Herry - Observant
He watched himself carefully as he lifted weights in the gym. Ares had recently installed some mirrors in there to assist his students in keeping their posture correct as they worked. He was rarely in front off mirrors. Completely understandable given the person he was, though he thought it was more accurate to say 'the person who he seemed to be'. There was more to him than muscle and a stomach that could be likened to a black hole. He certainly wasn't sub intelligent, but neither was he a genius of any kind. He did have his own little secret talent for simple mathematics, he could add, subtract, multiply and divide faster than most people could type it into a calculator. However, algebra made his head spin, it was just wrong to include letters in maths!
Apart from that he had no overt academic talents and achieved average results in most of his classes, which pleased his Gran quite a bit. His father had never been interested in school. Despite his intellectual aptitude, people came to underestimate him, thinking he was another stupid jock, albeit a relatively quiet and very kind-hearted one. As a result, he saw more things and heard more things, things he wouldn't have known otherwise. He also tended to notice more things when he spent the majority of his time in silence rather than participating in conversations. He saw the things that people said with their faces and their actions rather than their words. He could tell after watching Archie and Atlanta interact for a few moments after they had all met that there was something more to them than their budding rivalry. Jay and Theresa hadn't been as obvious, but that hadn't taken him long either. Even now, he seemed to be the only one who realised that Neil often looked at Odie in a way that reminded him of the way Theresa looked at Jay with a dash of pain that came with unrequited love. Odie didn't seem to notice and he was quite sure that the resident genius of the team wasn't pretending ignorance.
They weren't the only things he noticed; they were just the obvious and the understandable things. He noticed Archie's sudden and almost random bouts of what could only be described as intense nervousness around Atlanta. Nothing seemed to cause them. He noticed the sadness and longing mixed with love whenever Atlanta looked at Archie. He noticed the way that Theresa, on the days when Jay kept his distance from her, bit the inside of her mouth to stop herself crying while her hands formed such tight fists that her fingernails nearly broke the skin, instead leaving pink crescent-shaped dents in her palms for half an hour or so. He noticed the way that Neil spent half his time looking in his hand mirror, almost reluctantly, while spending the other half of his time sneaking glances at Odie. Odie seemed to do nothing unusual, which was a distinct curiosity in itself. But Jay, he was the one who he understood the least.
The darkness and guilt that had invaded his face since they had first met was grossly disproportionate to all they had experienced. The guilt in his eyes was like that of a murderer redeemed, living with the death some poor soul on their conscience, or the guilt of someone who had to destroy someone he loved for the sake of the world. Yes, guilt followed Jay, no matter how much he tried to hide it. He noticed all these things, but still something plagued him. He had no idea why these things were happening. He prayed there was some relatively guiltless explanation, some innocent secret that he knew nothing of that would explain the strangeness. He sighed, deciding he had done enough repetitions and wandered to put the weights back on the rack and turning back to face the mirror, noting the troubled expression on his own face. Unfortunately, innocent explanations were rather hard to come by these days. All he could do was pray that the truth would not be too terrible. Surely they had suffered enough.
A bit bombshell-ish, perhaps? If you don't want to be left wondering, like Herry, read the seventh and final entry tomorrow. Jay. Reviews and reviewers are loved!