The Story Of Sarelle: The Immortal Years »

Chapter 27

The coming week I spent more time buried in Alice's closet than I did out of it. She was taking the school dance as the perfect opportunity to flex her fashionista muscles. It was nice to do something so ordinary after the turbulence that had shaken up my life since the Cullens arrived last July. As with Carlisle's charity ball Alice had free rein over everyone's outfit, and since I would be attending the dance with the Cullens I had allowed that control to extend to my own outfit. The only aspect she had little control over was the colour. That had already been decided as soon as Alfie and I decided we would attend together.

As I looked at the blood red satin dress draped on the hanger I reminisced over the peculiar friendship Alife and I had developed in the past week and the moment we decided to go together.

I went straight to the seat beside Alfie as I entered the history class with Alice. We hadn't been allowed to return to our previous seating arrangement, much to Alice's chagrin.

She gave me a woeful smile as she slid into the seat beside Simon.

"Hi." Alfie whispered beside me. Since our first proper conversation last week he had become more confident around me. Not that he had much choice. Since watching Dylan walk away I had taken to talking at Alfie until it got the point that he started to return the conversation. Maybe it was transference, but all I knew was that since Dylan left I felt the need to prove I could still interact with the humans around me. I wanted to blend in, not segregate myself to the Cullens company.

"Hi," I returned as I arranged my books and pens on the desk. "Did you listen to that composer I told you about?"

"Yeah I did. Took some searching but it was worth it. How did you hear about him?" He toyed with his notepad as he spoke. It was one of the many things I had started to catalogue about Alfie. He was never at rest, always fiddling with something as if it were inherent for his fingers to constantly be moving.

"I'd just heard of him, a while back," I said offhandedly. He didn't need to know that I had in fact known the composer when he was still working 150 years ago.

"You're different to other girls." Again his green eyes pierced mine as he seemed to search for something to sate is curiosity.

"Am I?" I asked innocently as I started to slowly copy down the work on the board. One hazard of working beside humans is that everything had to be done painstakingly slowly.

"Yes," he said with the hint of a smile.

I chuckled as I replied, "you don't give much away, do you?"

"Neither do you."

"I suppose, so I guess we've each met our match." At this his tentative smile became a blinding flash of pearly white teeth and dimples. It was a shame it was so fleeting but through my time spent with Alfie I had learnt such obvious signs of emotions were rare. He was capable of a mask just as impassive as my own.

"I guess we have." He paused, twisting his pen around in his fingers as words seemed to stick on his tongue. "So, maybe, we could... I mean maybe we should... instead of forcing other people to, not that you would have to force someone-" "Class, you should all have the questions written down from the board so now I want you to discuss them in relation to the pages we've been reading." Mr Powers bellowed through the room, cutting Alfie's words off has quickly as if he had stolen the air from his lungs.

Despite asking him, he never finished what he was going to say and instead retreated back to the boy who hid behind his black hat and shaggy black hair.

It wasn't until Alice skipped towards me with a knowing smile on her face that I learned the intention behind his stuttered words, "He'll be wearing an all black suit and blood red tie. Very stylish, especially for him." She said with a wink as she nodded in Alfie's direction. He was loping down the corridor with his usual long strides and head hung low. It was almost comical to see a boy so tall try to shrink amongst the crowd.