Black Mist: Budding [on hiatus]

4. Power

Friday arrived quickly, and like a child throwing a tantrum, it kicked Rose in the shins, as she imagined Porsche wanted to. All the 10th graders had to stay in the cafeteria after lunch for the student officer elections. They had voted earlier in the week in English class, but since Rose wasn't taking English, Dean Whitley had given her a ballot during seventh period. It was just a blank slip of paper with two lines on it, and the dean told her to write two names, a boy and a girl. Rose had no idea who to pick. The only person she really knew had already been chosen for leadership. She thought about her classmates, and wrote two names randomly. Now, she and Ellie sat with Jeremy Franco and the people he hung around with. It seemed that Ellie and Jeremy had gotten to be friends through leadership.

Rose wasn't really paying attention as the dean spoke about what it meant to be a student officer. She was distracted by Alastair's emaciated form at the next table. Rose supposed he would look normal to others, maybe even to her, but she had developed a sense for when people aren't feeling well ever since he called her a healer last year. Now, it was like she could see the sickness seeping from people's pores. Once, she had taken a cold from Grant, when he moved her hand this way or that in class. He probably just thought he had fought it off. She glanced at Alastair again, but there wasn't anything obviously wrong with him, except for the bones sticking out at his collar and wrist. He looked like he was starving to death. Rose wanted to walk over and make him better, but she didn't want to draw attention to herself or to him. Plus, she thought, frowning, I didn't feel anything when I hugged him last week. 

A loud peal of laughter pulled Rose back to the moment. She heard a gasp from her table, but everything else was muted by her heart pounding in her ears. What had she missed?

Ellie nudged Rose, who stared blankly. "You have to go up there," Ellie whispered, pushing her again.

Rose stood and walked like an automaton toward the front of the room, keeping her face expressionless. Porsche, who sat a few tables along, stuck one foot out in Rose's path. Rose was happy to kick it out of her way.

"Sssss. Bitch," seethed the bully, rubbing the side of her thin, fancy shoe.

As she stood next to the dean, Rose noticed that the whole 10th grade class, except for Ellie and Jeremy, were laughing. Rose and Omar, the other kid who had apparently been voted in as a joke, weren't laughing either. So this was Porsche's revenge. To humiliate Rose by rigging the vote. But she was too strong now for this to hurt her. She had been strengthened by everything she had lost, everything she had seen. Everything she had become.

Rose wasn't sure what Omar had done to Porsche, but his expression broke Rose's heart. He looked crushed by their chortling. She grabbed his hand and pulled him into a deep bow, like actors at the end of a play. Rose raised her eyebrows at him and gave a slight shrug, wanting to say, "We're in this together. Let's show them they can't break us." His flushed face broke into a smirk, and as they stood up, he began to wave like the queen of England, or maybe a pageant winner.

"Thank you, thank you," he blew kisses out to the audience, who had fallen silent in their failure. Rose squeezed his hand and smiled in triumph. They were two of a kind--Porsche's would-be victims because they were different. Well, Rose was sick of being treated like a freak, and it seemed Omar was, too.

Alastair wished he had known that they were going to select Rose, so he could warn her about going up to the front. She looked angry, especially compared to the horrified face of the kid next to her. But he suspected it was probably embarrassment under that mask, and he understood. It had not been easy for him to get up on stage two years ago, with Mason Warner and Tommy Roarke muttering taunts at him. Based on the wave of laughter that circled the room, he was pretty sure she was being mocked. And Mason's snotty little sister Porsche was right in the middle of it. He felt a dark rage surging from deep in his soul, but before he could lose Control in front of the entire sophomore class, he snuck out the side door.