Overhearing Things

There are times I really hate holidays. They stand out as reminders that I am a lonely miserable creature that people outside my family view as a waste of their time and effort. Most considered me a monster though they dare not say it aloud in case I were to bite them.

Waiting for gifts is painful, anyway. Waiting for cards on Valentine’s Day is doubly so. My best friend Jane Bennetti usually called it Single Awareness Day, the day her single mom gets depressed. Strangely enough, this Valentine’s Day Jane was put on the candy gram committee for our grade, and she sometimes updated me on how full the box was getting for the big day, almost hourly, with a shameful smile on her face as if she were enjoying it. All I knew was that none of those candy grams were for me.

I leaned over the closed textbooks on my desk and tried to hold in the despondent sigh that was building up in my chest from all this romantic nonsense, listening to my classmates chat about the dance tomorrow and their dates. I could hear their whispers just under the noisier chatter the imps made around them suggesting naughty things for them to do in the moment. No one else could hear the imps but me. The noise they made used to really bother me, but I had at last managed the trick to ignoring them, which was good since it’s hard to concentrate on my classwork with all that racket going on. But sitting in History class, listening to the other girls’ plans during our study hour made me depressed.

“So Greg O’Grady is going to take Melissa Pickles to the dance with us. They’re even thinking about renting a limo.” Marla Hannigan was leaning over her aisle and had been whispering to Donna Diggory for the past ten minutes. They had already discussed getting one of those tan-in-a-bottle looks and a manicure. It wasn’t any more interesting than Sarah McDonald’s conversation with Patty MacCullah about what kind of underwear they were going to wear. I suppose all of the conversations around me were silly—but one, and that one bothered me the most.

Martha Patterson whispered quieter than I could hear over to Becky Dominae, but their imps were as loud as ever, practically broadcasting their thoughts.

“Good, now write something really nasty,” one imp said to Martha, grinning as he feasted on the mischief her actions would cause.

Martha snickered, writing as though she suddenly had a clever idea.

I frowned. It was unpleasant to see people give into their imps so willingly. Worse when they were eager about it.

“Now add: and my book is a horror story!”

I sat up, wondering what they were writing down. It sounded familiar. Hearing imps talk was like listening to partial thoughts. The little pests knew what was going on in our heads when they tempted us, but I had to guess what was really going on in that secretive huddle.

Becky glanced back at me to make sure no one was observing their plot. I did not avert my gaze. Lowering the sunglasses that usually covered my orange eyes, I returned her look with a fixed stare.

Shuddering, Becky hissed to Martha something I could not hear. Yet, I heard her imps clear enough. “That freak, Eve McAllister. Make a nasty candy gram for her too.”

I blinked. So that was what they were up to.

This sort of thing happens every year, actually. When I got Valentine’s cards as a child (before I could see imps and other weird phenomena) most of them were generic unless they had something malicious written on them. One year I got a card that was altered. It originally said: You are number one in my book. But someone penned in after it and my book is a horror story. It was cruel and childish. I suppose they were doing it again to someone else, but really who deserved that?

“She really is creepy,” one imp said to the girl. “Call her a dog.”

“No. Don’t give her a candy gram. It is a waste of money. It doesn’t bother her anymore. Wrap up some dog food and give it to her for Valentine’s Day.”

I really hated imps. I slumped on my desk again, only glad this year I could prepare myself for such heartlessness. Imps usually just caused mischief, but at times they were plain nasty.

The girls snickered again.

Mr. McDillan, our History teacher, cleared his throat, glaring down on the both of them to be silent. It was our study hour for the test tomorrow. How we used it was up to us, but the noise level had to keep down to whispers. And since nobody defied Mr. McDillan (who was ten times creepier than I was because he loved gory history and talked like he lived it) the girls quickly grew silent and ducked over their books again.

“Eve McAllister, are you going to study at all?” he asked, glaring over their heads at me. This was also nothing new. He had a personal vendetta against me.

“I can’t,” I said with a mild groan. “I have a headache from all the noise.”

Heads turned to stare. To them, the room was perfectly silent.

“Weirdo,” an imp shouted. The boy he fluttered about echoed him. “Weirdo.”

“Freak.” “Monster.” “Demon.” “Crazy.” “Schitzoid.” An endless cry of these epithets as always came from the imps’ ugly faces. Not everyone repeated what the imps said, but it was interesting to see who did.

Heaving out a long tired sigh, Mr. McDillan looked at me straight, ignoring the imps that told him to stake me in the heart, and said with a frown, “Attempt it anyway.”

