Veniam: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

         Back in Columbia people grouped in colonies, not cliques. They were the colony of athletes, the colony of brains, the colony of beauty, and on and on. It didn't matter how you dressed, what music you listened to, as long as you all met on some common ground. Somewhere along the lines I never got the memo on how to fit in. So I was the lone wolf. I traveled in between groups. Never really hated, but never really accepted either.  I never made any close bonds with anyone either for the same reason.
         At Linota things were different. They all grouped by personality, the jokers, the depressed, the super girly, and if I had to label them any further, then I had found myself at the table of the kind. Everyone sitting around me smiled genuinely and welcomed me. Things began to look up. I would have no trouble being with these people. If they were kind to me, I would be kind to them. It was a perfect balance, an equilibrium. Unlike that one guy and his friends… Again, really?  Why couldn’t I stop thinking about him?
         Though with every equation, there was always a loop hole, something that would always mess you up and lead you to the wrong conclusion. Those people, were the people I was told to be watchful of.
         “Cami-“ I interjected into her thriving debate over sling backs versus peep toes. “Who are they?” I nodded my head towards the far middle, where he sat with his two friends. All in their lonesome.
         “Rosemaree, Owen, and Nicholay Laine,” she said with the most serious face I could have never imagined on her. They were the people “who messed with the system.” They always sat together, every day, and spoke to no one unless absolutely necessary, her story unfolded. They were presumed to be the most egotistical people in the school, yet they all were different. No one could understand it, how such a group could co-exist, when one would always want to be better than the other. It was this group's “personal law” to not judge the other students, but even I could feel the small wave of scorn rolling in from these, normally, pleasant and sweet people.
         “It’s been happening to you all lunch since you asked Luca, but Nickolay is looking over here. I’m almost positive it’s directed at you,” Cami calculated. Me?  I questioned. Why was everyone so interested in me?
In Columbia new people popped up around every corner, I guess here it was a little different, little being a major understatement. When Cami said I’d know everyone’s name by lunch she was half right. I was told all of them, but I only remembered few, mostly being her friends and the Laine’s. The Laine's had such curious names, they sounded so foreign...Nickolay...I thought.
         “Are they from here? The Laine’s, I mean,” I tried not to let my eyes wander to their table yet again.
         “Well I’m not sure, they only moved here last year themselves, where from no one knows for sure,” she chimed. If anyone knew anything about anyone, it was clearly going to be Cami.
         “Well I heard they’re rich! So they must have come from a wealthy family, perhaps doctors, lawyers, or even an entrepreneur of some kind?” Natalie, slim, short, brunette girl added in. “I deduce they come from a larger American town, ooh or a wealthy European family,” she continued excitedly.
         “Not necessarily. I’ve heard that Rosemaree girl speak in a few of my classes and she has a slight accent. It sounded non-American or British,” said Markus, also an athlete; linebacker for the football team I found out later.
         “Europe is larger than just the U.K. Markus,” Natalie debated quickly. He fake scowled at her while she winked back before the others joined in.
         Suddenly I found my head swiveling from person to person, as they all presented gathered information. Why were these people so interesting to them, even to me? They were just people, weren’t they?  I couldn’t understand the allure that drew every person in Linota Academy to their feet. The boys all wanted Rosemaree, yet here I was, at a table of gorgeous girls, what about her was so different? And what sent all the girls cooing happened to be the two boys, especially Nicolay, the only rumored to be single Laine. What about these boys? Yes, gorgeous boys I must admit, but here I was. Plain looking me sitting at a table of attractive boys. It worried me, I felt almost unlike myself, because we all felt the same. We all were drawn to these people. I was determined to discover why. It seemed the perfect way to spend my zoning moments. Not to mention  distract myself from what seemed to be a whole new world.

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         Almost 200 years later, here I am. Walking the hallways of yet another form of the collaborative education system. We had yet another two years before me, my brother, and sister had to pack up and move again. To another city, another state; someday the Americas would run out of places for our kind to hide in plain sight.
