Chapter One.
Jacob Adlam was generally a very ignorable boy.
He was tall and thin, almost scrawny, with long slender hands that he kept balled in his pockets whenever the situation allowed, and feet that looked as though he hadn't quite grown into them.
He had short brown hair, cut above his ears for fear that, if left to grow too long, it would show signs of the slight curl he had inherited from his mother, and which he loathed with possibly the most passion he showed about anything. He had indistinct, moody eyes, a quiet mouth, a slight hunch to his walk from long years of a bearing a heavy rucksack slung over his shoulder, a guilty face.
Jacob had attended the same school for six more or less uneventful years before he noticed that he hated it, managing in this time to drift completely apart from both his peers and reality.
He kept to his own out of a mild but well-cultivated dislike he harbored for the people around him. It wasn't that he could be called outright unpleasant – unpleasantness wasn't a part of his nature – but he simply didn't enjoy conversation. Out of a peculiar kind of insecurity, he would often catch himself picking apart those he spoke to, attempting to analyze motives and character flaws of even those he only exchanged a few words with. Disliking this, and finding it harder and harder to control, he found he preferred to avoid people altogether. He eventually fell into the self- projected stereotype of Outcast gratefully, finding people expected far less of him when nothing was offered. He was, after all, not immune to his own criticism.
Jacob passed his classes with grades ranging from reasonably good to mediocre. Few classes sparked his interest – though in the beginning, he had made a brave attempt at enjoying what he did, he was by now far too jaded to anything his teachers threw at him to dredge up an acceptable pretense at interest. Classes to him were nothing but a chore, his cross to bear, and he did so with a dour attitude fitting to his perception of it. Nearly every day, he managed to make his way from his seat in the back of one class to his seat in the back of the next, a pile of highly-neglected books in tow, without being forced to speak a single word to anyone, and he had a peculiar talent for avoiding the roving eyes of a questioning teacher, whose attention, it seemed, just crossed right over his generic head on a regular basis. Had the attendance log in Advanced Summoning not cheerfully chirped his name every day from it's perch atop a stack of fellow books on Flitwick's desk, no one would ever have known it, though the knowledge of his existence didn't mean anyone particularly cared about it, so Jacob thought.
Not even his bunkmates, Julius Rosedale and Clyde Greenbaum, knew anything much about him at all. He'd been added to their room at the last moment a year or two ago, as he'd been an extra somehow misplaced in the listing, true to his nature. He'd entered their room as a stranger, cloudy-eyed, dull voiced, and laden with bags, and had simply never attempted to mend the rift, or responded to their commendable efforts to do so. To Clyde and Julius, he was a mystery, remote like a mildly interesting television program in unsubtitled Greek they could pick apart when they chose, but could just as easily ignore. They had no argument against him, however; his part of the room was always immaculate, even if this was only due to lack of use, and that was really the only thing that mattered.
Every day after classes ended, Jacob returned in silence to his room in the Ravenclaw tower, books held loosely in arms that were almost limp from sheer, agonizing apathy. These were shoved into a drawer in his nightstand – the same one every day – leaving Jacob free to don an old field coat in a questionable shade of gray that made Julius wince, and trudged outside, rain or shine. Clyde and Julius had long ago ceased to question him on this, as they knew that the answers would be vague and barely audible at best. They'd by now accepted this as a common practice, and when Jacob entered the room laden with books one cold October afternoon, they didn't bother to ask where he was headed. Julius, a slender, heavily freckled boy with dirty blonde hair, looked up only to give a reluctant half-smile in greeting, though he received no indication that Jacob had noticed this. Clyde didn't bother to look up from his reading.
"You're going to get in trouble one of these days, Adlam," he said, licking his thumb to turn the page.
Jacob made an indistinct noise that seemed to be a reply. He disposed of his books, untangled his coat from his bed post, threw it on over his robes, and left, shoving his hands in his pockets. He shut the door with the quietest of clicks, and was gone without ceremony.
Not much stopped him from going out. Studying sometimes cut in, admittedly, and once in a very great while the weather did as well. But Jacob was not touchy about rain or cold or heat, and he could often be seen trudging through a foot or two of snow, walking slowly along the border of the Forest that lined school grounds.
If anyone had asked what he was doing on these walks, he probably would have offered no reply. When questioning himself, however, as he had to despite himself on all occasions, Jacob could only dig up a vague, insistent feeling as an answer, as though there was something he had to do or find, something intangible. The truth was, the Forest was soothing, large and dark and quiet. Jacob did not enjoy being forced every day to sit under hot lights in stuffy classrooms, forced to socialize with people he knew didn't know his name, or really care. The jostle and merry clamor of the day appealed to some, for certain, but for Jacob, it was bewildering and a little frightening. The walks he took every day were a necessary retreat for him, an hour or two for him to calm down, to recollect his thoughts and keep himself sane. There was nothing to get caught up in, not the forest, not to him. There was something about being the only live, thinking thing within sight that was comforting, something that gave him purpose.
