A/N:
Trigger warning: anorexia is briefly mentioned in this chapter.
The next day of school was infinitely easier than the first.
The novelty of being the new girl hadn't worn off—far from it—but people didn't try to look at me constantly like they had yesterday. I had met enough people that I liked well enough, so I didn't have to worry about fitting in like I had the day before.
Unfortunately, my comfort level had dramatically decreased by second period. Mike managed to switch seats with a girl named Ashley so that he could sit next to me instead. I didn't particularly mind. Mike was friendly enough. But his overeager demeanor made me feel as if he was interested in having more than just a friendly relationship.
I had had a couple of boyfriends back home, but nothing serious. One was a human, so I had known it the relationship was doomed to fail from the start. The other knew I wasn't allowed to practice magic at the time, and it drove him crazy. I didn't really blame him for that; it drove me crazy too. Plus, boys weren't exactly at the top of my priority list at the moment—especially not human boys.
"So how's your second day going so far?" he questioned, taking it upon himself to walk me to Trig.
I shrugged. "It isn't so bad. Not as many people are staring."
Mike looked pointedly at a group of girls staring at me and talking quietly to themselves then back at me.
I rolled my eyes. "I said not as many, not that they weren't. Plus it seems that I am a bit ahead in classes so I won't have to study as much."
"Lucky. I'm basically failing Trig and Biology," he laughed.
"What's so funny?" asked Jessica, quickly walking up to us as we entered Building 5.
Mike chuckled nervously. "Oh, nothing. Oh, look at that, better get to class. See ya at lunch, Emme!"
Jessica scowled. "What am I, chopped liver?" she muttered before turning on her heel and stomping into Trig.
I reluctantly followed her. Not only was math my least favorite subject, but I wasn't exactly looking forward to hearing Jessica rant about Mike. You didn't need powers to see that Jessica was into him.
I took my seat, waiting for the bell to ring. I hadn't even set down my bag before Jessica whirled on me.
"It's like, totally uncool of him to run off like that. He didn't even acknowledge me! Is he ignoring me? What do you think it was? I didn't do anything, and even if I did, I do not deserve to be treated like I'm invisible."
"I don't know, Jessica."
Despite the bell ringing, she continued her rant. "What were you talking about before I got there? Was it me?"
"No. He was telling me which classes he had a hard time with."
She furrowed her brow. "That doesn't make any sense."
Mr. Varner glanced back at us from the board while he was writing some equations. He gave Jessica a pointed look then turned back.
I decided to give the girl some peace of mind if only to get Mr. Varner off our backs. "Look, Jessica. I've only been here for one day, but I can tell you're really smart. Not everyone can keep up with your brains."
She nodded along, agreeing. And I wasn't lying. She was smart if she was in Trigonometry instead of Geometry like the rest of the Juniors. Shallow, maybe, but still intelligent.
"He probably just got nervous. Maybe he doesn't want you to think less of him?" I shrugged.
That seemed to placate her enough that she was silent. I had about two minutes of silent note taking before she began to speak again. "So do you think he's, like, interested then?"
I had told myself this morning that I wasn't nervous about my second day of school, but as I walked with Jessica to the cafeteria, I had to admit I was. It wasn't because I was still the center of attention. It wasn't because I wasn't fitting in.
It was because of Edward Cullen.
I still didn't know what to think of him. He was so different than the rest of the kids here. Sure, my aunts had encouraged me to get closer to him and his family (Alice, specifically). But that would be a selfish thing to do if they liked to keep to themselves. I didn't want to get to know them just because I thought they would help me with my magic. If I was being totally honest with myself, that wasn't the only reason I wanted to get close to them, anyways. I could feel some sort of pull between myself and the Cullens—almost like a magnet.
After getting our food, Jessica and I sat down at our table with the others. I managed to get a seat that faced the Cullens this time. As creepy as it sounded, I wanted to try to look at them again to see if anything else happened. This time, I was prepared.
The family was already seated, though they had no food. Emmett seemed to be saying something to Rosalie, sitting across from him next to her twin. Next to him was Alice, but one was missing. I counted again, just to double-check. Edward wasn't there.
I got a feeling in my gut that the reason he wasn't there was somehow because of me. The worst part was that because my intuition was annoyingly always right, I knew it was true. I began to halfheartedly try to talk myself out of that thought. Maybe he was eating somewhere else. Maybe he was sick.
Alice suddenly looked up at me. I probably should have been embarrassed since I was so obviously staring at her family, but I wasn't. Instead, I met her eyes, eager to see if I would get another premonition.
Edward was standing in a huge valley that was blanketed in deep snow. Ahead of him was a large, modern house. It almost looked like a log cabin, but it was much too big to be called a cabin. The entire scene was picturesque, but Edward only looked at the house in front of him.
