Silent teardrops

Evelyn

I yawned, stretched and opened my eyes. Filtered sunlight streamed through my groggy swollen eyes, the heat on my shocked retinas immediately giving me a headache. I groaned and turned over to get rid of the burning light. A shape very close to my head was blocking most of the light from this angle. Opening my eyes fully, I was startled to see there was someone fast asleep, with their head and arms resting on the edge of my bed. My shriek woke him up with a jolt. It was Noah.

"Oh I'm so sorry; I didn't know it was you!" I apologised profusely.

"Great thanks I get for watching over you all night," he said grumpily, leaning back in his chair. I didn't know whether he was teasing or was genuinely grumpy, so I stayed quiet.

He must have seen my neutral, questioning expression because he laughed, "I was just joking. My humour is pretty lame I know!"

"Can I leave yet?" I asked impatiently. "I want to go home. What did you tell my parents?"

"Rae told them you were staying over at her house for the weekend," Noah replied staring intently at me.

"So does Rae know about everything now?"

"Yes. We figured we would have to tell her what was going on since she saw so much. She has been sworn to secrecy though."

Noah gently pushed some troublesome curls out of my eyes, his hand lingering for a moment on my cheek. My breath quickened, before he pulled away.

"Uh... so can I go?" I asked again, still waiting for an answer.

"You may want to get changed first," Noah said gesturing to the nightie I was wearing. "And you can only leave if you can stand up and walk."

He left the room while I got changed into my now clean clothes which were on the end of the bed. Then I walked out to the landing.

"Satisfied?" I said as I presented myself. "Can I please leave?"

"If you want to," Noah said shrugging his shoulders, "Nothing I say will stop you anyway. By the way you may want to talk to Rae and tell her you're alright now; she looked pretty anxious to me."

Something about the way he talked about my friend, his familiarity with her, irritated me. I said goodbye and left.

*

Today was the track meet. And I had completely forgotten about it. I had a couple of races I was running in: hurdles, a circular relay, and the 1600m race. I was running against 30 other girls from my school, Marytville High.

I did the hurdles and ran the circular relay at a medium pace, managing to stay roughly around the middle to avoid attention.

In the 1600m race, which was through the forest next to our school, Rae and I ran together at a leisurely speed most of the way. This gave us a chance to talk.

"So... are we still friends?" I asked earnestly.

"Of course!" Rae assured me, slipping her hand into mine as we were running. "We've been best friends ever since kindergarten. That's never going to change."

"So you aren't scared of me?"

"Well, I was at one point, when I saw you create that storm out of nowhere, but when I saw you laying there motionless and so pale, I was more scared of losing you than scared of you." Rae squeezed my hand and then dropped it, allowing us to run faster and more freely.

Rae and I had been friends since kindergarten. She had a blonde bob and was taller than me. Ever since the first day of kindergarten when she beat up some boys who were being mean to me, she had been like a mother hen. Rae had always been there for me and I'm so glad she was now.

When we were only 300m away from the edge of the woods, and ultimately, the finishing line, I saw a flash of light and movement in the trees to my right. There, the corner of a cape. More shapes were moving around now. I was certain it was Carlos and the rogues. The quickly spreading mist, a bolt of lightning and the silence in the trees confirmed it.

I whispered to Rae, "Pretend you don't know me and you won't get hurt!" and sprinted off. My sole aim of getting away made me forget how fast I was running and astonished gasps surrounded me as I crossed the finish line. Students and parents encircled me in surprise. I heard the whispers going around, "How can that girl run so fast?" I started feeling claustrophobic as people, grabbing their cameras hurriedly, crowded around me. Suddenly I saw the worried faces of Cheyenne, Noah, Roman and Rae. Noah glanced at me but looked away as soon as I saw him looking. There was an awkward air between us; I wasn't sure how he felt about me.

"We have to get you home, Evelyn, it's not safe here. You'd better go home too Rae," Chey added urgently. She dragged us away from the crowd and took us to her car, a fancy Mercedes I had seen before in their driveway, and we all climbed in. Chey put her foot down on the pedal and the car jumped before speeding off down the road. Black and gold caped rogues swarmed out of the trees from the forest behind us.

"Why do they want me?" I said nervously looking out the back window.

"Just ignore them Evelyn," Chey answered sharply, "Don't let them get on your nerves. They know the full extent of your powers and want them for their own selfish purposes. And they won't stop until they have you on their side. Sooner or later we are going to have to fight them."

That really scared me. Two different groups of people, fighting over me like two dogs and a bone? I didn't like the sound of that! The car jerked to a stop; we were at the Scevola's house.

"I couldn't take you home," Chey said apologising, "they wouldn't stop following us!"

We looked back down the driveway and saw the rogue dæmons advancing up the road, Carlos in the lead.

"So that fight you were talking about could happen sooner rather than later," Roman remarked saucily.

"Roman, run and tell Mum and Dad what's going on, and get the rest of the family, quickly!" 

Carlos stopped in front of me as Noah and Chey stepped to my sides like bodyguards.

"Hello sister," he drawled. "Nice to see you again, and your friends." He nodded towards Chey and Noah. Noah stiffened beside me.

"Carlos, skip the sweet talk," I said impatiently, "What do you want?"

"I would have thought that would have been pretty obvious to you," he said, biting a surprisingly clean fingernail.

"Stop avoiding my questions!"

"Okay, you asked for it!" Carlos said as he straightened up and looked me in the eye. "We want you. We need your powers for our experiments. We want you to become one of us."

"What?" I said shocked, "How could you think that I would do anything like that? You may be my brother but I wouldn't turn my back on my friends just so you can use my powers for your silly little experiments."

Carlos's face went purple at this.

"They are not silly little experiments thank you very much," he spluttered in my face, "They are very important and could mean the difference between life and death."

"I think you just made him angry Evelyn," warned Chey cautiously.

I know I did. I think it ran in our family blood. Or maybe it was something to do with us both having red hair.