Acquainted ⇒ Brett Talbot

VI. Ecstasy

"What's gotten into you?" Brett asks.

I giggle. God, that's weird. I never giggle. "Maybe I've just decided to stop feeling sorry for myself. Life is too short to be upset all the time, Brett."

Brett stops in his tracks. "What the hell is wrong with you, Lenore?"

I sigh. "I don't feel bad for once," I tell him. "Just let me have this at least, Brett."

After feeding last night, it was like a switch had been turned off. All the aches, all the pain, all the hunger - it was all gone in that one moment. An insane ecstasy had filled me and it had felt as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

Then came the heightened hearing, taste and speed. I could hear everything my aunt was saying downstairs from up in my bedroom and was hyperaware of the sounds around me.

In short: it was a stark comparison to the pain it had caused beforehand.

"I just want to make sure nothing's happened," he mutters.

I tilt my head back and exhale a long, loud breath. "Nothing's happened, Brett," I say. "Lighten up. This whole brooding, mysterious thing. Not a good look. I miss the fun Brett."

He raises his eyebrows at me. "Alright, then," he mumbles.

We get to chemistry and I sit down next to Brett at the desk. Brett doesn't press the issue any further. About halfway through the lesson, the teacher begins handing back results from our pop quiz.

"How do you think you went?" I ask Brett, leaning over the table.

"To be honest, I probably barely passed," he says. His eyes are fixed worriedly on the teacher who is coming down our line of desks. Brett's extremely jittery, drumming his fingers on the table and bouncing his knee up and down under the desk.

"Hey, calm down," I tell him. I move my hand under the sliver of sunlight on his hand and close my hand over his.

My fingers have barely grazed his skin when I recoil my hand from the heat of the sun. I wince as I look down in alarm at my fingers. My skin is scorched and covered in blisters. My flesh feels like it's playing home to a wildfire.

"Lenore?" Brett asks. "Are you alright? What was that?"

I cradle my hand close to my chest, groaning in pain. "The sun," I grunt. I hold my hand out again as a test and as my fingers brush the light, an agonising pain shoots up my right arm. I swear loud enough to alert the teacher and everyone else in the room.

"Lenore," she scolds. "I don't come to my work place to hear those type of words. If I wanted to hear those words I'd go to a prison."

Brett puts an arm around me and guides me up off my seat. It's hard to ignore the closeness of him. He looks pointedly at the teacher. "Fuck that," he says. "Me and Lenore are getting out of here, anyway."

He steers me out of the classroom still wincing in pain. "Are you alright?" he asks as he hurries me down the hall. He takes special care to stay out of the way of the shards of sunlight streaming through the windows.

"Yeah," I say through clenched teeth. "Just hurts." I look down at my seared hands. "Where are we going?"

"Boy's locker room," he says. "There's not many windows in there."

The boy's locker room is empty when we get there. Brett rushes me over to a basin and holds my hands under a stream of cold water. The coolness of the water offers relief to the sweltering pain on my hands. A glad sigh escapes through my lips as I feel the pain receding.