Eventually, a petite woman came out of the house. She looked similar to him in that she was beautiful and had skin so pale she almost blended in with the snow around her. Her long, strawberry blonde hair shifted in the breeze. It must have been freezing, but she seemed unconcerned in her fitted jeans and a simple sweater.
"Edward? What are you doing here?"
"Earth to Emme!"
I broke contact with Alice, refocusing my eyes before sliding them to Jessica. I was irritated that she had interrupted me. I had a feeling that the premonition was about where Edward had gone, and I wanted to know more. I had officially moved from nervous about Edward being here to being disappointed that he wasn't. I didn't even let myself think about the implications of that before I answered Jessica.
"Yes?"
"Where were you just now?" she demanded, brow raised.
"I didn't get much sleep last night. Guess I zoned out. What were you talking about?"
"I was just telling Lauren and Angela about the whole Mike incident this morning."
I looked over at Mike. He was deep in conversation with Tyler Crowley about basketball.
Jessica looked at me expectantly. She wanted me to chime in, obviously, but I could not care less about her relationship with the blonde boy.
I looked back at the Cullen table, seeking Alice once again. "Yeah, he was super rude to Jessica this morning."
It wasn't an involved response, but it was enough to send Jessica into another rant. It gave me an opportunity to return my attention to the Cullen table.
Alice wasn't there. Neither were any of the other Cullens. They were all heading out of the cafeteria. Just as the door shut behind them, the bell rang. I gathered my things and headed to Biology with Angela. I couldn't tell if I was dreading the class because Edward might be there… or because I knew he wasn't.
When the second bell rang, I knew I was right. I had the table to myself.
"So…" I began, tossing my backpack onto the desk in the library. "What's on the agenda for today?" After arriving home from school, my aunts called me for training without so much as an afternoon snack.
I tossed my backpack onto the desk and then dropped onto the floor by the fireplace. There was a slight pressure that had been forming in between my eyebrows ever since I stepped in the door. If I was going to get a headache, that would make today's lesson incredibly difficult—especially seeing as I didn't think my aunts would let me slack off for something so trivial.
"You would be correct on that assumption," Blair commented.
I snapped my head up and looked at her. "How—" I began before cutting myself off. Today was Wednesday, which meant practicing the art of telekinesis.
"Correct again!" Isolde smiled, entirely too pleasantly. "But we won't be doing that. We thought it best if we focus on telepathy first, given the circumstances."
"I'm assuming this pressure in my head is the two of you ratting around in it?"
Isolde nodded. "Whenever a witch uses telepathy to look into another witch's mind, you should be able to feel it. Unless the stronger the witch, the stronger she feels foreign presences."
"On the other side of that, the stronger the witch, the easier it is to disguise your presence in another's mind," Blair continued.
The pain in my forehead flared again. "Fine, fine. Ignoring the fact that that makes almost no sense, how do you keep out unwanted presences?"
My aunts began the intricate process of explaining to me how to build up a mental shield. It was something that was unique to each individual person. Even humans could make mental shields, on the assumption they knew that their minds could be read. Aunt Blair said her shield was made of gold. Isolde's was silver. It made sense that theirs were similar since they were extremely close.
I thought about what I wanted mine to look like. The material didn't have to be strong; it just had to be a barrier. If someone tried to change anything about it, you would notice. I didn't want it to be too malleable though. If my mental shield was a bubble, I would certainly feel if someone popped it… but then they would have full access to my mind. If I used something like brick, even if the intruder ruined a part of it, the rest would stay strong. It would keep too much from escaping. Plus brick was familiar. It was old and tested. It was what my house in Salem was built with. It was what I knew.
My aunts coached me through the building of my wall. They taught me how to protect myself, but also how to test others' shields to try to find a way in. They didn't stop until I had successfully infiltrated both of their shields. The entire process was exhausting.
Magic was a part of me. It was like I had decided to start training for a marathon as someone who had never run a day in her life. I'd never used magic on purpose, and now that I was, my body almost couldn't take it. Blair and Isolde were pushing me, but they were careful not to overstep.
Despite how draining it was on me, I was actually very good at it. It was harder for me to keep my mental shield in place, but when it came to dismantling them, I could easily find my way in. My aunts were clearly surprised that I took to the mental exercise so quickly when I was only adequate at best with the spell casting. And I knew they were shocked because I read it in their thoughts. If I could infiltrate their minds, then humans would be no problem at all.
I tried not to think about who I would test this theory on. Part of me knew that would be a major breach of privacy, but the other part wanted to test my abilities and practice as much as possible.
"I think that's enough training for the night," Blair sighed. "You have quite the affinity for this, though. It should make next week much easier, and we'll be able to move onto other aspects from there, I think."