This was one of the chillier days. Jacob pulled his jacket a little closer and held it there as he fastened the top two buttons. From under his coat, he produced a wand – the one he'd received six years ago, and could still hear the dusty, creepy shopkeeper pronounce it ten inches, ebony, quite pliant. Unicorn mane. Rubbing his hands together and breathing briskly on them to warm them, he muttered a quick charm and tapped the soles of each of his shoes. Charms had always been his best class – and for that reason, he felt himself excused to use charms outside the classroom.
Momentarily, a pleasant, easy heat spread up from the soles of his feet, relieving his already-numb toes. Satisfied, Jacob replaced his wand. The simple heating charm came in handy on days like this, though he couldn't easily control heating anything much larger than his shoes without risking a fire. He scuffed his feet in the dirt and drifted down the familiar path, leading from the safety of the school walls and toward the looming Forest that would have looked imposing to anyone but him.
Night was coming earlier these days. Already the sun was beginning to turn the sky a little pink about it's edges, and was barely peeking out over the tops of the towering trees. Jacob adjusted his collar and continued to wander the edge of civilization, one shoulder at home and the other grazing the line of what to him was the epitome of Wild. He leaned his head back into the cool evening air, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply until his nose hurt from the cold.
He failed to notice his company until the figure silently pacing him, noticeably to the Forest side of his path, tripped and yelped in surprise. He jumped himself, startled, and, unconsciously gripping the wand in his coat pocket, he wheeled around to stare.
In a sheepish heap on the ground was the palest girl Jacob had ever seen. The paleness didn't even only account for her paper-colored skin – her hair was so blonde it was a startling gold-white, and her eyes were a faded blue. She looked like a picture taken with the flash much too bright.
Jacob blinked.
She didn't get up, only pulled herself into a sitting position, dusting off her robe, which itself contrasted alarmingly with the hand that tidied it. Her hair was extremely fine, long and a bit wild, and floated around her face, crackling with static. She flashed an alarmed Jacob a very wide grin, albeit an embarrassed one. "'Lo."
"..Hello," Jacob said, cautiously.
This seemed to delight the girl, whose grin grew a little wider. Her long, thin nose crinkled a bit, and she climbed to her feet, a surprisingly ungainly motion for such a frail girl. As she stood, Jacob stared at her with a creased brow. She wasn't especially pretty; her nose was too long for her face, for one, and she was far too pale to even look like an attempt at normal. Her eyes were wide-set, large, and frank, and were a bit slanted, like her cheekbones. Jacob could now vaguely recall seeing her once or twice in the corridors, though he never noticed much of the other students he passed, especially when he'd have had to make an effort to have seen her, between the amount of girls surrounding her and her height. At full stature, she was a good six inches shorter than he. This notwithstanding, he shifted uneasily under her stare, taken aback by the frank curiosity she was displaying.
"..You.. you need something?"
"Oh nonono," the girl announced cheerfully, continuing to dust herself off despite the fact that she had been spotless long ago. "Need not anything, nothing at all."
Jacob was not sure what kind of a reply this sort of comment constituted and decided to say nothing. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to discourage the strange girl, who chewed on a thumbnail in thought. Finally, she reached over and bluntly poked him in the shoulder. He flinched a bit, giving her a reproachful glance like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
"You have a name," she declared, and only after a moment of puzzlement did Jacob realize that this was a question.
"Oh," he said finally, scratching his head. "Oh. Jacob."
"Jaycobe," the girl said, nodding sagely. "I see."
The aforementioned made no attempt to correct her strange pronunciation, desiring to speak with her as little as possible. "..Yeah," he said uncomfortably, and began to walk past, hurried.
She fell into line beside him, copying his posture and shoving her hands in the pockets of her robe in his style. "Where are we going, Jaycobe?"
He quickly pulled his hands out of his pockets with the indistinct idea that he was being mocked. "We?"
"Yes."
"Oh." He continued in silence for a moment, feeling terribly violated.
"My question is not being answered," she said with a deliberate patience, eyebrows raised daintily.
"I'm just walking," Jacob said, almost defensively.
"With no purpose?"
"No." Jacob was mildly annoyed. "I'm just walking."
"Alone?"
"I was," he said pointedly, a little more sharply than he meant.
"I see, "she said wisely, "I see, say I."
"..Aright," Jacob observed, wishing more and more that something should jump out of the bushes and eat her.
They continued on in silence for a moment.
"Do y'like parrots?"
