Her name was Chrysanthemum, Chryssie for short.
Her hair was long and tangled and the darkest shade of black, running down her back like a river of ink. Crystal irises accompanied dark pupils, clear and kind and as potent as the Lethe, for a mere glimpse made him forget everything awful in the world. Her preference was to be unseen and unheard, but he could never ignore her.
She was everything, and his love for her was infinite.
~
Chryssie sat at her usual lunch table with her usual friends. It was debatable whether they cared for her or not.
Well, it was debatable whether Amber cared for her or not, and Gigi seemed to take whatever Amber said as gospel. Frieda was sweet, she supposed, always trying to include her. They sometimes went shopping together, but Frieda always seemed quite distant to her.
She was picking at her bruschetta when Frieda tapped her shoulder. She looked up.
"Did you hear, Chrys?
"Hear what?"
"Rae committed suicide."
Her stomach dropped, veins ran cold, and she felt pity, something that she never thought she would have to feel for Rae Jackson.
"Oh," she murmured, but Frieda had already turned and was discussing the gruesome details with Amber. Chryssie tried her best to tune out their voices.
Rae had been terrible to her ever since she was nine and Chryssie accidentally spilled water all over her at lunch. She was convinced that someone had tripped her, but Rae hadn't much cared.
And so had begun the torment.
Chryssie would admit, lately she had begun to be quite waspish whenever she heard Rae snipe about her hair or the way her uniform wasn't pressed to perfection, but now she felt simply awful about it
She tried her best to push the thoughts out of her head, vowing to pay her respects, before brushing her hair out of her eyes and pulling her hand away from her forearm, which she had subconsciously been scratching. An anxious reaction.
Then he came up to them. Rather, came up to her.
People rarely came up to her.
Chryssie thought that he was the most handsome boy that she had ever seen. His hair was messy and his eyes were soft and green and beautiful. His lips were set in a small smile and the white sleeves of his uniform were rolled up. As he sat down, he gave her a genuine smile and held out a hand.
"Hey. I'm Grayson."
She observed him for a few moments before shaking his hand shyly. "I'm Chryssie."
His eyes gleamed with something unrecognisable, something off, but she ignored it, if only to be polite.
(People had always told her that she was too polite.)
As they talked, he seemed to know Chryssie almost better than she knew herself. It was bizarre, for someone she had just barely met to know so much about her.
She brushed it off. Perhaps he had talked to her friends before talking to her, never mind that none of them had noticed him sitting down.
He asked her many questions, but told her only a few things about himself. He seemed to want to know absolutely everything about her, while she only knew bits and pieces about him. He liked books, and those chocolates with caramel centres. He was going off to university next year. He had taken a few art classes when he was young. He was an only child.
They talked up until the lunch bell rang. She liked his laugh and his eyes. She didn't like whatever was behind them, whatever made them gleam.
"It was nice meeting you," she said as she stood up, hiking her bag up on her shoulder. Her voice was quiet, but fairly clear.
"Likewise," Grayson replied, nodding in agreement. He smiled at her saccharinely and walked off, melting into the crowd of people.
He was nice and handsome and seemed to be genuinely interested in the things that she had to say.
Still, Chryssie felt that there was something wrong, something strange and uncomfortable about the entire encounter.
But she ignored it, writing it off as simple paranoia. After all, it wouldn't be the first time she had felt paranoid about a boy and been wrong.
Although, it also wouldn't be the first time she had felt paranoid about a boy and been right.
That hadn't turned out very well.
Not at all.
~
Grayson knew that some people were off.
It showed if you talked to them for long enough - the ferocity in their smile, the way their hands move subconsciously, looking for something to hold.
Or crush.
They were different, and it was known. They' were suspicious. Blameful.
Some of them weren't aware, didn't understand that their thoughts were leaking out of their heads and into their physical being, exposing them for what they truly were.
But Grayson wasn't stupid like the others.
Every word coming out of his mouth had been carefully selected, every movement concealed or controlled. He attributed it to survival instinct - one wrong move, and everything went all to hell.
In truth, he was very wary of being unwanted by her. Outed for what he was.
(being alone.)
So he made a point to ooze charisma and charm out of every pore. His social intelligence was off the charts, so it wasn't especially hard, but he still put effort into looking loose and interested and friendly even when he wasn't feeling any of those things.
He was good at lying. Always had been. Always would be.
It would make protecting her from the world a whole lot easier on his part.
He noticed her wandering down the hallway, holding her books when the last bell rang and smiled at her. She looked a bit flustered and gave a small wave. His smile grew wider, then dissipated when she disappeared from view. When he turned into the headmistress' office, he sat down in the chair and waited patiently for her to finish her email.
"Mr. Holloway," she finally said, giving him a pleasant smile. She was young, with honey blonde hair and kind eyes. There was a ring on her finger. "How can I help you?"
"I'm here to turn in those packets that you gave me at the beginning of the year. I've had them graded and everything."
He placed them on her desk, taking great care not to disrupt any of her other papers. She looked through them.
"Well, this seems to suffice. Let me pull you up."
He waited patiently as she did so, waiting for the words that he knew would come out of her mouth.
"It looks like your testing is done. And you're scheduled to take early testing for A-levels on Monday?
"Yes Ma'am."
"Excellent. I suppose you're done with sixth form. You most likely won't have trouble getting into any university you choose to apply to, at least, judging by your testing scores."
"That's a relief."
(No it wasn't. He already knew that.)
"Well, you're free to go. I wish you luck. You're not required to go to your classes after Monday, seeing as you tested out of them all."
"Thank you," he said politely, standing up and nodding his head.
He exited the school quickly, pushing past packs of rabid teenage boys and gaggles of teenage girls that seemed to do nothing but titter. He was beginning to get tired of all the talk about Rae - not because he was worried about getting caught, but because he was bored. How could one person that vain be relevant to more than five minutes of discussion?
He supposed that people just loved tragedy, and left it at that. He didn't care to ponder much more on the ethics of that love as he walked home, sleeves of his uniform rolled up so that he could feel the cold air against his skin. He took the route he always took - the one that passed by Chrysanthemum's home. As he walked by, he could see her drawing the curtains in her sitting room, just as she always did. He smiled before continuing on his way, three streets up, turning onto Elizabeth Avenue.
Elizabeth Avenue was where people aspired to live. It was up on the tallest point of a hill, looking over the entire city, and inhabited by doctors, lawyers, and other members of similar professions.
They were all nosy bastards, as far as Grayson cared to know, and he hated living next to them.
His home was an old Victorian-style mansion that had been paid off long before he was born. It wasn't unique in architecture to the others along the street, but it was unique to the others in that every time he looked at it, he felt an intense hatred. It burned in his chest when he walked up the stairs to the door, fingers brushing against the ivy that crawled up the side of the house. He had put pumpkins up, in the spirit of Halloween, but otherwise didn't care much for decorations.
The wood creaked under his feet as he walked inside. He sulked past the mirror on the wall, past the sitting room and into the kitchen, where he dropped his bag on the floor and picked up a piece of paper to start sketching out his plan.
He couldn't get the smell of blood out of his nose.
a/n
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