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I found myself subconsciously comparing
Heathcliff with Brandon during English, and Mr. Whethers had to ask
me a question at least twice before I realized he was talking to
me. I hardly even blushed at the inevitable giggles. I made a
mental note to find out from Britney if I'd caught his question on
the second or third repetition, but I rather suspected I'd
forget.

In fact, when class finally got out I
remembered my question, but just didn't feel like asking. Instead,
I just wanted to get away from her, and the never-ending gossip. I
waited until she stopped to talk to one of the cheerleaders about
who was dating who, and then mumbled something about the bathroom,
and made a break for it.

Not wanting to out and out lie, I ducked into
the nearest restroom. It was empty except for a mousy brunette that
I'd only seen a couple of times before. I smiled and started to
open my mouth to say hi, but thought better of it. This was
Sanctuary. She wasn't going to acknowledge the new girl was even
breathing, let alone sentient.

It should have bothered me, but I just
shrugged it off and went to the far stall. A split second after I'd
closed the door I heard the heavy wooden outer door open. Normally
that wouldn't have caused me to even pause in my normal routine,
but it suddenly felt as if the stall was too small.

"I told you to stay away from him you stupid
whore."

I didn't recognize the voice for all that I
felt like I should. It was a snarling alto that even distorted by
anger had traces of smooth velvet, the kind of voice guys
occasionally fantasized about, when they weren't thinking about
other, less subtle, feminine features. Something hit the stall next
to me, hard enough to leave dents.

I was scared, I should have been terrified,
but I was too busy trying to breath. It was like the air had become
thick, and although the fine strands of hair on the back of my neck
hadn't moved, it felt like they should be standing on end.

I heard indistinct sobbing, and then the
voice returned and made me shiver. The sensation started somewhere
on my back, and traveled forward like it was clawing to get out of
my face.

"I know you're sorry, just like you were
sorry before. Only I don't really believe you, so we're instituting
a new policy. If I catch you sniffing around him again, I'll kill
you. No questions asked."

My pulse skyrocketed as the raw terror hit.
I'd heard death threats a couple of times before. You don't go to a
school of any size without seeing fights, and usually by the time
girls resort to physical confrontations they really are serious
about hurting the other person. When girls say they're going to
kill each other, they mean it. This was something else entirely
though.

Whoever was on the other side of the flimsy
metal door I was hiding behind didn't just believe she would kill
the other girl, she knew it, like someone who'd killed before. As
scared as I was, I should have been a gibbering wreck, but
strangely enough part of my mind was coldly rational. If I walked
out right now I might be ok. If however they did kill the brunette,
they'd come after me too.

It was possible, it turned out, to be
rational but still completely paralyzed by indecision. The girl was
sobbing now, and my heart felt like it was about to tear itself
into pieces. The creak of the bathroom door opening should have
been a relief. I was expecting the tension to somehow evaporate
once there were more witnesses. I couldn't have been more wrong.
The air had felt heavy before, now it somehow felt alive, maybe
like ground zero of a lighting strike a split second before the
soil was blackened by 300,000 volts.

"Get out."

"Go to hell."

I expected whoever it was to leave, I
would've. I didn't expect for them to tell monster girl off, or
that I'd recognize the new voice as belonging to Cassie.

The first girl was still whimpering. It
nearly covered up the distant sound of some kind of machinery
kicking on and creating a barely-audible two-part growl that seemed
to make the air shiver.

"You can't get away with this." Cassie's
voice was barely recognizable, a tattered shadow of her usual
arrogance.

"I already have. I've already told Lucy where
she stands with Ben. If you get in my way, if you approach him on
her behalf, if you even think of acting on any of the hundred
things going through your mind right now, I'll kill you too."

My knees were weak, but I had to get out now.
For all that I hated Cassie, there was no way this crazy chick
would act on her threats when there were three of us to corroborate
each other's stories. I quietly swung the stall door open and felt
my eyes go wide as I saw Lucy curled up, sobbing at Jasmin's
feet.

Neither of the other girls even bothered to
look at me as I carefully moved to the door. Jasmin took half a
step to the side, giving me room to get around her, but there
wasn't even a slight drop in the level of menace she was radiating.
It was almost like I didn't even exist.

I was still shaking on my way down the hall.
By the time I made it into Algebra, I thought I was going to throw
up. I felt like a complete coward, but I wasn't willing to go back
there. I rationalized it by saying there wasn't enough time before
the bell rang, but I was really just scared.

Britney gave me a questioning glance from
across the room, but I just shook my head. I couldn't tell anyone
about what'd happened. Not yet at least.

Mrs. Campbell obviously knew something was
wrong, but as soon as class ended I dodged out of the room and
headed towards the relative safety of the lunchroom. Britney's
proclivity towards gossip was a complete godsend when you wanted to
find out information about someone.

"Jasmin? I don't know, people don't say very
much about her. She's got an incredible temper though."

"She's dating Alec right?"

Britney nodded emphatically. "I've never seen
them kiss or hold hands, but they've got to be. She's totally
rebuffed everyone, and he's never evidenced even the slightest
interest in any other girl. Plus, they're like the two hottest
people in the entire school. How could they possibly date anyone
else?"

It was hard to argue with that. Jasmin was
the kind of brunette who disproved the old saying that gentlemen
prefer blonds. Any guy with a pulse would want her. And Alec was
like a composite of every gorgeous model ever born. I could get
past that and see he was a jerk, but that was just because girls
seemed to be wired a little different.

None of it made sense. If Jasmin was dating
Alec, why was she so mad at Lucy for talking to this Ben boy? I
hadn't seen any other boys who were even close to as attractive as
Alec and Brandon, and Jasmin didn't seem like the type to pick
substance over form.

