Disclaimer: I own nothing that is not mine. But you know that now, don't you?

Previously:

'…Tonight…'

I shivered and closed the door, heading out to the comfort of the person who actually cared about me.

Chapter Seven

Once I was safely in Zack's car, I sighed in relief, leaning back against the seat. I'd never been so glad to go to school. It being a Friday had nothing to do with it this time. Most of the time, I was just glad to get out of the house. That was true of the situation now, as well, but really anywhere was better than the house, as long as Jim was there. You were never safe around him. Never. He was like a loose cannon; you never knew when he was about to go off.

"What's wrong?" Zack asked me quietly. I turned to see him looking at me, a look of worry on his face.

"Just Jim being Jim." I replied with a sigh. Zack nodded, accepting that. It's not like I hadn't told the truth. I told myself resolutely. Jim was being Jim, just a little more vigorously than usual today.

We rode the rest of the way to school in a comfortable silence. I stared out the window, looking at the scenery and not seeing any of it. I couldn't help but turn over that last thought I'd gotten from Jim. What was happening tonight? I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but I couldn't stop worrying about it. He had sounded like he was anticipating something that most people would find unthinkable. A dark anticipation. That was what I'd gotten from him. Darkness. Why did my mother keep him around? I just didn't understand.

We pulled into the parking lot at school.

"Brace yourself." I whispered. Zack shot me a look.

"Very dramatic, Lara. I'm sure it won't be that bad." He told me exasperatedly.

"That's not what you said yesterday." I told him in a sing-song voice. He shot me another exasperated look that said chill, Lara. I kept my expression carefully innocent. He didn't need to know that I was teasing him.

He shook his head as he pulled into an empty spot. I scowled as the thoughts of all the students near us became clearer to me. They were all gossiping about yesterday's revelation like a gaggle of geese. Honestly. Didn't these people have a life outside of school? Did they really have nothing better to talk about? I suppose I didn't really care all that much because of the whole mind-reading thing. It kind of took priority over gossip. I rolled my eyes at the thoughts of some people.

"Don't forget we're dating, Zack." I reminded him.

"I know. It's hard to forget right now." He answered me, annoyed. I giggled at the expression on his face. He gave me a mock scowl and got out of the car.

"Come on," he told me. "Time to face the music." I nodded in agreement.

The morning passed slowly. People, mostly girls, kept whispering about me. I could hear their condescending thoughts in my head all day long. It was so annoying, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't tune them all out. My guess was that it was probably because of my annoyance. And I was so proud of myself yesterday, keeping out my mother's and Jim's thoughts. I guess I need more practice…

To challenge myself, I decided to focus on one person's thoughts. I even gave myself guidelines: they couldn't be in my current class, and they couldn't be in the class rooms next door; they had to be at least two class rooms away, preferably more. I was going to track someone the entire day without falling behind in class. After some thought, I decided to follow Kevin through his day, because we only had 7th bell together, and during seventh bell, I would spy on Sara, so as to avoid any unnecessary, annoying confrontation. That being decided, I swiftly searched the minds around me for Kevin. I did a few tricks with my mind to see if I could keep tabs on him, but not hear his thoughts – I didn't want to spy on him; he was too nice for that. All I wanted was to be able to see through his eyes, or at least know where he was, for the day, not hear his private thoughts. Heads were supposed to be private – I didn't really like being able to hear people's most intimate thoughts, although, it could come in handy. If I was very lucky, I'd never find out how handy it could be. I doubted that I would be so lucky; I never was.

When my lunch time finally rolled around, I stood with a sigh. Food… my sentiments were echoed by just about everyone in this lunch period. The few notable one's who didn't want to eat were either on a diet or anorexic or something. I focused slightly on Kevin to see where he was; I was interested to learn that he was as annoyed by the fact that the Spanish teacher was Chinese as was everyone else who had that teacher. I thought it was funny, but then, I wasn't taking Spanish. I didn't have to learn to speak Spanish from someone with a Chinese accent.

I walked to the cafeteria pretending that I didn't notice that nearly everyone I walked past was whispering about me. I looked around at the selections of food and tried not to gag. Fried foods drenched in grease, and old, dried out fruits or withered, wilted salads was all there was to choose from. Gross. I decided to get the fried food – it looked the most edible – and milk. As I stepped up to the cash register, I noticed a certain fury that had nothing to do with anything I, or anyone around me, was experiencing at the moment. As I walked to the table Zack was sitting at – thank god he had the same lunch as me; I didn't think I would've survived lunch these past few weeks without him – I considered what could cause this fury. I knew it wasn't me who was mad, and yet I still felt furious. I sat down, thinking hard. Was it Kevin who was mad? It was unlikely – I'd never seen Kevin frown, let alone get mad – but not impossible.

"Lara. Lara! Hey Lara, anyone home?" Zack waved his hand in front of my face, trying to get my attention.

"Yeah? I'm here, Zack. What's up?" I replied absentmindedly. I focused more on Kevin, but he was fine. He wasn't mad or furious or anything but bored. So where was that feeling coming from?