Of course, he knew what I could see. And in a way it was reassuring—even though I knew he was a retired vampire hunter originally hired by some town official to kill me. My father got a court order to stop that. But not since last Halloween has he truly kept his distance. But then, I’m no vampire. Just half.

Sighing now, I sat up and pried open my book, pretending to go over the recent chapter on World War I. I wasn’t a perfect student, but it was difficult for me to study in class when all I heard were imps shouting and my classmates whispering. Besides, I had nasty feeling about those two girls. I didn’t care if they sent me a can of dog food for Valentine’s Day. We have a dog. I could give it to him. What sent my stomach into twisting knots was the horrid feeling that they were picking on someone else, someone who was defenseless.

So, lowering my eyes to the page, I listened to the girls’ imps suggest nasty things to inflict on this poor unsuspecting classmate. Becky glanced back once more, but she wasn’t looking at me really. Perhaps she hadn’t before either. But then who was she looking at?

Martha glanced under her arm and smothered a snicker again.

I felt my insides burn. I hated this wretched feeling I got, fighting the urge to get up and bite her. My teeth were sharp enough to cause some real damage, but it was just so wrong. Instead, I reminded myself that there were other ways to fight people who were unkind, much more effective ways than giving in to my instincts to make her lunch.

But the class hour ended with the bell, and I stood with the rest of them to go, taking my chance to now look back at where they were staring.

I blinked.

Oh, I felt so stupid. Of course, Tabby McMahon, the geek. I had totally forgotten about her. Who else would be the target of such stupid holiday pranks? If they weren’t picking on me, then they would choose some other misfit to tease.

Tabby was a redhead with frizzy long hair, freckles from head to toe and huge coke bottle glasses. My sister Dawn used to say that all Tabby needed was a good haircut, contacts, some nicer clothes, and she’d be gorgeous. However, Tabby was also clumsy, and she always spoke in a voice barely above a whisper that rasped slightly. I had never seen a shyer, more awkward girl. Unfortunately, she was just as nervous around me as everyone else was, so befriending her was out of the question. I had tried once in junior high, but she screamed and ran away as if I were planning on biting her. Really, I hadn’t bit anyone since I was five.

I watched Tabby duck her head and walk out of the room, nestling her home-stitched book bag in the crook of her arm to protect it.

“What a loser,” Martha said aloud, not needing to be prompted by her imps.

Becky chuckled, nodding with a narrow, churlish smile in her eyes.

Girls like that annoyed me. Honestly, how petty can some people get?

But with the end of class, all of us rushed into the hall to dump off our texts and collect other books from our lockers.

My second hour class was just two doors down and I didn’t need to go to my locker, so I took the free time to stroll over to where Jane was sitting, selling candy gram cards that would be put with giant red and pink suckers tomorrow. Grinning, Jane thanked each person that put a card into the box, greeting even Becky and Martha when they arrived with their wicked notes in hand.

They gave my best friend a polite smile before slipping their cards inside.

“Here you go. And make sure these get the biggest suckers,” Martha said, patting the paper heart decked box.

“All the lollypops will be same size,” Jane said, casting me a smirk as I crept silently behind them with my hands tucked behind my back. “We favor no one.”

“Are you so sure?” Martha snapped, now looking down on Jane. “You certainly favor creepy Eve. I bet you’ll make a blood sucker for her.”

“She is a blood sucker,” Becky chimed in, snickering.

“Well, you know what they say?” My perfectly blond sister Dawn skipped up out of nowhere, winking at me before stuffing three candy gram cards into the box.

The girls cast her dirty looks, pulling back.

I reached over to put four cards in the box myself. “A sucker is born every minute.”

This time they jumped, slamming their bodies flat against the recessed door of the science lab. They stared wide-eyed at me, their knees and every other inch of their bodies shaking in terror.

“Ta! Ta!” Dawn waved with a cheery cherubic smile that she was so famous for, leaning forward like the flirt that she was.

They took her wave as a signal to run. Becky and Martha darted from their pinned position into the hall, scurrying into the crowd of students passing from class to class. They were gone in just a few seconds. Any of our other classmates would have done the same, considering our close proximity and how I had lowered my sunglasses so that they could see my orange eyes and my exposed canines. Normal people would be freaked.

“Don’t do that,” Jane said, slapping the tabletop.

I turned and set my sunglasses right. “Fine. But those girls are such jerks.”

Dawn smirked and turned back down the hall to

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 14.01.2015
ISBN: 978-3-7368-7154-0

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