         “Nickolay, you are brooding again?” Rosemaree slanted her big auburn eyes at him while they walked through the halls.
         “Yes. I can't help it, there is nothing of interest anymore to contain these thoughts. All that’s left is the negative to consume me,”  he replied to her balk English, so rough she was, after 100 years of being away from Norway, she still held her head high, and her accent gruff, much like that of her ancestors long dead.
         “You are so dramatic Nickolay. Can ‘t you ever be happy? You have lived longer than any man, you are superior in every way, is that not something to be proud of?” The largest of the three chimed in. Owen’s method of 'cheering up' was to build up the ego, he truly was one to keep simple minded. His thoughts were always sporadic and never contained a deep level of understanding. It amused him the most to confound the others with our supernatural powers, especially in their own created activities. Owen found the activity 'gym' particularly amusing. Our thoughts travel through on a frequency higher than that of the natural human beings. We could read each others mind and speak, without ever moving a lip or flicking a tongue. It resulted in his second favorite activity, boasting. For no one could defeat us unless we truly wanted them to, well not that of a human. If one of our kind were to engage us in battle, I was confident we would fare well, but then, I had not had to fight for my life in over 150 years. All of them spent in solitary confinement, due to my own wishes.
         True. We were superior beings, not only in thought,but in body as well. Each one of our own was indestructible, Owen and myself, muscular to the highest physical degree, our abdomens rippled, our biceps and our pectorals stood out against even the loosest clothing, although we still had characteristics that of our old selves, when we were still human. I myself was smaller in stature to Owen. He was taller and thicker, I was shorter and thinner; while Rosemaree, as most our females, had the perfect body. She could out due any model or athlete, yet she was only slightly shorter than I. She fit in well with human girls. With her long blonde hair and gracious auburn eyes that were just a dash more brown than ours. She welcomed even the most frightened spirit; she truly was the upbeat one of us three albeit the feistiest. Both she and Owen always had higher spirits than I; it was partly their nature, but partly their lives. If that’s what you could call them. Each had already found there ihailija, both attending Batesburg Academy a town away while I remained alone. I resolved to the arts, I was a drawer; it’s the only honest collection of all that I’ve seen over the past 200 years, since the night I lost my life.
         “Nickolay! I swear you are as strange as these humans sometimes, you sit and stare at the wall for no reason. Please now, be cheerful! True happiness will arrive someday,” Rosemaree promised.
         “Thank you Rose,” I curved the corners of my lips up. The most realistic smile I could muster anymore. Having seen hundreds of years of misfortune and travesty, I could no longer smile at small things, such as the sun shining or a mere childish victory in the human world of sports. Nor an accomplishment in answering educators questions without pause and being correct 100% of the time. The simple gratifications that humans endure… he thought., I only wish could still affect my cold heartless body.
Enraptured as typical, I didn't notice the daily onlookers, the fawning girls and boys. Our prey so close at hand and yet so trusting of our presence. My thoughts continued in their downward spiral of disgust and contempt until I caught the sound of an unfamiliar voice. Its sound was so sweet, I had not heard any sound so becoming since my human life. Even stranger, it was not the voices that we drowned out every day to speak our own silent language. It was a voice inside my head, a voice speaking on the same frequency that we spoke.
         My family and I halted mid step, closed out all other senses and listened. There it was again. My body yearned to hear it, and just as so we wished, we found its source. Sitting inside the office was a girl with long black hair.
         “Fresh meat,” Rosemaree said sarcastically.
         “Agreed,”  we thought to each other.
         “Come Nicolay, we need to discuss this with Daniil, they will know what this means, what she is,”  Rosemaree instructed.
         I heard my sister’s thoughts, but I couldn’t move. My warm hazel eyes were locked on hers. I could hear her thoughts. They were messy and worried, but they seemed almost in a different language. I could not understand them, but I could feel them. She was scared and contemplative. She then turned away from me, but she was still alert. I made her nervous.
