TEN | IMPOSSIBLE

I blinked. I felt my lashes compress against my eyelids, and I saw the world turn black, just for a moment, and I felt safe in the darkness. Then I opened my eyes, and saw that he was still there, his head cocked slightly, his dark skin glowing and those strange, beautiful golden eyes glinting in the fluorescent light of the classroom.

I felt that same pull from before, and without thinking I reached out towards him. His lips were quivering, the corners on the verge of pulling up into a smile, and his eyes were soft as I brought my gaze up to meet his.

Then the classroom door banged open, and the spell was broken.

“Sorry all,” our History teacher coughed. His face was pasty, and its texture reminded me of over-worked dough. He’d combed part of his hair over his bald spot, and I felt a little sorry for him as I caught his eye. It couldn’t be easy, feeling the rigour of age every day, and parading it in front of crowds of young, bright-eyed students.

“It’s fine, Sir,” squeaked a mousey-looking girl, sat right at the front.

As he loaded up the powerpoint for today, I focused on determinedly looking away from the golden-eyed boy. I could feel him beside me; it was as though I could see him from the corner of my eye, all of the time, even when I was looking nowhere near him.

My thoughts kept jumping back to the search results I’d found last night. Maybe humans weren’t the only out-of-the-ordinary nightmate a vampire could have…

No. This must be some sort of wolfish trick. He’d drawn me in, and now he had me just where he wanted me. That was why I was so enticed by him, so beguiled by his smooth skin and flowing, dark hair. And those eyes…

I mentally shook myself. I tried to tune back into the History teacher’s words, rather than fixating on one strange, handsome, dangerous boy sat beside me.

“So,” he coughed, his eyes alight with the tales of the past, “Queen Victoria’s reign began in 1837. She was the second-longest reigning Queen of England, coming just behind the current matriarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The Victorian Era is most notable – in my humble opinion – for its rapid advances in technology. This was the time of trains, of the London Underground, of vaccines and of cures and of education.”

I kept my eyes focused on the powerpoint slide as he spoke. I agreed with him, to an extent – the Victorian Era had been incredible, awe-inspiring. But it had also brought with it death, in the crowded, smog-filled cities, and in its factories, with tiny children working from young ages. He was telling us of the light, but not of the dark that accompanied it. In everything, there was good and bad: a natural balance that came with life itself.

Maybe, I considered, I’d been right before. Perhaps, like vampires, werewolves were not so simple as literature and films would have us think. If there was light and dark in everything, then that would surely apply to them, too.

I let my eyes flicker to the boy. He had finally dropped his gaze, and his eyebrows were furrowed as he meticulously wrote something on a slip of paper. His handwriting was neat, from what I could see, all perfectly straight lines and delicate curves.

I looked down at my own, messy handwriting. I often deviated from the lines in the notepad, and got distracted doodling around the edges of the words I’d written. I’d hardly taken any notes today, in fact, but as I’d been thinking, I’d been drawing mindlessly, too.

Scrawled on my page in smudged black biro was my own face. I’d barely registered drawing it. It was cartoony, with lips that were even bigger than my real ones, and doe eyes that were looking up at nothing. My lashes were long, casting spider-leg shadows down my cheeks. One side of my face was dark, and the other was shining in the light.

I scribbled over it, forcing my pen so firmly into the paper that it began to tear. My vision became blurred as I dragged the pen through the notepad, and then I jumped when a hand was laid on my arm.

The touch itself was accompanied by a feeling of warmth, of love. It felt supportive, from the gentle grasp on my forearm to the pressure from its fingertips, evenly spaced and spread out from the palm.

I didn’t like being touched. But this… this was okay.

I turned slowly, already certain that I knew who was behind the quiet gesture. The golden-eyed boy looked nervous, shy, even, as his eyebrows raised and he met my gaze. His lips parted, just a little, and I felt the sudden, strange urge to lean forwards, to close the space between our desks and kiss him.

“Hey,” he whispered. Then he looked around quickly, as though worried we’d get reprimanded for talking in class. His voice was deep, but he put an inflection at the end of the word that made him sound young, and scared.

I wondered if this was part of his fiendish wolf-plan, too. It didn’t seem likely to me.

“Hi,” I whispered back.

He pulled back, and then dropped a note onto my desk. He mouthed, “read it,” and then turned away from me again. I saw his leg jiggling nervously beneath his desk, and then my curiosity overcame me, and I began to unfold the note.

It had been folded a lot – more so than any normal person would see fit when quickly passing a note in class. The creases were deep, too, as though he’d worried over them, and pressed them in with a ruler. He seemed like the sort of person to have a lot of stationary, and like the sort of person that would bring all of it, neatly tucked into a pencil case, to every lesson.

I preferred to chuck a couple of pens into my bag, and more often than not they would run out while I was using them. Then I’d get distracted, scribbling them in rapidly expanding circles across the page, wanting them to come back to life.

I finally unfolded the note, and his steady, careful handwriting was clear on the paper.

Meet me by the bleachers after school. I think we need to talk.

-       Skye

The rest of the day passed slowly, after that. Where Skye’s leg had been jiggling nervously, mine tapped out an excited rhythm beneath my desk. It was nice to finally be able to put a name to his face, and to have something to call him other than the golden-eyed boy.

Kathrena, for her part, seemed just as distracted as I was at lunch. We barely spoke, and toyed with our food wordlessly, moving it aimlessly around our blue cafeteria trays. Sometimes, for effect, I’d hold an orange segment up to my mouth, but I didn’t once bite down on it.

Finally, the end of the day came. The drizzle had darkened during the day, and as I ran in the opposite direction to the clusters of students eagerly pushing towards the car park to leave the campus, I heard the roll of thunder somewhere far away.

As I reached the sports field, I broke into a full sprint. I took cover under the brightly coloured blue and yellow bleachers when I reached them, and tucked my small body under the stands. The rain sounded louder when I was beneath them, each droplet smacking against the plastic with the fury of an enraged fist.

I waited, and I twirled the ends of my hair around my fingers. I braided a plait into the rain-dampened curls, and then pulled my index finger through the centre of it, letting it unfurl and lie free against my chest once more.

I waited, but Skye never came.