"Lara! Are you listening to me?" I looked up at Zack startled. He had an annoyed look on his face. I immediately felt guilty for not listening, but this anger was bothering me. Why couldn't I figure out where it was coming from?

"No," I replied guiltily, hunching my shoulders up and shrinking into them as if they could provide me some sort of protection.

"I said, I don't think that we talked this out very well. The whole dating thing." He clarified, noticing my confused expression. I nodded in agreement.

"It's not like we didn't have more important things to talk about last night." I told him. He gave me a slight smile, agreeing with me on that point. I shook my head sadly. "It's too bad that we didn't get to 'clarify' things until now. It'd have been a whole lot easier to have figured things out at the beginning of our relationship." I feigned sadness. I wasn't all that upset; it's just nearly everyone around us was trying to listen in on our conversation. Zack raised his eyebrows, confused. I glanced at the people around us, trying to tell him that people were eavesdropping on us. His mouth opened in a silent 'oh!' and then he schooled his face into a regretful look, as if agreeing with me.

"It certainly would have been easier to straighten things out when I was at your house last night." I lost the carefully constructed look of sad regret I had to a grimace. I hurriedly put my expression back on, but really. Boys. Must they all be like that?

"That would've been much easier." I propped my head on my left hand and sighed.

"It's too bad we were busy." Zack said somberly, trying to keep the amusement off his face.

"Mmmm." I agreed, raising my food to my mouth distractedly. I was listening to the thoughts around me, most of which were coming to the same conclusion. Humph. I kicked Zack under the table, and his eyes laughed at me. I can't believe he was enjoying this! I contemplated not talking to him today, and then decided that was juvenile. I thought for a few seconds and came upon a more fun idea.

"Maybe we can work it out tonight." I suggested innocently. I felt the shock and then the sudden excitement from everyone around us. They all waited in anticipation for what we would say next. "Didn't you say there was a movie you wanted to see? We could talk then."

"Yeah," he agreed with me. "It's better to work these things out in private." I kicked him under the table again, and then finished off my food. As fun as it was to listen to the thoughts of some of the people around us, other people had their minds in the gutter. I focused on keeping those people out of my head. I had a feeling we were going to regret using such implications in our speech. I could practically feel the eyes of people staring at me, and I could hear what they were thinking – which was gross. I suppressed a shudder. I would never do that with any of them. Never. Never ever.

Ding! The bell rung and everyone had similar feelings of regret that lunch was over – for varying reasons. Personally, I was sad, because now I had to go to Trig, and that was definitely my hardest class throughout the entire day. I didn't want to know the reason everyone was sad. I focused harder on keeping their thoughts out of my head, but it was difficult. They were so loud.

I went to trig slowly, trying to postpone my fate. It didn't work. No matter how many times I had tried willing the bell to ring, or not to ring, it still rang faithfully. What was the use of having awesome powers when it didn't make a difference in how easy trig was? How annoying.

Trig passed slowly. It seemed like every time I glanced at the clock, it hadn't moved, yet I know that time was passing – it never stopped. I would be very, very scared if time did stop. I mean really stop, not what they said Professor Xavier could do. They said he could stop time, but what he was really doing was changing the slowing time down, but staying the same speed himself. In order to move, someone needs space to move through and time to move in. So, time never stops. It just moves slowly when you want it to move fast, and fast when you want to take your time.

Finally 7th bell rolled around. True to my agreement with myself, I stopped keeping tabs on Kevin (I mean who wants to live through health class twice, even if it was from a different perspective) and kept tabs on Sara. I didn't think that she would plan anything too early in the bell, but you never know; she'd probably started planning "revenge" the minute Zack and I walked away from her yesterday. I still wasn't to clear as to why she felt she needed revenge; it's not like she'd ever said anything about liking Zack before, so I don't know where she got the idea that I'd 'betrayed her.' She didn't know that I could read minds, and it's not like I always had been able to! After pondering this conundrum for the better part of ten minutes, I decided that some things were better left unknown, especially when it came to how people thought. And they called me weird. I didn't get offended when someone didn't automatically assume that I had first claim on a boy, just because I was me. (That sentence didn't even make sense…) I didn't think it was possible for someone to be that conceited, but I was wrong before. I realized that I was complaining in much of the same way Sara was, and stopped.

I don't think I had ever been so startled by the bell ringing than I was right then. I'm pretty sure I jumped clear out of my chair. Shoot, shoot, shoot. I hurriedly shoved my stuff into my backpack and got up, only to find that I was too late. Everyone else was gone, except for me and three of the stupidest, most dense, lame, annoying boys I knew. I'm sure there were more aggravating boys out there, but I couldn't think of any at the moment.

"Hey Lara," the leader, Mark, I think, or Mike, or Matt, or something said.

"Hello," I replied shortly; it would have been rude not to respond.

"You should totally go on a date with me, Lara. I'm sure I can do better than Zack." I didn't miss the double meaning of his words, and, surprisingly, neither did his friends.

I pretended to consider it.

"No." I told him curtly. "Excuse me." I tried to move around them to get to the door. Imagine my surprise when they blocked me off.