Jacob could barely restrain himself from rolling his eyes. "What?"
"Y'know – parrots!" She held her hands to her face in a cheerful, flamboyant, and entirely purposeless demonstration. "Big big birds with th' beaks – and th' –"
"I know what a bloody parrot is –"Jacob made a sound of frustration "–why do you want to know what I think of parrots?"
"We have a parrot at home," she informed him solemnly. "They told me. A big one. With a beak – and it is red, I think, unless I dreamed it."
Jacob, who opened his mouth for a moment of helpless silence, found he could only stare.
"Why are you walking alone with no purpose?" she asked for an abrupt change of subject, not seeming to notice how much her presence was unnerving the boy.
"Because I can," he said finally, definitely irritated by now. "Why are you following me and talking about parrots that don't exist?"
"Because I can," the girl answered, very much pleased with herself.
Jacob grumbled something, suddenly very crabby, and made no audible answer.
"Do you not have anyone to walk with, Jaycobe?" she pressed.
"No," he said shortly.
"Then I will walk with you," she said with an air of finality.
"I don't WANT anyone to walk with," he said stiffly.
"Sure?"
"Positive."
The girl seemed to consider this, by now forgetting to copy his posture. Though the wind was chilly and she had no coat, she didn't seem to be bothered.
"I am bored," she stated finally, "so I will walk with you anyway."
Jacob adjusted his collar again, this time pulling it around his face. "Jesus, stop going around in circles. Did it occur to you to think that I was just fine before you had to start following me?"
"No," she said certainly, "and I have an idea that you did not, either."
"You know that much, eh?"
"I know more than you think," the girl said, suddenly quite serious.
"..Whatever." Jacob was growing apprehensive, the unfamiliar presence grating somewhat on his nerves. Maybe if he kept his answers shorter she'd just go away.
There was no such luck. He walked on in total silence for at least ten minutes, and the girl simply continued to trudge along the path beside him over the frozen ground.
"If I bothers you so very muchly," she said sensibly, after a time, "why are you still here?"
Jacob found he had no answer for this. So, after a pause in which he grasped for words like a suffocating fish, he turned right on his heel, and walked back inside without throwing back so much as a glance.
Grimly smug about how he'd dealt with the situation, Jacob gripped the cold, heavy iron handle of the door with both hands and tugged. It finally opened jerkily with a low moan of protest. Jacob slipped through the doorway before it had a chance to close again, and had only a moment to turn and glance outside, despite himself.
The girl stood where he'd left her, at the overgrown path on the edge of the Woods, and was watching him, her head tilted and her arms crossed behind her back. He jerked his head back to the hall, eyes averted (though it was too far for her to have noticed at any rate), and pretended he hadn't seen her, more for his own sake than hers.
The door finally clanked closed with a cold sound that rang out in the hallway and dissolved after a moment with the carpet-muffled sound of a few students farther down. Jacob slid out of his jacket, balled it up roughly in his hands, and held it under one arm, turning to head back to his room.
A thin ribbon of smoke reached his nose – he coughed, muttered something, and batted indifferently at the now-flaming soles of his shoes. The small blaze went out easily enough, but the irritating smell of burning rubber remained floating about his head. Another heating charm gone awry, and another scorched pair of sneakers. He'd been certain he had the stupid spell down by now. It must have been the distraction.
He swung around the staircase and began to drag himself up, by now thoroughly irritated with the world and the entirety of it's inhabitants.
One less pair of sneakers, and one less place to go with them. That'd been his haven out there, his own space to think. What was the justice that he find himself one place, one small place, to have a bit of peace, only to have some psychopath of a girl (as she obviously wasn't quite right in the head) start barging in on his territory?
What if someone should SEE?
Jacob held his coat a little tighter, shaking his head. One person walking around was easy enough to ignore, but if she decided to join in, perhaps someone else would, and someone else would follow after that, and it would begin to look like some kind of party. And Jacob would be smack in the middle of it all, and would no longer have an excuse for being ignored.
No, Jacob decided finally, still doggedly ascending the stairwell, and doing his best to ignore the loud clucking of a few distressed chickens in the painting he was passing. No. She wouldn't even be there tomorrow, her attention wouldn't last that long. She wasn't the type to be interested with dead leaves and dark woods, she was too flighty and bubbly and giggly, just – generally girly. Girly. Stupid. And she couldn't take a hint, for that matter. A rather strong hint at that.
Jacob paused at the top of the stairs, one hand in his hair, and peered suspiciously down the length of it, as if the girl might be lurking at the bottom to stare at him a bit more.
She wouldn't be there tomorrow.
He was, of course, spectacularly wrong.
