Rabbits and Roses

Chapter Six

Matthew looked at me uneasily from the side. Alfred sat at the end of the table, Arthur and Francis across from me.

Arthur opened his mouth to speak but shut it again. I glared at them all. "Tell me." I commanded.

"L-look, Jurene, it's a lot to take in at once," Matthew muttered beside me.

"I can handle it, dammit!" I looked down at the table. "Stop treating me like a child who doesn't know what they're supposed or not supposed to do!"

Francis stared at me. "It's as simple as the fact that you aren't a normal human being."

"What are you saying?"

"You're a genius. You can do things that no one thought possible." Arthur piped up. "Some people want to kill you and use your brain for their own purposes."

"What do you mean, genius? I'm just an average girl!"

"Jurene, it is debated that your IQ is between three hundred fifty to four hundred. You can do things with your mind that most scientist can't even do with science. You're father had warned us ahead of time that you were like him, a genius."

I paused. "So you said it's debated? How many people know about this and why do they know but I am just now hearing about this? Why has no one told me I'm a genius?" My voice was rising with each sentence and they all shushed me.

The waitress came by and dropped off our food. "Thanks," I muttered.

"So why did you guys save me? What do you even want with me?" I asked quietly after stuffing some pancake in my mouth. My trust for them was quickly slipping away.

"It's our job." Alfred chirped with a mouthful of omelette.

"You guys get paid for this?"

"You aren't the only one we have to protect, and we aren't the only group of protectors." Matthew explained. "There's many more of us in different countries. Each one of us is assigned a person to find and protect. So far we've figured out that the countries who do have these people only have one of them. You're the one from Canada. There was one in America, but right now he's safe in another country."

"And every one that we have found was born on the same exact day as you, at the same exact time, right down the the nanosecond." Francis said.

For the next while we ate in silence as the information seeped into my skin and buried itself. Was this why I often got brain-splitting headaches?

"So," Arthur said, breaking the silence. "Still feel like that child who doesn't know what to do?"

Francis kicked him under the table. "Ow, ya bloody git! That hurt!"

I was too much in thought to laugh as they started arguing with each other. My food sat half eaten, but at the time I had lost my appetite. Matthew squeezed my hand under the table.

"Hey, it's okay." I looked down at his hand on mine and he tentatively let go of it. "Sorry."

The waitress came back by and began picking up our plates. She handed us the ticket. As I began to retrieve the money from where I had moved it to these shorts earlier, Francis stopped me. "I've got it, mon amour."

He fished out a hundred dollar bill and handed it to the woman. "Keep the change for a tip." Her eyes widened and she thanked him many times, then left with an extra skip in her step.

"Wow, nice guy Francis, eh?" I asked.

"I guess you could say that," he grinned.

Arthur nearly had a convulsion. "She said "eh" like you Matthew!"