"That's too bad, Lara. Are you sure you thought about it enough?" The first guy, I'll call him Mark, asked with a leer. His thoughts were coming in loud and clear. He had a … vivid imagination. My stomach rolled, and I tried not to heave. As if I would ever…ugh. Gross!

"I'm sure I don't need any more time to think about it, thanks though." I told him with as much false cheer as I could. "I'm sure no one else would consider it either. Excuse me." I said with as much force as I could muster. I went to move forward, and I would've left only Mark/Mike/Matt grabbed my arm. I turned to look at him. He glared at me, furious.

"You're gonna pay for that." He glowered, his lip curling up over his teeth. I would've laughed if I weren't so mad. He wasn't nearly as scary as Jim was, or my mother, or Zack, when he put his mind to it.

"Let go." I said as coldly as I could.

"Didn't you hear me? I said you're gonna pay for that!" He squeezed my arm hard enough to bruise. I looked pointedly at the place where his hand touched my arm.

"Let go." I repeated. "You'll be sorry if you don't."

"Hur, hur, hur," He and his friends laughed stupidly.

"You're going to make us sorry?" He sneered, looking over at his friends for support. "Whatcha gonna do, huh?" My body tensed. They laughed, thinking it was because I was scared of them; they couldn't know that I had to put up with a guy like them on a daily basis, or that it was that guy I was afraid of.

"Do you really want to know?" I asked sweetly. I heard the hesitation in their thoughts. They were really just a bunch of bullies. Pathetic.

"Sure," he exaggerated the u, drawing it out. "Like you could do anything."

I rolled my eyes at his bravado. Then I pulled my arm pack and punched him square in the nose. His grip on me instinctively loosened, and I yanked my arm free. He put his free hand up to his nose, and it came away bloody. Ha! Serves him right. I tugged futilely at my arm, trying to break his grip on it. It didn't work. What it did do was serve as a reminder that he did, in fact, have a grip on me.

His two friends seemed concerned for his well being.

"Mark, you okay?" One of them asked nervously. If he'd been a butterfly, he'd have been fluttering around this Mark guy. Since he wasn't a butterfly, the best I can do is to say he almost hovered. Almost because it was like he was afraid to get close to Mark. Or maybe he was worried that he'd make Mark look weak if he tried to help him.

"Of course I'm okay, you idiot!" He snapped back at his minion. Then he squeezed my arm even tighter and glared at me. "You're really gonna get it now, girlie." He shoved me backwards, and while I tried to regain my balance, lunged at me.

It was right then that I knew that, despite what people said, it had been a good idea to make Zack teach me to fight. I knew I'd have to beat off a bunch of bozos someday, and I didn't want to play Little-Miss-Helpless every time some stupid idiot got it into his head that I was an easy target. So I knew how to throw a punch, and how to duck (the first lesson), and I knew (by word of mouth, mostly) where a guy's weakest place is. So I went for that place. Perhaps I was too obvious in my actions because he dogged it. I was losing pretty badly (I had a bruised cheekbone and a bloody lip, whereas they had only a bloody nose, and, of course, I was outnumbered. You tend to be losing when you're outnumbered) when I remembered that I could read minds. Then I realized that that would give me an advantage. So, I looked into his mind, only to find that he was concentrating on the fight! I did a little mental happy dance. He wouldn't consciously think about his next move – people didn't think about walking, after all – but he did subconsciously, and that's what I used. I had to concentrate more to 'hear' these thoughts – they weren't thought, really, more like automatic reactions to me and to his friends – but it was worth it. I found myself to be one step ahead of him, and I was able to successfully keep out of his (and his friends, who, as I was beginning to find, were more of a show of brute strength than anything else) grasp, which would've been disastrous.

I spoke (or thought) too soon. The next thing I knew, one of Mark's goons had gotten behind me and grabbed me. Shoot. I looked disbelievingly over my shoulder. And then looked up. And up. And up. This idiot was thick, tall, and had a face like a boulder.

"Thought you'd get away with it, didn't you girlie?" Mark sneered through his bloody nose, and I could see the blood on his teeth. Gross.

"We can't let you get away now, can we boys? Not after you disrespected me." His words were thick, but understandable. "We've gotta teach her a lesson don't we? We can't let her get away with disrespect, can we boys?" They all laughed like his words were hilarious. Mark rubbed his sleeve under his nose. Gross, but at least he didn't look like he'd dunked his face in red paint any more. There wasn't much improvement to his looks, though. If anything, I'd say his looks got worse.

He looked at me, slowly licking his lips, and his thoughts became graphic and all around disgusting. I quickly tuned him out. I didn't need to hear this perverted idiot think those kinds of things about me. Definitely not.

His gaze settled on my chest, and his thoughts became so loud I had trouble tuning them out. He was practically shouting them at me, and it was giving me a head ache. His mouth turned upward in a lewd smile.

"We'll start here."

A/N: Sorry for the wait. I was on vacation. In Disney World! Sooooo I didn't really think about this while I was there. I mean, come on! It's Disney World! Would you think about writing when you could be going on Space Mountain or something? Honestly.

Please, please, please review! They make me really happy, and they inspire me to keep writing! You know you want to click the button. Go on, click it! There you go...