LIMINAL || 𝙅𝙖𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙧 𝙃𝙖𝙡𝙚 [1]

𝟙𝟝 | 𝕗𝕖𝕖𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤

"You're trying to hide your emotions from me, aren't you?"

Jasper had been out for over a week for what I had assumed was the unspecified medical condition that he had mentioned during our last conversation. Alice had taken it upon herself to head up my "security team," as she called it, making sure I got to school in one piece and stayed that way. We had a schedule of who could walk me to and from certain classes so that if Matthew had the bright idea to try and approach me, then I wouldn't be alone. Admittedly, it'd been nice to not worry about Jasper's gift invading my privacy and it was nice to see Alice, Jess, and Angela getting chummy, but the longer he was gone, the further we got in Calculus. I had started to get nervous as the material was getting increasingly harder and we had a test at the end of the week.

Now, he was sitting across from me, nonchalantly flipping a pencil into the air and then catching it between his thumb and forefinger after it made exactly one rotation. I, on the other hand, was trying to divide my focus between math and concealing anything I felt. How were you supposed to do that with an empath, and how did Jasper know that I had been?

"I don't know what you're talking about," I mumbled and tried to think of something happy, hoping that it would affect my emotional state enough to blanket anything else.

"Because, for one, you're working as slow as molasses on a skill that you're pretty confident in, and two..."

He trailed off, making me look up.

"It's hard to describe but I can tell. I can feel it. Like you're putting on a show with your emotions. They're too...transparent."

So much for that plan.

"Okay, so what if I am?" I dropped my pencil, crossed my arms, and leaned back in my chair, giving him an irritated look. "It's a little unnerving to have you prying into my mind. Into anyone's mind all the time."

"It's not like I can help it. Trust me, I try," Jasper huffed and caught the pencil one last time. "I can tune out a little but between 400 other hormonally deranged students, I get worn slap out."

He made an unfortunate amount of sense. I had the luxury of getting to rein in any psychic power when needed; the constant exposure could probably drive anyone crazy.

"How do you tune it out? I've been trying to bounce around in my head all day. Guess it's not working," I resumed my math problems to try and ignore the Cullen Effect (™) — it's what I'd named that weird feeling they all cause in my head. Jasper didn't answer for a while, long enough to make me think he hadn't been paying attention to the question. It was better that we focused on math anyway, right? That was the whole point in us spending every darn free period in the library when instead, I could be curled up near the window with a book and he could be.....well, doing whatever it was he wanted to do. Camp out in the nurse's office with a fake migraine, probably.

"I'm not very good at it," Jasper said so quietly, it was hard to make out the words. He sounded almost sad about it, as if it were some personal failure.

"Yeah, well, apparently I'm not either," I snorted. "Is there anything that helps?"

"Focusing on something or someone else. If I find someone that's in a really good mood, I can zero in on them, but then it runs the risk of my mood affecting them. Win some, lose some. You forgot a decimal place in your answer."

He'd corrected my answer before I'd even finished writing it. Turd.

"I wish I could block out what happens when I touch you," I sighed, then cringed at the verbiage. Ugh, he knew what I'd meant. If I could learn to block him out, then I could probably block out anyone. It hadn't been too much of a problem before, but now that there was the possibility of other empaths tuning into my mind without me knowing, it'd be nice to guard against it. But how? Jasper had seen through my attempt almost immediately, much to my chagrin. There wasn't even anything that I worried about him sensing — except for maybe the occasions that I thought he was hot (always) or an asshole (almost always). But it wasn't like he could read my mind. That would be an absolute disaster.