I had a full-blown headache by this point, and I felt like I could sleep for weeks. "Other aspects?"
Isolde nodded. "Telepathy isn't just reading minds, you know. Once you get into another person's mind, you can manipulate it as well. Mind control, as it were."
"It works with animals, too."
"And even spirits sometimes," Isolde finished.
"I can finally run away and start my own circus."
Blair snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. You're destined for much greater things."
Edward wasn't at school the next day, either. In fact, he wasn't at school for the rest of the week. By Friday, my patience had worn out. I was tired of wondering about Edward. It occurred to me that no one else seemed as obsessed with him as I was. I could just as easily have tried to approach Alice, but for some reason, I didn't focus on her as much. Instead, I thought about him.
I had a feeling that Edward's mysterious disappearance had something to do with me, and I was tired of wondering helplessly about it like a love-struck school girl. I wasn't a love-struck school girl. I was a witch, and if I started acting like one, I wouldn't have to wonder about where Edward was and why he was missing. I could find out for myself.
I had every intention of testing my power out on Jessica in Trig, but the girl was so chatty that I doubted the only thoughts running through her head were what she was saying to me. It wasn't until Spanish that she actually fell silent in order to translate the page that Mrs. Goff handed out.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I focused on the girl next to me, reaching my mind out to hers.
She didn't have any sort of mental shield up, as expected. I made sure to only probe the surface of her thoughts and to keep myself from branching too far out. I didn't want to hear the entire class, just Jessica. I listened to her switch the words on the page in front of her from English to Spanish.
'Let's see… Siempre los hemos llevido—no wait—llevar, not llevir. Siempre los hemos llevado bien. I wonder if Mike thinks Spanish is hot. I bet he does, any foreign language is sexy. Except maybe German. German always sounds so angry. I wish I had taken French. French is infinitely hotter. Si, los he repartido—ugh, damn these verb conjugations—repartado antes. No one in Forks even speaks Spanish. What is the point of this?'
I almost couldn't believe I had done it, until I felt the wave of slight fatigue that hit me. It wasn't a lot; mind reading didn't take much effort. But it was still upper-level magic, and I wasn't an upper-level witch technically. Yet, anyways.
I went ahead and finished my translations, making sure to fix the mistake that Jessica didn't know she had made as I did it. I glanced at her. "I always get the verbs mixed up. Repartado sounds much better than repartido, don't you think?"
She stiffened next to me. 'Shit. Thank God for the new girl. I can't believe I missed that.' "Ugh, you have no idea. I should have taken French," Jessica answered, erasing her mistake and changing it to the correct answer.
I gave her a small smile, but she didn't even notice. Say what you will about Jessica Stanley, but she took her studies seriously. She probably only made the mistake in the first place because she was distracted by Mike. The girl had it bad. She was also refreshingly transparent. Jessica seemed to say exactly what she thought: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I could respect her honesty.
Unlike a certain family that seemed to be shrouded in mystery.
I made sure to choose a seat that I could easily see Alice Cullen from. I had tested my abilities out on Jessica, but I was going to use Alice to find out what was going on with Edward. I sighed, running my hand through my hair. Everything came back to him. It was getting a little pathetic, and yet I was going ahead with it anyways.
"Aren't you getting food, Emme?" Angela asked me.
I pulled myself out of searching for Alice long enough to look at the dark-haired girl. "Nah, I'm not very hungry today."
She shrugged and went off to the lunch line with Jessica and Eric. Mike and Lauren brought their lunches for the most part.
"It's healthy to skip lunch, you know," Lauren told me with a pointed look. 'Anorexia isn't cute.'
"I know. I ate a big breakfast this morning though, and it kind of made me nauseous. I usually just have fruit or toast." It wasn't true, but she bought it. I wasn't anorexic. I just had other things on my mind that distracted me from my appetite.
Speaking of other things on my mind, Alice Cullen gracefully sat down at the Cullen table, gently setting her tray down in front of her. I briefly wondered if she was a dancer; normal people didn't look so fluid when doing normal things like that. Carefully, I looked into her mind.
Like Jessica, Alice didn't have any sort of shield up. That led me to believe that she was simply magic sensitive, and not a witch. If she were a witch, she'd have a shield.
Unlike Jessica, her thoughts were wild. She didn't think in words very often. From what I could tell, it was mostly images. Sometimes she thought from her point of view, but other times the images didn't even have her in them.
Alice and her siblings walked through the door of what I assumed was their home. Alice was laughing at something someone said, then looked at Rosalie. Rosalie pulled a ring off the necklace that was around her neck. She placed it on her left ring finger before grabbing Emmett's hand and running with him up the stairs. They were fast. Weirdly fast.
