CHAPTER TWELVE- WORKING IT ALL OUT

The bell rang and people flooded out of the class rooms like hell; people almost trampled over me and Leo. I shielded him until most of the students had pasted. Then Dereck. Laura, Madison and Kevin found us.

Dereck crouched down beside me. "You look like shit," he stated as he observed Leo's face. Then he turned to me, "And you look like you've just seen a ghost,"

I saw Leo wince at his choice of words and remembered how touchy I was when I was first dealing with being shadow kissed all on my own.

"No, we were just getting to know each other, it seems like Leo's headache was pretty bad this time," I stood up and offered Leo my hand. "We'd better get to your next class," they obeyed and we walked to their next class, listening to Laura and Dereck bicker, Kevin and Madison discuss fighting techniques. I hung back from the energetic group with Leo.

"Hey," I said quietly. "Do you have a Moroi friend that you're really close to?"

He looked at me in astonishment. "Yeah, how did you know that?" he asked just as quietly.

"Who is it?" I ignored his question and leaned closer to him.

"Tristin Badica," he murmured. I thought about this and the other spirit users I knew- it's not like I knew a lot- Lissa was Royal and so was Adrian…and this Tristin Badica would obviously be another Royal. Was spirit a Royal only type of thing? I leaned in closer to Leo, in case anyone was listening to our conversation and was about to tell him that I would need to talk to him and Tristin Badica alone when Laura spoke.

"Oh, looks like Leo and Guardian Hathaway are hooking up!" everyone in our little group turned to face Leo and me. I saw Leo blushing and I pulled away from him so the space between us was less intimate and cleared my throat.

"I was just asking him about his headache, in case he might have to go see the Doc in the clinic," I covered up quickly; I wasn't sure if any of these people were trustable enough to keep their friend's unusual abilities a secret. I shrugged and moved a bit farther away from Leo. "Just making sure he's okay,"

"I'm sure you were; but that's not what it looked like," Laura answered.

"What it looked like was that you and Leo were going to start making out right there," Madison added seeming to enjoy teasing a guardian, I probably would have too, it's not everyday that you find a guardian who'd be friendly enough to take a nice banter. I shrugged again and smirked at them.

"Alright, I'll play along with your childish game, now who am I going to play in house- I really would like to be the mommy." I said dryly.

"Hey!" Laura exclaimed. "You're the same age as us, so I wouldn't be talking about immaturity,"

"Well, if you weren't acting to immature I wouldn't have to talk about it," I countered and a small smile spread across her face.

"You're good,"

I smiled back, "Thank you,"

"You're welcome," she replied and I could see the calculations going on behind her eyes and wondered what she was thinking.

"Laura's probably thinking of come-backs that she can throw at you whenever the opportunity is given; or sometimes she'll just randomly snap at you if she thinks it's a really good one that she just can't hold back," Madison explained and Laura frowned at her.

"Why would you tell her that?" she demanded.

"Because unlike you, I'm going to make friends with the coolest guardian on earth," she replied happily.

"Well, I agree with Laura, it did really look like you were going to start getting close up with Leo," Kevin said.

I rolled my eyes. "I don't care what it looked like, but we'd better get to class now," I looked over to Dereck, who hadn't said anything this whole time, and saw that he looked peeved; about what? I got my answer when he stayed by my side, not letting me be alone with Leo for the rest of the way to their class. Dereck and I were the last to answer the class room and me, being the polite guardian I was becoming, waved him forward to go in front of me and he did. But as I came in behind him, his hand reached back and snagged mine and squeezed briefly and I was too confused to react. I stood there for a minute with my brow pushed together while Dereck took his seat; I looked at him and a suggestion of a smile came over his lips and he winked at me. He winked at me? I thought bewildered, then my next thought was, Wow, Rose, you can't fuck things up enough by leaving your best friend to chase after a dead man and breaking someone else's heart? You really have to mess up your life more by getting another guy involved with? It was that mean voice again and I really didn't appreciate its commentary. I shoved that ugly voice to the back of my mind and made my way to the back of the class room.

******

The rest of the classes until lunch flew by very quickly and I never got to be alone with Leo like I wanted to again- courtesy of Dereck Hays who suddenly became very interested in my presence. At noon I escorted the children to he cafeteria, where they were joined by five Moroi, I wanted to stay behind and find out this Tristin Badica, but I thought that it would be rude to stand up the Head Guardian here.

"Hey, I'd love to stick around, but I need to go do something now," I said.

Dereck turned to me. "What do you have to do?"

"I have to go get my promise mark and molnija marks," I answered and the others stared at me admiringly.

If they only knew how messed up you really were they'd look at you like the freak you are, the mean voice was back again and my nice voice responded with, maybe it's your stupid mouth that's making her lose her mind. But neither voice comforted me at all my next thought was a normal thought: if voices start having conversations in head, doest that mean I'm losing my mind?

*******

I made it to the guardian building with about five minutes to spare (because I jogged most of the way) and once I opened the door to the foyer/meeting room (I didn't know what to call it) a Moroi with tattooing needles looked up.

"Hey," I said and as I jogged up to him.

"Hi, I'm Charles," Charles was short for a Moroi, but he was very skinny; it would have worked if he had regular the tall and lean Moroi build. He had some stubble on his cheeks and chin.

Charles lifted up the needles he was holding. "So I'm guessing that you're Rosemarie Hathaway?"

"Yeah, I am," I took a deep breath and centered myself. This was not a big deal, just a tattoo. Who was I kidding? This was the biggest thing that could ever happen to me…but something was off. I knew immediately what was wrong: I wasn't graduating with my class and with Lissa, I wasn't her guardian.

That's because you don't deserve to be her guardian- you don't deserve to even have a position here. I wanted to actually rip the voice out of my head, but obviously that wasn't possible; I'd just have to ignore it.

"You seem a little nervous," he observed.

I looked at him "This wasn't exactly how I imagined getting my promise mark," I admitted.

He set the needles down and sat in the stool behind him putting his hands in his lap. "How did you imagine getting your promise mark?"

"I imagined getting my mark at graduation with all my friends and graduating with Lissa and being assigned to her as her guardian. I imagined having fun and laughing and just letting go for one more night before I became serious forever. I thought that it'd be great, instead…I'm here," I lifted my hands at the last bit and let them fall to my sides and hit my thighs with a quiet slap.