Exile

At noon, Stella’s friend drove her to the airport with the windows rolled down. In tropic Massauchettes, the noon sunburst was overhead at 34 degrees, the sky was quite gloomy, and was bereft of cheerful clouds. She was in a sexy red velvet gown. Her carry-on item was a backpack and a suitcase.

Massauchettes was like that-always under the constant cover of clouds and it rained most here than any other place. And it was here that she had come looking for her sister. She found her at last but it learned an unprecedented dimension. As she stared out to the outside, she still heard her crying as she begged.

‘I am sorry, just this once. Let it slide just this once for me’

‘ Don’t come looking for me Laura.’

‘ Don’t come again, please’

After that, she ran away. Laura went after her but was soon out of breath. Her prospective chase took the form of sobbing and sniffing as though it could bring her sister back. She stood there, to the confused and pitying glare of passers-by, crying. And even as she stared out of the vehicle vacantly, tears returned to her eyes and made the facade misty.

She gently bent her face and let the tears flow freely and remembered her father.

Holmes, for that, was her father’s name, died a year or so ago. He was a genuinely sweet and caring person. And mind, this is a really small town. One day, he picked up a hitchhiker just outside of town. He told him to jump in the bed of the truck, and he'll drive him to Walmart.

About halfway there, the hitchhiker shot him in the back of the head for no reason. He didn't even steal anything. And if she remembered correctly, he got caught. Holmes didn't die, but he was permanently disabled and had severe brain damage. Laura remembers when she first heard that. This was probably about 2 years ago now, but she still thought about it anytime someone talked about hitchhikers. It scared her to think someone would do something like that.

.

It was also from this wooded city that they had fled to when fate was cruel to them. Her father later died and they were subsequently hunted. And if not for the intervention of fate in the nick of time, they surely would have shared in the same fate as their father’s. Together with her mother, they had come a long long way from home. But when their mother was raped and stabbed, she yielded to despair and fell into a coma, they moved out again and went to Greenville.

When her sister ran away from home, she was forced to exile in Massachusetts. And she took Massauchettes with a sense of foreboding. In short, she hated this place.

At least, Greenville was better. She loved the sun, the blistering heat, and the vigorous countryside that crawled with climbers and creepers and teemed with throngs of trees.

‘Laura’ Stefan called quietly- the hundredth time before she entered the plane. ‘ You don’t have to keep doing this to yourself. You have cried enough. Be careful or you might displease your mother when you get home, Just stop! Please’

He brought her to his chest and the cries returned, more intense now.

‘You don’t have to keep doing this,’ he said. A spasm of panic tugged at him as he watched her white, innocently child-like face which was filled with tears.

‘I don’t mind you staying at my…’

‘No,’ she had cried herself hoarse. ‘Thank you for letting me stay

‘Tell Danielson i said hi’

‘Sure will’

‘I will see you soon,’ he insisted. ‘If you need anything, please let me know

She shook her head and then spoke in a faltering voice. ‘Don’t worry about me. I  will be great. Thank you so much

He hugged her tightly for some seconds. Then she got on the plane. Then she was gone.

It was a three hours journey from Massauchettes to Greenville.

Stella at long last arrived in the dry land. And what a journey it was- it was quite uneventful but she could not just wish for anything else, she was thankful.

They had set out in a flaming sunset and arrived in the winnowing winds of autumn which basked under the glare of the mad, biting sun.

Andre had really been fairly nice about the whole thing. He seemed genuinely happy that she was going to live with him in the interim.

But even in the matter of his gladness, it was sure to be awkward with him. That was Andre. Their conversation sometimes got awkward. And when in good spirits, he was always the chatter. Neither of them was what anybody would call verbose, and she as well did not know what there was to say regardless.

When they arrived at his house, the blazing sun returned and was much more fierce so that it felt like live coals to the feet. Tree leaves seemed to boil in them.

Andre was waiting for her in the SUV when she arrived. She had not expected that much, once again she was thankful. Andre gave her a one-armed hug as she stumbled out of the plane and managed to put up a smile.

‘Nice to see you.’ he smiled back. ‘You haven’t changed much, how is Stefan’

‘He’s good. It’s good to see you, too, Andre. Thank you

She had only her backpack with her and most of them were too permeable for Greenville. She had pooled resources with her mother to supply her winter wardrobe but it was still scanty.