The next afternoon, Jacob routinely dropped his books in the bottom drawer of his dresser, and, buried in the old gray coat, left the tower. Predictably enough, as soon as he fell into pace along the worn path, she was right behind him – a pale, ungainly shadow that he barely noticed when she appeared.
His heart hit the bottom of his chest and he said nothing, narrowing his eyes and pulling the coat a little closer.
He could hear the grin in her voice. "Not walking alone today, you're not!" She took a few very high steps, her hands clasped behind her. "Now we just need to find you a purpose."
"Will you go away?" he grumbled, stuffing his hands quite miserably as far into his pockets as they would fit.
"Jaycobe," she said carelessly, peering at him, "No one'sa ruin your place, not one 'cept me. And I am quiet. Usually."
Lord. She knew what he'd been thinking. How creepy.
"How about if I said I don't care for that, either?"
"I wouldna believe you."
"Why in the hell not?" The minor profanity reassured his confidence a little, though it didn't seem to faze the girl.
"As you don't look much happy."
That was somehow even creepier. "What do you do, watch me all day?" Jacob demanded, a little shaken.
"N'n." She shook her head emphatically and swung around quick so somehow she was suddenly walking backwards and Jacob abruptly facing her, which was the last thing he wanted. He stopped quite suddenly, jerking his hands from his pockets in his surprise. "Y'always by yourself, it grows in your face. We can all see it," she went on, quite seriously.
"All?" He didn't particularly like the sound of that.
"Yes," she said. "Everyone, yes."
"Well good, at least I'm known for something."
"So I am going to walk with you," she concluded, sanguine.
"You do that," Jacob said.
"I am already," she informed him brightly.
And though the conversation had not been pursued farther than that, the girl had stayed put in silence until Jacob broke down and hurriedly left again, somehow still unable to deal with the odd presence. And the next afternoon, she reappeared, as well as the next, and the next.
Jacob, finding a reserve of the obstinate somewhere in him, refused to abandon his path and continued to cling with a sulky desperation. He had been using it for three years now, and the idle interest of a strange girl was not going to chase him away now. It was his place and his alone; she'd soon get bored and pick on someone else.
"Soon" became a week.
She began to wait for him, with over-dramatic patience, right next to the outside door, arms crossed and face set. As he passed, trying in vain to pretend not to see her from two feet away, she set into a brisk, military step behind him, looking as though she'd forgotten he was there and was simply gazing innocently around at the charming dead winter foliage.
Finally, on the eighth day, Jacob knew something had to be done. He turned his head slightly, and grudgingly spoke to her. "What's your name, then?"
She gave him a surprised glance, fair eyebrows nearly reaching her hairline.
"I might as well know," he said, set on the defense.
The girl seemed absolutely elated to be asked such a question from her otherwise silent new "friend" and nearly tripped on herself, though she appeared not to notice.
"Eva," she beamed, pronouncing the name oddly, which made it sound more like Ai-va. "I'm Eva."
"Eva?"
"Yes."
"Eva what?"
"Brighton," she said, turning and walking backward for a few large steps in her amusement.
"Aright, so Eva Brighton," Jacob began, "when are you going to start leaving me alone again?"
The smile on her face collapsed, and she shot him a wounded look that was obviously supposed to evoke some sort of pity, but failed miserably. It was precisely, in fact, what Jacob had hoped for. He supposed.
"By now, I thought you dinna mind," she began in an injured tone.
Jacob sensed an approaching Scene of some sort, and he disliked causing Scenes. His newfound self-assurance, born of the familiarity of this weirdo, wavered a bit.
"There's better things for you to do," he amended hurriedly.
She considered a moment. "No," she said simply, shrugging.
"..Like letting me get on with my life, here?"
"Does not look like much of a life to me, Jaycobe."
"Then why are you sticking around?"
"I said before. You don't look happy, you don't."
"Glad to know what a judge you are on people's expressions," Jacob said, a bit more sharply than he'd planned.
"It is obvious –"
"Look," Jacob said, wheeling around and staring straight at the girl, who looked more puzzled than frightened. "I know who you are, and I see you in the halls all the time in the middle of your little - little group. You've always got someone to talk to, you're happy where you are - I don't need one of you out on another little good-will mission for my well being and social life, and I sure as all hell don't need someone to talk to. Aright? Do you get it? Will you leave me alone now?"
Eva stopped mid-step, for the first time, and examined him for a moment, her brows knitting.
He shifted uncomfortably, suddenly an amoeba under a microscope that was half a foot shorter than he.
She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, shook her head, and said only, "Then I go." She turned, blank-faced, and wandered back to the school's large iron doors, into which she disappeared after a brief, but noticeable hesitation.
Mission accomplished, thought Jacob, alone on his path, although predictably enough he wasn't feeling the triumph he thought he should have been. The blankness in her eyes remained before his.