Edward was lying in a deep pile of pristine, white snow. He wasn't dressed for the snow, but he didn't seem cold. He actually seemed quite comfortable. The woman strawberry blonde woman sprang over a rock a few feet away from him. He turned to glace at her, an unreadable expression on his face. She was truly beautiful; her skin looked almost silver in the moonlight.
Suddenly, she launched herself off the rock canon-balling into the snowbank next to him. Edward didn't even flinch.
"Edward?" the woman questioned, worry on her face. She quickly brushed the snow off of him. "Sorry. It was a joke."
"I know," Edward replied. "It was funny." His face didn't show any amusement, however.
The woman sighed. "Irina and Kate said I should leave you alone. They think I'm annoying you."
Edward didn't hesitate. "Not at all. On the contrary, I'm the one who's being rude—abominably rude. I'm very sorry."
It was silent for a moment before Edward began to have a one-sided conversation with himself. "I haven't… entirely… decided that." A pause. "No. It doesn't seem to be… helping." Another pause. "Of course not." He smiled. "No."
The woman raised one eyebrow, her expression disbelieving. Edward laughed at her and then sighed. "Alright. A little bit." It was silent for a moment before Edward continued. "You're a thousand times lovelier than the stars, Tanya."
There was a meadow in the forest. It was so green and alive. It was beautiful, but even more beautiful was the couple lying in the middle of it.
There was a girl with long, dark hair. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, but still held olive undertones I was familiar with. Her hair shone with an auburn tint in the sunlight. Her butterscotch eyes sparkled as they stared at the sky above. It was that unrecognizable version of me that looked well-rested, carefree, and truly happy.
I was lying next to Edward. I looked more relaxed than I had ever seen him. He had been looking up, too, but slowly turned his head to look at me. His gaze expressed a fondness that I had never seen from anyone before. The clouds above slowly moved out of the way. A glint of light caught my eye; I turned to look at him as well. He was shone like a million tiny crystals.
I let out a peal of laughter. "This is what you were so worried about?" I asked, sitting up.
Edward sat up as well, avoiding my eyes. He didn't say anything.
"Don't make me read your mind," I warned.
"I worry about a lot with you, Emme." He was being sincere. Slowly, he reached out and brushed his hand against my cheek.
I closed my eyes.
Throughout the clearing, wildflowers began to bloom into bursts of color.
It was cloudy now. It looked as if it were about to rain. The Cullens stood in a large clearing, a field.
"It's time," Alice announced.
Lightning flashed, and a crack of thunder boomed almost immediately afterward.
I huffed. "You know I can do that, right? Or were you just waiting around to be overly dramatic?"
Emmett looked at me with topaz eyes wide in surprise. "You can do that? Like on command?"
I glanced up at the sky. Almost immediately lightning tore across the sky only to hit a tree on the far side of the clearing. It was followed by even louder thunder than before and the crackle of a limb of the tree tearing off before crashing to the ground. I turned back to Emmett, brow raised.
He was silent for a moment and then said, "So… you're telling me we can do this whenever we want?"
I laughed.
I stood up sharply, pushing the chair back so fast that it fell backward with a clatter. Several heads whipped around to me, but I didn't pay attention to anything. Instead, I was looking straight at the Cullen table. My head was pounding.
Jasper was shaking Alice, who was holding her head in her hands. I could tell he was speaking to her, but I couldn't hear what they were saying over the noise of the cafeteria. Emmett and Rosalie threw away their lunch trays as Jasper pulled Alice out of her seat. She was shaking her head but looked a lot better than she had a couple of moments ago.
Did she see what I saw?
I had to know.
Apparently, my tablemates had been trying to get my attention, but I ignored them as I marched across the cafeteria. I didn't think; I was acting on pure instincts. Something told me this was the right move.
But the Cullens were too fast for me. They were out the door before I could even make it halfway across the cafeteria. I stood there for a moment, contemplating whether or not I should follow them. The bell rang before I could make a decision.
I had a feeling the Cullens wouldn't be there for the rest of the day. I would have to wait to get the answers that I so desperately craved.
I had no idea what I had seen. I mean, I knew what I had seen, but what was it? And how? Were they visions? Were they dreams? Were they from Alice, or were they from me? I doubted they were visions. Some of the things I had seen couldn't happen. Rosalie and Emmett running quickly up the stairs—Tanya launching herself off the rock—Edward shining like stars in the sunlight. What was going on?
Reluctantly, I went back to my now empty table. I picked up my things and went to Biology.
A/N:
Long time no see! I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. Hopefully, I'll be able to post more since my job is as non-essential as it gets... I'm feeling inspired to create. Please rate and review :)
Edit 4/2/2020: I fixed the whole telepathy/telekinesis mix up so that bit should make more sense now!