         Suddenly I realized how strange I must look to the other students right now, stalled and rigid, no breathing, no flinching, nothing. I was a statue. I gathered myself and continued past into the lunch hall. Every now and again I had to look back, my body was calling in every fiber to turn back, to sit and gaze; be mesmerized by the sound of her thoughts. They were the most intriguing thing I had ever discovered. How could Owen or Rose be so immune to its warmth and taste, it was almost as delicious as when we feed. I truly was in a trance, for I could not repel these thoughts with the greatest of my mental strength. A skill I trained centuries to acquire.
         “Nicolay, you are drawing suspicion to us, we are going to lunch and then home. Stare at that girl no longer. What has gotten into you?”  She barked mentally.
         I smiled to myself. Wait, no, I did, I smiled, genuinely; to the point where I was almost going to chuckle. Me, gawking at a girl, this was the first time I had ever even gazed past the first glance. I was so used to finding everything unappealing, until right now, I had changed, in a split second. The course of fate had changed everything, it had changed the impossible, and it had even uplifted my mood.
         “Rose, I mean Rosemaree…” Owen changed her name at her slanted glare. Her shortened name was reserved just for me, for she was my first friend in the afterlife. We were destined together forever. I almost smiled again; things seemed so much lighter, the air, and the weight upon my shoulders, everything… “What is that girl? Why could I hear her thoughts, but not understand them?” Owen rumbled inside his head.
         “I do not understand either Owen. Nicolay? What have you concluded?” she added onto the end sarcastically, poking fun at me over jealousy. She was always territorial, she was when we met Helen especially. She never knew in the end it would mean the discovery of her ilhailija, Owens, and Daniil’s. I was the only one who came out of that situation empty handed. She was still determined to protect me.
         “She’s something special, but I can’t understand it. I felt her…Her thoughts I mean, remarkable…” I gazed off in wonder; this new development began to sit with me. The consequences of this could be dire and I had to begin to be serious. Never before have I had to tell myself that, to focus. Whatever she was, she held some power over me. A human in control of one of us could be more than disastrous.
         “Here she comes! Watch her Nicolay. Tell us. What do you feel from her?”  the venom of her thoughts sinking in. “What is this remarkableness?”   I rolled my eyes sheepishly, turning I watched her, trying to tune into the station that connected us together in thought. I closed my eyes momentarily, not even long enough for the average human blink, but enough for me to drown out other sounds and concentrate on her.
         There it was! A humming, almost, of the most glorious sounds. She was still so mesmerizing. Yet, entirely unintelligible. There was a definite feeling coming off of them. I began to feel overwhelmed, a glow almost came to my cheeks. I recognized this as human embarrassment; fear of mistake. She was embarrassed, but also optimistic, for I felt this amazing sense of upliftedness. As if I was on top of the world. She sat down at a table in the center of the hall and they all began talking to her. None the less about us, for her blonde friend kept looking back at me; they must have noticed I was staring. “Well Nicolay?” Rose pushed.
         “She’s not like us. She’s human, but I have no explanation.” I responded. Still tuning into her thoughts, my foot begged to tap. I needed to focus. This influence was just as mystifying as it was frustrating. I bid for control, for muscles to tense, and brows to arch, yet they remained relaxed. I was calm, almost serene. I couldn’t rid myself of this freedom.
         “We have to find Daniil. He would know whats up,” Owen rushed. We three locked gazes and nodded as a bell pealed overhead. Lunch was over and the masses shuffled from the wide common area into the small hallway to their classes. We sat and watched as they all moved in a frenzied panic to reach their classes on time. As soon as they dispersed, we looked all ways, checking for any stragglers before we locked eyes once more. In the blink of an eye we were gone.
         I was sitting in my chair before she walked in. Her long hair flowed behind her and suddenly I was stricken with that same humming. It vibrated through my body, sent shivers down my spine. I didn’t take my eyes off her.