Jacob Adlam was generally a very ignorable boy.
He was tall and thin, almost scrawny, with long slender hands that he kept balled in his pockets whenever the situation allowed, and feet that looked as though he hadn't quite grown into them.
He had short brown hair, cut above his ears for fear that, if left to grow too long, it would show signs of the slight curl he had inherited from his mother, and which he loathed with possibly the most passion he showed about anything. He had indistinct, moody eyes, a quiet mouth, a slight hunch to his walk from long years of a bearing a heavy rucksack slung over his shoulder, a guilty face.
Jacob had attended the same school for six more or less uneventful years before he noticed that he hated it, managing in this time to drift completely apart from both his peers and reality.
He kept to his own out of a mild but well-cultivated dislike he harbored for the people around him. It wasn't that he could be called outright unpleasant – unpleasantness wasn't a part of his nature – but he simply didn't enjoy conversation. Out of a peculiar kind of insecurity, he would often catch himself picking apart those he spoke to, attempting to analyze motives and character flaws of even those he only exchanged a few words with. Disliking this, and finding it harder and harder to control, he found he preferred to avoid people altogether. He eventually fell into the self- projected stereotype of Outcast gratefully, finding people expected far less of him when nothing was offered. He was, after all, not immune to his own criticism.
Jacob passed his classes with grades ranging from reasonably good to mediocre. Few classes sparked his interest – though in the beginning, he had made a brave attempt at enjoying what he did, he was by now far too jaded to anything his teachers threw at him to dredge up an acceptable pretense at interest. Classes to him were nothing but a chore, his cross to bear, and he did so with a dour attitude fitting to his perception of it. Nearly every day, he managed to make his way from his seat in the back of one class to his seat in the back of the next, a pile of highly-neglected books in tow, without being forced to speak a single word to anyone, and he had a peculiar talent for avoiding the roving eyes of a questioning teacher, whose attention, it seemed, just crossed right over his generic head on a regular basis. Had the attendance log in Advanced Summoning not cheerfully chirped his name every day from it's perch atop a stack of fellow books on Flitwick's desk, no one would ever have known it, though the knowledge of his existence didn't mean anyone particularly cared about it, so Jacob thought.
Not even his bunkmates, Julius Rosedale and Clyde Greenbaum, knew anything much about him at all. He'd been added to their room at the last moment a year or two ago, as he'd been an extra somehow misplaced in the listing, true to his nature. He'd entered their room as a stranger, cloudy-eyed, dull voiced, and laden with bags, and had simply never attempted to mend the rift, or responded to their commendable efforts to do so. To Clyde and Julius, he was a mystery, remote like a mildly interesting television program in unsubtitled Greek they could pick apart when they chose, but could just as easily ignore. They had no argument against him, however; his part of the room was always immaculate, even if this was only due to lack of use, and that was really the only thing that mattered.
Every day after classes ended, Jacob returned in silence to his room in the Ravenclaw tower, books held loosely in arms that were almost limp from sheer, agonizing apathy. These were shoved into a drawer in his nightstand – the same one every day – leaving Jacob free to don an old field coat in a questionable shade of gray that made Julius wince, and trudged outside, rain or shine. Clyde and Julius had long ago ceased to question him on this, as they knew that the answers would be vague and barely audible at best. They'd by now accepted this as a common practice, and when Jacob entered the room laden with books one cold October afternoon, they didn't bother to ask where he was headed. Julius, a slender, heavily freckled boy with dirty blonde hair, looked up only to give a reluctant half-smile in greeting, though he received no indication that Jacob had noticed this. Clyde didn't bother to look up from his reading.
"You're going to get in trouble one of these days, Adlam," he said, licking his thumb to turn the page.
Jacob made an indistinct noise that seemed to be a reply. He disposed of his books, untangled his coat from his bed post, threw it on over his robes, and left, shoving his hands in his pockets. He shut the door with the quietest of clicks, and was gone without ceremony.
Not much stopped him from going out. Studying sometimes cut in, admittedly, and once in a very great while the weather did as well. But Jacob was not touchy about rain or cold or heat, and he could often be seen trudging through a foot or two of snow, walking slowly along the border of the Forest that lined school grounds.
If anyone had asked what he was doing on these walks, he probably would have offered no reply. When questioning himself, however, as he had to despite himself on all occasions, Jacob could only dig up a vague, insistent feeling as an answer, as though there was something he had to do or find, something intangible. The truth was, the Forest was soothing, large and dark and quiet. Jacob did not enjoy being forced every day to sit under hot lights in stuffy classrooms, forced to socialize with people he knew didn't know his name, or really care. The jostle and merry clamor of the day appealed to some, for certain, but for Jacob, it was bewildering and a little frightening. The walks he took every day were a necessary retreat for him, an hour or two for him to calm down, to recollect his thoughts and keep himself sane. There was nothing to get caught up in, not the forest, not to him. There was something about being the only live, thinking thing within sight that was comforting, something that gave him purpose.
