Undying Legacies: Mirrored

13: Deciphered

13: Decipher

Teagan watches Lila jump around with excitement as she hugs her new red blouse to her chest. It's  letter day again and most students got something, all were chattering around the yard reading or talking with each other about their updates

Thad and Chrys aren't even here.

Teagan just stares at the empty grey sky. Nothing from her parents. Teagan relizes now, in this rare normal moment, that she hasn't gotten a letter from her parents since the beginning of the year. She'd sent several. But they hadn't sent any back.

Now she relizes what Thad must have felt when he didn't get anything. It feels awful, like something was grabbing her stomach and twisting it like a wet rag.

"Teagan, what's the matter? Didn't you get a letter." Lila asks, now aware that the red headed girl is standing there with nothing in her hands.

She shakes her head. She can't figure out why they haven't sent anything. And she's not sure she should be worried about it... The she remembers when she hadn't sent her parents  anything last year, perhaps this is what they'd gone through. She's suddenly very sorry and remorseful for what she'd done.

"I'll just head back inside." She says, her voice sounds brittle to her ears. As if it will break at any second.

She rushes off before Lila can say anything. Her eyes pass over and catch Scarrow's tall skinny self. He's sitting at the edge of the fountain in the middle of the court yard, bent over with his forehead in the palm of his hand and his fingers tight in his silver white hair. The letter he so obviously got is hanging limply in his other hand. Teagan wonders for a brief moment, if perhaps not getting a letter was better than getting one as distressing as his were.

She feels highly cruel for thinking so. 

She turns away as Joseph come sidling up to Scarrow, that boy seems to be the only one that approaches Scarrow regardless if he speaks to him or not.

But they don't seem to be friends.

Teagan wonders, for the first time, who is Joseph anyway?

The bell chimes and Teagan's thankful for this momentary distraction and heads inside for lunch. Even though she's certain she will not be able to eat a thing from the tightness in her stomach.

-----

She runs into Thad instead.

She's been trying to avoid him since there fight. But Lila kept on insisting that she should talk to him, that  Thad might miss her, that he hadn't meant to hurt her feelings.

Teagan doesn't care about that.

She just cares because he was right for what he said. And she was wrong. And admitting that seems like she's pulling teeth out with rusted tongs.

But the moment she runs into him, he grabs her by her elbows and Teagan startles to a stop and looks up. She still hates the height  difference... And he's still growing it seems.

"I - I didn't see you there." She says quietly, not looking at him and inconspicuously trying to pull out of his grasp.

Thad lets her.

He puts his hands in his pockets and sighs loudly, dramatically, and very much sounding like Lila.

"I wish you'd stop being so bloody stubborn." He says, unamused by her prideful self.

Teagan looks up at him sharply, his brown eyes hold nothing but resignation and disappointment.

She hates it when he looks at her like that.