𝐄𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 - 𝐄𝐝𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧 𝐅𝐚𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐜

chapter ten - legends

I exhaled—fingers wringing through my hair, trying to gravitate a sense of calm.

Blank walls, blank mind.

"Ow!" I hissed. Something singed me from my arm, like hot coal fires pricking every nerve. A wild fire of ants were crawling up and down, biting me. Consuming my blood. I viciously chucked off my sweater and grimly glanced at the product of such pain, and to my distraught, nothing.

Nothing except skin.

A dry scoff elapsed from my lips.

What the hell was going on with me?

"Hey, did you hear what I just said?" Jessica's voice managed to yank me from the momentary brown noise my mind fogged over with—I realized I had been writing the same damn thing over and over again on my notepad in class. And it wasn't the math numbers up on the board.

A symbol stared back at me in a messy black scrawl—seven pitched heads like arrows but with no point, almost akin to a compass, and they were all pointing to each different pole, with the center being of a cross and strange letterings. The whole paper was congealed in the images, symbol against symbol, like my brain was trying to tell me something.

A haunting echo somehow pressed against my skull, a pressure that I subdued as merely a headache from the weather.

Something told me that wasn't the case in truth.

"Hellooo? Earth to El?" Jessica was less inclined to seem like she was patient or concerned as she waved a hand in front of me, slightly petulant I wasn't listening.

My eyes refused to move from the notepad. And my dry lips started opening, "Do you recognize this?"

"What? Those weird drawings you've been doing for the past ten minutes?" Jessica gestured, confused. I nodded, my eyes analyzing each head, trying to fathom exactly what it meant. "No. Not really."

"It's been bothering me," I uttered strangely. "It's like I should know what it means. . .I just can't figure out what."

"Uhhhh, right. Well, I don't take geometry so I cant really help you with that," Jessica said thinly.

"It looks more like a hieroglyphic," I mumbled, slightly dazed.

"Rightttt, we'll, I'm just gonna ask you again because you obviously didn't hear me before. What did Edward Cullen want yesterday?"

And the spell broke.

I looked up, eyes blinking erratically I probably looked like I had taken crack, and observed the obvious curiosity and annoyance that graced Jessica's sharp features.

"I don't know," I uttered. "He never really gets to the point."

"We'll, you looked kind of mad," she fished, obviously referring to the cafeteria incident.

"Did I?" I kept everything concise and without reason to spread rumors, my face remaining blank.

"You know, I've never seen him sit with anyone but his family before. That was weird." I could detect a hint of envy, but I chose to ignore it.

Despite me not saying anything, she seemed even more annoyed due to my less then satisfying answer. She was obviously clinging to a hope I had something juicy she could spread.

I rolled my eyes inherently as they shifted to the same scrawl I couldn't get out of my mind.

By the time lunch rolled around, I couldn't help but let my eyes wander to the Cullen table non-conspicuously. Rosalie, Alice, and Jasper were all huddled together speaking in hushed voices, or as hushed as you can be in a hubbub of students all crowded into one space. Of course, untouched food, and brooding faces at the Cullen table. I considered a genetic disorder—anemic being one or if they were just really against the poison provided at our school.