This was one of the chillier days. Jacob pulled his jacket a little closer and held it there as he fastened the top two buttons. From under his coat, he produced a wand – the one he'd received six years ago, and could still hear the dusty, creepy shopkeeper pronounce it ten inches, ebony, quite pliant. Unicorn mane. Rubbing his hands together and breathing briskly on them to warm them, he muttered a quick charm and tapped the soles of each of his shoes. Charms had always been his best class – and for that reason, he felt himself excused to use charms outside the classroom.
Momentarily, a pleasant, easy heat spread up from the soles of his feet, relieving his already-numb toes. Satisfied, Jacob replaced his wand. The simple heating charm came in handy on days like this, though he couldn't easily control heating anything much larger than his shoes without risking a fire. He scuffed his feet in the dirt and drifted down the familiar path, leading from the safety of the school walls and toward the looming Forest that would have looked imposing to anyone but him.
Night was coming earlier these days. Already the sun was beginning to turn the sky a little pink about it's edges, and was barely peeking out over the tops of the towering trees. Jacob adjusted his collar and continued to wander the edge of civilization, one shoulder at home and the other grazing the line of what to him was the epitome of Wild. He leaned his head back into the cool evening air, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply until his nose hurt from the cold.
He failed to notice his company until the figure silently pacing him, noticeably to the Forest side of his path, tripped and yelped in surprise. He jumped himself, startled, and, unconsciously gripping the wand in his coat pocket, he wheeled around to stare.
In a sheepish heap on the ground was the palest girl Jacob had ever seen. The paleness didn't even only account for her paper-colored skin – her hair was so blonde it was a startling gold-white, and her eyes were a faded blue. She looked like a picture taken with the flash much too bright.
Jacob blinked.
She didn't get up, only pulled herself into a sitting position, dusting off her robe, which itself contrasted alarmingly with the hand that tidied it. Her hair was extremely fine, long and a bit wild, and floated around her face, crackling with static. She flashed an alarmed Jacob a very wide grin, albeit an embarrassed one. "'Lo."
"..Hello," Jacob said, cautiously.
This seemed to delight the girl, whose grin grew a little wider. Her long, thin nose crinkled a bit, and she climbed to her feet, a surprisingly ungainly motion for such a frail girl. As she stood, Jacob stared at her with a creased brow. She wasn't especially pretty; her nose was too long for her face, for one, and she was far too pale to even look like an attempt at normal. Her eyes were wide-set, large, and frank, and were a bit slanted, like her cheekbones. Jacob could now vaguely recall seeing her once or twice in the corridors, though he never noticed much of the other students he passed, especially when he'd have had to make an effort to have seen her, between the amount of girls surrounding her and her height. At full stature, she was a good six inches shorter than he. This notwithstanding, he shifted uneasily under her stare, taken aback by the frank curiosity she was displaying.
"..You.. you need something?"
"Oh nonono," the girl announced cheerfully, continuing to dust herself off despite the fact that she had been spotless long ago. "Need not anything, nothing at all."
Jacob was not sure what kind of a reply this sort of comment constituted and decided to say nothing. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to discourage the strange girl, who chewed on a thumbnail in thought. Finally, she reached over and bluntly poked him in the shoulder. He flinched a bit, giving her a reproachful glance like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
"You have a name," she declared, and only after a moment of puzzlement did Jacob realize that this was a question.
"Oh," he said finally, scratching his head. "Oh. Jacob."
"Jaycobe," the girl said, nodding sagely. "I see."
The aforementioned made no attempt to correct her strange pronunciation, desiring to speak with her as little as possible. "..Yeah," he said uncomfortably, and began to walk past, hurried.
She fell into line beside him, copying his posture and shoving her hands in the pockets of her robe in his style. "Where are we going, Jaycobe?"
He quickly pulled his hands out of his pockets with the indistinct idea that he was being mocked. "We?"
"Yes."
"Oh." He continued in silence for a moment, feeling terribly violated.
"My question is not being answered," she said with a deliberate patience, eyebrows raised daintily.
"I'm just walking," Jacob said, almost defensively.
"With no purpose?"
"No." Jacob was mildly annoyed. "I'm just walking."
"Alone?"
"I was," he said pointedly, a little more sharply than he meant.
"I see, "she said wisely, "I see, say I."
"..Aright," Jacob observed, wishing more and more that something should jump out of the bushes and eat her.
They continued on in silence for a moment.
"Do y'like parrots?"
Jacob could barely restrain himself from rolling his eyes. "What?"
