- They were servants of the darkness and for the longest time, Harlow Alden was reasonably content with being peculiar... Though that was until the day she met the boy who made her feel less peculiar...
The Alden family was atypical, gifted with po...
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Forks High School was not, Harlow decided by the first break, the worst school in the world. Many of the students had fully formed friendships since infancy, formed enough that they did not bother to try and expand said groups, not even for the new girl-- at least not a new girl with a haggard expression and a reluctance to smile. The second brilliant thing she had learned was that somehow, due to their scheduling, Harlow and Hector were in many of the same classes. He was as much a comfort to see to her as she was to him.
The teachers also seemed to despise the students quite entirely and made no effort to socialise with them, meaning that none had asked Harlow to introduce herself. It was something that she found marvellous because it meant that she did not need to strain to think of one interesting fact about herself... that could actually be said in front of a class of students.
This teacher, at the very least, did not even ask for her name before he sent her to her seat and she took it as a definite win as she took a space by the window at the empty table at the back. Hector was not here now, her shield against the world despite the fact that he spent much of lessons hunched over his little book scribbling away. Crowded rooms were understandably the hardest for him. But he, like the rest of his siblings, had long since gotten used to their strange renditions of ordinary.
Shucking off her fitted coat left her in a charcoal grey turtle neck and she pulled the sleeves low onto her palms, locking her fingers together and staring at the family signet ring set on her middle finger on her left hand, a shard of opal glimmering back at her in the low Forks greyness. When the seat beside her moved, she did not, frozen with a prenatural stillness and instantly regretting her previous sense of hope. Turning her head to the left, she spotted Harriet perched on the windowsill swinging her legs and watching the world go by beyond the window. Nobody could see her, not unless Harlow projected her but still, the living sister kept her tethered to her throughout the day. If she could not have Hector as a safety blanket, she could have her only sister.
Harriet should have been in that room with them, Harlow's identical sister learning alongside them. But she was not and she could never be. Perhaps, if she had been-- they'd never have moved there at all.
Shifting her hands to tug her notebook nearer to her came with unnecessary strain as every movement always did, sluggish as though her body was weighted down at every joint. Her mother had often compared it to the aches experienced when a human had the flu. Harlow, who had never had such a thing, could not be certain but she did know that the pain was enough to make her stop moving almost instantly and stress over the thought of having to write.
Being alive was far too painful and when she glanced across at Harriet in her pristine state, watching a bird beyond the window without a care in the world-- she was genuinely envious that she could not join her. Even now, her breath rattled in her dry throat and she was perpetually parched. How much better it would be to join the shadow realm of which she could hear whispering to her from just beyond her self-forged veil.
She was pulled from her thoughts when two pale hands dropped and opened a notebook on the desk. Handsome hands in all regards and she almost laughed at the thought-- what constituted handsome hands? He was uniquely pale, though he did not retain the grey quality that she did and his paleness did not put his veins on the show as would expect-- it was clean, pristine as though it had been polished, nails manicured though she doubted those hands had done such a thing.
Pale hands led to a navy blue shirt cuff and sleeves drawn unintentionally tight around toned, lean forearms, tighter still around biceps and across a chest. But it was his face that stopped her from her analysis-- of which she had been attempting to remain discreet until she saw the face. He was gorgeous, completely, inexplicitly and shamelessly handsome with a straight nose, lowered brows and chiselled jaw. He was immaculate with slightly waving honey-coloured hair and eyes the startling vibrance of gold, darkened around the pupil. They seemed to darken the longer she looked at them, as though a shadow had cast right the way across them and she realised almost too suddenly that the two of them had been staring at one another.
Feigning a lack of care for the man who was too gorgeous to exist on this earth, she turned her eyes to face Harriet again. She could so very easily pretend that she had been looking at that same little bird beyond the window but instead her eyes were trained on the cheeky giggling of Harriet who-- despite looking every part a child, saw the man beside Harlow and understood.
Harlow Alden was glad in that moment that there was no blood in her cheeks to flush and even more grateful still that the begrudging English Literature teacher chose then to begin his lessons. It did not, however, distract her enough to not notice the way his shimmering gold eyes turned to her every few seconds as though he was quite literally doing a series of double and triple-takes. Perhaps it was the way she seemed to match the grey of her turtleneck, or worse, perhaps she had begun to emit the odour of death. Nothing would come as much of a surprise to her now.
Only when he had seemed to settle whatever mental debate he seemed to be waging, did Harlow feel the need to restrain a groan of agitation as the teacher announced partner work... Her first day at a new school, paired with an outlandishly gorgeous man-- for boy was surely not a word suitable to describe him-- and she now had to suffer through partner work, locating quotes and preparing a presentation of a book which she had not so much as read, let alone previously studied. Perhaps this was her karma for being alive, it was quite simply what she got for not being worm food. A life of torment instead.
"Hello," Harlow was not entirely sure why she was surprised he had spoken. Why wouldn't he speak to her? They were, after all, partners for this particularly harrowing task. Still, it did nothing to stop her from freezing for a split second. His voice was as marvellous as the rest of him and if Harlow did not know what it was like to see something that was not there-- she would perhaps believe that he was a hallucination. There was a soft honeyed southern drawl to the single word and she found herself addicted to the sound.
She was in trouble. One word and she was in trouble.
"Hello," she returned, aware that her voice sounded somehow even raspier than usual from not speaking all day-- it sounded like two boulders being scraped together but given her other side effects, it was one of the least impressive. His expression did not change, as though he had heard nothing odd in the word.
"My name is Jasper Hale," he introduced, giving a name to the handsome face and she nodded, her lips somehow wishing to twist into a smile-- she did not give them permission to. There was nothing happy about this situation, about any situation any longer.
"Harlow Alden," she returned with a simple nod and her eyes fell back upon the lines of her notebook as she lifted her hands from beneath the desk to write. Her motions were always sluggish, purely because they ached to achieve. She could move with some real speed if she desired... she did not often desire.
Even as she wrote the date, she could feel his frown on the side of her face and avidly ignored it as she turned her eyes to Harriet perched in the window. There was something decidedly odd about the boy sitting beside her but even as she allowed herself to speculate on his particular shade of peculiarity, she could not quite place what was so impossibly off about him. His frown seemed to suggest that he was pondering the very same about her. Could she exactly blame anyone for being peculiar when she was so distinctly abnormal?