She thought about this, together with her runaway sister, and tears began forming in her eyes. But Andre spoke. When he noticed that her voice faltered, he looked through the rear-view mirror and asked her if everything was fine. She managed to croak a reason, telling him that she was tired.

‘But you are almost crying’

‘No, it's fine. Really, nothing is the matter. I am fine. It's just that I am tired, that’s all’

They talked about the weather and the extremes of both. They exchanged a few more comments on the weather, which was wet and that was pretty much it for conversation. She afterward stared out of the windows in silence.

It was beautiful of course, everything was green. The trees, their trunk covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.

All was green, like an alien planet.

Eventually, they made it to Andre’s which was typically the type of house young rich Betas like him lived in. He still lived in the small two-bedroom house that he had bought some years ago when he was sixteen or so.

‘Wow, I love it. Thank you Now her horrific day would be that much less dreadful. She would not be faced with the choice of either walking two miles in the rain to school or accepting a ride in the chief's cruiser.

‘I am glad you like it’ Andre said gruffly.

It took only a trip to get her stuff upstairs. She got the bedroom that faced out over the front yard. The room was somewhat familiar. The wooden floor, light blue wall, and peaked ceiling. All these reminded her about distant and dim childhood

One of the best things about him, Stella thought, was that he did not hover. He left her to unpack and get settled, a feat which would be impossible for her mother. It was nice to be alone, not to have a smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape.

Greenville high school had a frightening total of about four hundred-now two hundred students. There were more than eight hundred people in her junior class alone back home. Every person here had grown up together-their grandparents had been toddlers together.

She would be the new girl from the big city., a curiosity, a freak.

When she was done putting her clothes into the old pine dresser, she took her bag of bathroom necessities and went into the communal bathroom to clean herself up after the day of travel. She looked at her face in the mirror as she brushed through the tangled, damp hair. Maybe it was the light but already she looked sallower, unhealthy. Her skin was pretty, it was very clear, almost translucent-looking - but it all depended on color. She had no color there.

Facing her pallid reflection in the mirror, she was forced to admit that she was lying to herself. It wasn’t just physically that she had never fit in. And if she couldn’t find a niche in a school without a staggering five thousand people, what were her chances here then.

The truth was that she did not relate well to people of her age. Even her mother, who was closer to her than anybody on the planet, was never in harmony with her, never on exactly the same page. Sometimes she wondered if she saw the same things through her eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in her brain. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was the effect. And tomorrow was just the beginning.

She cried again that night, and thus didn’t sleep well. The constant whooshing of the rain and wind across the roofs wouldn’t fade into the background, She pulled the faded quilt over her head, and later added a pillow, too. But she couldn’t fall asleep until midnight when the rain settled into a drizzle.

Then something suddenly struck her as she stared as if awake in the light of sudden revelation. The next and last full moon would be ‘heat’. She rushed to her bag and emanated from it a lunar calendar and was shocked. How could she not have remembered, it was only two days away. She sensed it when her sex became wet and she felt an urge for no apparent cause, even despite the sad bad news of her sister. She moaned slightly and subsequently, grabbing her sex.

Even though it was two days to ‘heat’, the sexual urge was usually unbearable and that was why at school, several cases of sex were reported. Measures had been taken by the humans to stop them but it never worked. When an Omega was in heat, nothing could stop her. She would go any length to see that she was had- either by finding a mate beforehand or masturbating like mad.

When the measures became unbearable and the heat, irrevocable, many girls she knew back in school took to the woods with their mates who were mostly roguish and rustic rookies.

That was why they, the Omega, came to be disrespected by the chain -Alphas, Betas, Lunas, and Druids. They were seen as whorish things or nymphomaniacs. That was also one of the reasons her family and 5th High bullies despised her. And it was also because of that intimidation that her sister ran away to build a new life with all of their savings.

Once she had forgotten about it and was nearly mated but she came to be claustrophobic when in the midst of boys resulting from the excruciating memories of her parents who got clasped in the cold hands of faith. Save for Andre, Stefan, and a few boys whom she came to trust with a pinch of salt, every other person appeared to her as stinkers. And that was why she hastily took out her vibrator from her bag and undressed rapidly, having in mind that this sexual excitement was only the beginning. Tomorrow it would be worse and the day after, it would be irresistible.

Thick fog was all she could see out her window in the morning and she could feel the claustrophobia creeping up on her. You could never see the sky here, it was like a cage.