"Y'know – parrots!" She held her hands to her face in a cheerful, flamboyant, and entirely purposeless demonstration. "Big big birds with th' beaks – and th' –"
"I know what a bloody parrot is –"Jacob made a sound of frustration "–why do you want to know what I think of parrots?"
"We have a parrot at home," she informed him solemnly. "They told me. A big one. With a beak – and it is red, I think, unless I dreamed it."
Jacob, who opened his mouth for a moment of helpless silence, found he could only stare.
"Why are you walking alone with no purpose?" she asked for an abrupt change of subject, not seeming to notice how much her presence was unnerving the boy.
"Because I can," he said finally, definitely irritated by now. "Why are you following me and talking about parrots that don't exist?"
"Because I can," the girl answered, very much pleased with herself.
Jacob grumbled something, suddenly very crabby, and made no audible answer.
"Do you not have anyone to walk with, Jaycobe?" she pressed.
"No," he said shortly.
"Then I will walk with you," she said with an air of finality.
"I don't WANT anyone to walk with," he said stiffly.
"Sure?"
"Positive."
The girl seemed to consider this, by now forgetting to copy his posture. Though the wind was chilly and she had no coat, she didn't seem to be bothered.
"I am bored," she stated finally, "so I will walk with you anyway."
Jacob adjusted his collar again, this time pulling it around his face. "Jesus, stop going around in circles. Did it occur to you to think that I was just fine before you had to start following me?"
"No," she said certainly, "and I have an idea that you did not, either."
"You know that much, eh?"
"I know more than you think," the girl said, suddenly quite serious.
"..Whatever." Jacob was growing apprehensive, the unfamiliar presence grating somewhat on his nerves. Maybe if he kept his answers shorter she'd just go away.
There was no such luck. He walked on in total silence for at least ten minutes, and the girl simply continued to trudge along the path beside him over the frozen ground.
"If I bothers you so very muchly," she said sensibly, after a time, "why are you still here?"
Jacob found he had no answer for this. So, after a pause in which he grasped for words like a suffocating fish, he turned right on his heel, and walked back inside without throwing back so much as a glance.
Grimly smug about how he'd dealt with the situation, Jacob gripped the cold, heavy iron handle of the door with both hands and tugged. It finally opened jerkily with a low moan of protest. Jacob slipped through the doorway before it had a chance to close again, and had only a moment to turn and glance outside, despite himself.
The girl stood where he'd left her, at the overgrown path on the edge of the Woods, and was watching him, her head tilted and her arms crossed behind her back. He jerked his head back to the hall, eyes averted (though it was too far for her to have noticed at any rate), and pretended he hadn't seen her, more for his own sake than hers.
The door finally clanked closed with a cold sound that rang out in the hallway and dissolved after a moment with the carpet-muffled sound of a few students farther down. Jacob slid out of his jacket, balled it up roughly in his hands, and held it under one arm, turning to head back to his room.
A thin ribbon of smoke reached his nose – he coughed, muttered something, and batted indifferently at the now-flaming soles of his shoes. The small blaze went out easily enough, but the irritating smell of burning rubber remained floating about his head. Another heating charm gone awry, and another scorched pair of sneakers. He'd been certain he had the stupid spell down by now. It must have been the distraction.
He swung around the staircase and began to drag himself up, by now thoroughly irritated with the world and the entirety of it's inhabitants.
One less pair of sneakers, and one less place to go with them. That'd been his haven out there, his own space to think. What was the justice that he find himself one place, one small place, to have a bit of peace, only to have some psychopath of a girl (as she obviously wasn't quite right in the head) start barging in on his territory?
What if someone should SEE?
Jacob held his coat a little tighter, shaking his head. One person walking around was easy enough to ignore, but if she decided to join in, perhaps someone else would, and someone else would follow after that, and it would begin to look like some kind of party. And Jacob would be smack in the middle of it all, and would no longer have an excuse for being ignored.
No, Jacob decided finally, still doggedly ascending the stairwell, and doing his best to ignore the loud clucking of a few distressed chickens in the painting he was passing. No. She wouldn't even be there tomorrow, her attention wouldn't last that long. She wasn't the type to be interested with dead leaves and dark woods, she was too flighty and bubbly and giggly, just – generally girly. Girly. Stupid. And she couldn't take a hint, for that matter. A rather strong hint at that.
Jacob paused at the top of the stairs, one hand in his hair, and peered suspiciously down the length of it, as if the girl might be lurking at the bottom to stare at him a bit more.
She wouldn't be there tomorrow.
He was, of course, spectacularly wrong.
The next afternoon, Jacob routinely dropped his books in the bottom drawer of his dresser, and, buried in the old gray coat, left the tower. Predictably enough, as soon as he fell into pace along the worn path, she was right behind him – a pale, ungainly shadow that he barely noticed when she appeared.