Britney had wandered off to other, safer
subjects. I nodded a lot and tried to avoid thinking about what
life was going to be like if Jasmin was determined to kill me.
There was just no way to know if I'd made the right choice in
leaving when I did. Would Cassie hate me a little less because we
were both potentially in Jasmin's cross hairs, or would she hate me
all the more because I'd seen her humiliated and forced to back
down?

I finally finished the little can that
represented my lunch. I wasn't particularly hungry, but I couldn't
lose much more weight without mom dragging me into a doctor.
Besides, it gave me an excuse to try and ignore the fact that half
of the people in the room seemed to be staring at me when they
thought I wasn't looking.

I finally worked up enough courage to look
across the cafeteria as I peeled the label off of the can. Alec
wasn't at his usual place, but Brandon was at his normal table,
surrounded by a smaller than normal group. The discussion looked
way more intense than normal, and seemed to center around him and
Cassie.

It was all so crazy. Two weeks ago my life
had revolved around my inability to think of certain things without
collapsing. That hadn't changed, but now there was a distinct
possibility Jasmin was going to hurt me just to ensure I stayed
silent. Oh, and I was actually considering opening myself up for
some very nasty ridicule, just on the infinitesimally slim chance a
boy who was so popular, rich, and gorgeous that he shouldn't even
know my name, might be interested in me.

Life was supposed to get better as you got
older, but it was starting to look like it just got more
complicated.

Just before I looked back down at the shiny
aluminum of my now-naked can, Brandon looked up and caught my eye.
The smile on his face seemed to say all kinds of things. "I'm sorry
I can't come over and talk. They all really depend on me. This
whole thing with Jasmin is really crazy; we've got to figure out
how best to handle it."

Maybe it really said all of those things, or
maybe I was completely deluded, but it was definitely a smile. That
alone was enough to make my heart skip a beat, and send a warm
tingly feeling lapping through me like a wave of distilled
happiness.

I was halfway through History before I
realized there'd been something odd about the discussion at
Brandon's table. Luckily, Mr. Simms started out the class in usual
form. It was virtually guaranteed we wouldn't learn anything which
was fortunate or I might have missed something. Once my mind
latched on the question of what had been different than normal, I
didn't hear a word anyone else said.

It wasn't until I was back at my locker and
midway between switching out my History book for my Physics notes,
that I finally realized what it was. Normal Juniors didn't sit at a
lunch table and figure out what to do about anything. They
complained, they gossiped, they boasted about what they were going
to do, but it was all just an exercise designed to reinforce the
social order. I'd seen it played out in multiple grades, among
groups ranging from the jocks down to the lunatic fringe, and while
the details changed, the overall form didn't. It was a universal
constant, like the speed of light or maybe gravity.

Only Brandon's group hadn't been gossiping.
They'd been discussing, brainstorming even. I didn't know what it
meant. I didn't even know if it was a good thing. It made Brandon
more intriguing, but he hardly needed any more help there.

With a sigh of frustration, I walked into
Physics, smiled at Mrs. Alexander, and took my normal seat. I could
pretty much set my watch by Alec's arrival. Apparently it wasn't
cool to be caught inside a classroom more than fifteen seconds
before the bell rang.

It was a sign of just how far removed from
reality I was that he was able to sit down in the other corner
before I even realized he'd stepped through the door. I realized I
must have been woolgathering for longer than I'd thought, and
reached for my notebook.

Only the bell should have rung by now, and it
hadn't. I looked up at the clock and it confirmed that there was
still at least a minute before class started. A slight rustle to my
right brought my head around, and I looked up to find Alec smiling
at me. I couldn't remember for sure if he'd ever smiled at me
before, but I found myself suddenly positive he hadn't. I would
have remembered such a strangely innocent expression. Brandon's
smile was one of the most genuine I'd ever seen, the kind of thing
that only the most deceptive person could possibly pull off and not
mean.

Alec's smile was like the first bloom on a
flower, like something so new, so unpracticed that there wasn't any
possible way it was anything other than sincere. It made me tingle
all over, and want to giggle like I was still six.

Several seconds passed before I realized I'd
been unconsciously returning his smile. I felt a blush slowly
rising past my throat, but I couldn't look away. Luckily the bell
broke my strange fit of paralysis, and I was able to regain some of
my composure while Mrs. Alexander struggled her way through the
role.

"I've been thinking about the fact that I
didn't really give you young people a chance to ask any questions
that might have come up during the course of your work on our
section regarding light. Now's your chance, please ask away. If I
don't know the answer, I'm sure that together we can find an
adequate explanation for whatever you might have come across."

The class was quiet for several seconds,
before a hand finally shot up. I could have predicted who it would
be. Every class has at least one teacher's pet. Some of the kids
end up that way because they have this bizarre thirst for
knowledge, some go that route because they like to make everyone
else look stupid. Sammy was in the latter group. She'd probably
been saving a question about light since we'd started the unit.
Just in case an opportunity presented itself to earn some brownie
points.

"Mrs. Alexander, I read something about water
around reactor cores giving off a blue light. Can you explain how
that works?"

I'd expected something stupid, but glowing
water made me think of the vivid dreams. I listened as intently as
I'd ever listened to anything, and did my best to follow all of the
diagrams as Mrs. Alexander attempted to break a college-level
concept down into something fairly average high school students
could follow.

"So, in short, really it's a matter of the
hydrogen and oxygen atoms attempting to shed the excess energy
they've gained from the radioactive particles emitted from the
core. The energized electrons give off radiation in the visible
light spectrum during the process of dropping down to a lower
energy state."

Hmm, an interesting concept, but still not an
explanation for how the water in my dream had given off a soft
golden glow, one that had rippled with the movement of the water.
Almost before I'd realized it, my hand shot up.