Faults

Chapter 15: Archie

Every time I see Aydin with that guy, Shane, I want to run over there and make it clear that Aydin is mine. But I know he's not.

Not now, at least.

I guess he never really was, anyway.

It's like I'm being replaced by Shane. The second Aydin comes back to classes, he practically ignores me and finds someone new to fill the slot as his companion left empty by me. I can't say I particularly like that. It's been four months since Aydin has come back and I still haven't decided on how long I want Taylor to be kept in prison.

Without a doubt, Taylor deserves to serve at least another month or so. I'll figure out how long his sentence will be eventually, but for now, I need to speak to Aydin.

After our classes end, I go to approach Aydin but as his back is turned to me. I tap his shoulder and he turns around to face me. When he does, his hair moves from the back of his neck and I notice something. A black mark, almost identical to the one I have. I touch my fingertips to my own mark and wonder when Aydin got his.

This is not good.

"Oh. Hi, Archie," he says.

I try to brush off the fact that he sounded and looks incredibly disappointed to see me and focus on my point of talking to him. "We need to talk. It's important," I say urgently, glancing around us.

He holds up a hand. "If this is about us–"

"It's not, just listen to me, okay?" I say as I grab his hand and pull him away from the schoolhouse. I force him to come with me all the way down to the lake where I'm certain no one will overhear us.

When we reach the water, he drops my hand and scratches his head. "What is this about?"

"The mark on your neck. The marks in general."

His eyes widen when I say that. "How did you know about that?"

"I saw it for a second when you turned around," I explain. With his hair significantly grown out, reaching just a few centimeters past his shoulders, there was no way I would've known before this. "I have a mark, too. Did you get yours right after using your ability?"

"Yeah, actually. It happened around three months ago," he replies.

"I see. Have you been using your ability since then?"

"I have. Every time I do, the mark becomes darker and more defined," he tells me.

I walk around Aydin so that I'm standing behind him. "Do you mind if I move your hair out of the way for a second?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

I brush his hair aside, revealing the three-pointed mark on his skin. When my fingers touch his skin, I swear I can feel him flinch. It's incredibly subtle but it happened.

Now that I'm looking at his mark up close, it's far darker than mine and almost seems bigger. He must be using his ability quite a bit for the mark to look like this. My mind wanders to how bad the marks might be for our classmates. Who knows how many of them have this? I haven't received any complaints in recent months, leading me to believe that most likely all of our classmates have one. What could it mean?

"What are we supposed to do about this?" Aydin asks as I walk back around him.

"I have no idea. I don't even know what's causing this. Something is obviously out to get us, but why? First the headaches, then these marks. It makes no sense," I say.

He nods. "It really doesn't make sense."

I sigh. "I shouldn't really be telling you this, but I've known about the marks for a while. I'm pretty sure that most, if not all, of our classmates have marks. Again, this is only occurring to our class."