His heart hit the bottom of his chest and he said nothing, narrowing his eyes and pulling the coat a little closer.
He could hear the grin in her voice. "Not walking alone today, you're not!" She took a few very high steps, her hands clasped behind her. "Now we just need to find you a purpose."
"Will you go away?" he grumbled, stuffing his hands quite miserably as far into his pockets as they would fit.
"Jaycobe," she said carelessly, peering at him, "No one'sa ruin your place, not one 'cept me. And I am quiet. Usually."
Lord. She knew what he'd been thinking. How creepy.
"How about if I said I don't care for that, either?"
"I wouldna believe you."
"Why in the hell not?" The minor profanity reassured his confidence a little, though it didn't seem to faze the girl.
"As you don't look much happy."
That was somehow even creepier. "What do you do, watch me all day?" Jacob demanded, a little shaken.
"N'n." She shook her head emphatically and swung around quick so somehow she was suddenly walking backwards and Jacob abruptly facing her, which was the last thing he wanted. He stopped quite suddenly, jerking his hands from his pockets in his surprise. "Y'always by yourself, it grows in your face. We can all see it," she went on, quite seriously.
"All?" He didn't particularly like the sound of that.
"Yes," she said. "Everyone, yes."
"Well good, at least I'm known for something."
"So I am going to walk with you," she concluded, sanguine.
"You do that," Jacob said.
"I am already," she informed him brightly.
And though the conversation had not been pursued farther than that, the girl had stayed put in silence until Jacob broke down and hurriedly left again, somehow still unable to deal with the odd presence. And the next afternoon, she reappeared, as well as the next, and the next.
Jacob, finding a reserve of the obstinate somewhere in him, refused to abandon his path and continued to cling with a sulky desperation. He had been using it for three years now, and the idle interest of a strange girl was not going to chase him away now. It was his place and his alone; she'd soon get bored and pick on someone else.
"Soon" became a week.
She began to wait for him, with over-dramatic patience, right next to the outside door, arms crossed and face set. As he passed, trying in vain to pretend not to see her from two feet away, she set into a brisk, military step behind him, looking as though she'd forgotten he was there and was simply gazing innocently around at the charming dead winter foliage.
Finally, on the eighth day, Jacob knew something had to be done. He turned his head slightly, and grudgingly spoke to her. "What's your name, then?"
She gave him a surprised glance, fair eyebrows nearly reaching her hairline.
"I might as well know," he said, set on the defense.
The girl seemed absolutely elated to be asked such a question from her otherwise silent new "friend" and nearly tripped on herself, though she appeared not to notice.
"Eva," she beamed, pronouncing the name oddly, which made it sound more like Ai-va. "I'm Eva."
"Eva?"
"Yes."
"Eva what?"
"Brighton," she said, turning and walking backward for a few large steps in her amusement.
"Aright, so Eva Brighton," Jacob began, "when are you going to start leaving me alone again?"
The smile on her face collapsed, and she shot him a wounded look that was obviously supposed to evoke some sort of pity, but failed miserably. It was precisely, in fact, what Jacob had hoped for. He supposed.
"By now, I thought you dinna mind," she began in an injured tone.
Jacob sensed an approaching Scene of some sort, and he disliked causing Scenes. His newfound self-assurance, born of the familiarity of this weirdo, wavered a bit.
"There's better things for you to do," he amended hurriedly.
She considered a moment. "No," she said simply, shrugging.
"..Like letting me get on with my life, here?"
"Does not look like much of a life to me, Jaycobe."
"Then why are you sticking around?"
"I said before. You don't look happy, you don't."
"Glad to know what a judge you are on people's expressions," Jacob said, a bit more sharply than he'd planned.
"It is obvious –"
"Look," Jacob said, wheeling around and staring straight at the girl, who looked more puzzled than frightened. "I know who you are, and I see you in the halls all the time in the middle of your little - little group. You've always got someone to talk to, you're happy where you are - I don't need one of you out on another little good-will mission for my well being and social life, and I sure as all hell don't need someone to talk to. Aright? Do you get it? Will you leave me alone now?"
Eva stopped mid-step, for the first time, and examined him for a moment, her brows knitting.
He shifted uncomfortably, suddenly an amoeba under a microscope that was half a foot shorter than he.
She opened her mouth to speak, closed it, shook her head, and said only, "Then I go." She turned, blank-faced, and wandered back to the school's large iron doors, into which she disappeared after a brief, but noticeable hesitation.
Mission accomplished, thought Jacob, alone on his path, although predictably enough he wasn't feeling the triumph he thought he should have been. The blankness in her eyes remained before his.