Control

Chapter Two

"Annabelle. Annabelle. ANNABELLE!"

My attention directs towards Mrs. Hembridge who seems angry that I spaced out during her class.

"Yes?" I guiltily respond. I see I have made Mrs. Hembridge's day worse. I look at my freakishly skinny teacher. She has no meat on her bones and she looks like you could snap her in half with one finger. I look into her pale green eyes that have a hint of blue in them and I read her: she is frightened of losing her job. Earlier she had a talk with her boss, and now she feels unimportant and unworthy of anyone's attention.

"Stay after class and see me." She snaps at me.

I turn and make eye contact with Liam, my best friend.

I read him. Liam is a nervous wreck, I can tell. He got in a fight with his parents this morning while he was trying to stand up for himself. Liam is a tall, blonde boy with gorgeous grey-blue eyes. He's about 5'10, and he is very twiggy, but very athletic. I frown a sympathetic frown towards Liam, he doesn't understand why though.

The bell rings, and I nod Liam to the door, telling him not to wait for me. He walks out the door to fourth period.

"Miss Martin," Mrs. Hembridge starts to speak to me, but I cut her off.

"Mrs. Hembridge, I'd like to apologize. I am so sorry for everything. Believe me this is my most important class and I work my hardest in this classroom. I am sorry I did not show that today, I've had a lot going on, especially with my foot. I've had tendonitis for quite some time now and I am so sick of wearing this boot on my foot and dealing with the pain. I also cannot dance and it's driving me insane. I am so so sorry, you're a really good teacher and you deserve to be treated with respect."

She stands there in shock as the music starts playing, indicating that there are now only five minutes left of passing period. I can tell that hearing me say these things altered her mood, anyone could have. But she is confused as to how I knew just the right things to say, as would anyone else have been.

"Go ahead." She says, clearly not wanting to discuss matters further.

I smile slightly and head out the door. I take a sharp right without looking where I am going and collide with someone. Me only having one good foot and the instability of the boot, I fall over. The boy I collided with loses his balances, regains it, then trips on his dropped stuff and falls almost on top of me.

I sit up and begin picking up our dropped stuff. "I'm so sorry!" I say without even looking up.

He stays silent, and out of curiosity, I look up at him, meeting his eyes. I can't help but stare back at him as he continues staring at me. I have no words. His looks are mesmerizing. He stands up, eyes still locked on mine. He takes my hand and helps me up, leaving our things on the floor.

Our heartbeats synchronize and I know this because of the placement of our hands, our pulses are identical.

"Lucas. My name is Lucas." Our eyes are still locked, and we still have a secure grip on one another's hands, fingertips touching each other's wrists.

"I'm Annabelle." I say, not daring to break the gaze.

I intensify the way I look at him, trying to read him. I get nothing. No emotion. It's like trying to scrape words off of a blank page.

The bell rings and we both break the intense staring. Had we really been staring for almost five minutes?

"I guess we should probably get to class..." Lucas/Luke says. I can sense the shared emotion of not wanting to leave the other. Can that classify as an emotion?

"Is this your class?" I ask him. After all, he was heading into the classroom I was walking out of.

"No," he explains, "I was just dropping this off." He says while gesturing to a paper he had picked up off the floor just a few seconds beforehand.

I then realize that nobody had entered or exited the room we are standing outside of; the door is closed.

"I have to get to biology. What's your next class?" I start walking towards my biology classroom.

"I'll walk you, I just have lunch." He says and starts walking next to me.

I smile at him. It is starting to bother me that I cannot see his emotion.

We walk past a girl whose boyfriend had just broken up with her after seven months. She was casually walking down the hall pretending everything was okay.

Lucas and I make small talk, I learn that I enjoy talking to him as well as staring at him. When we reach my class, he asks me if we can talk later.

"Sure, but how will I know where to find you?" I ask.

He smiles at me. "I guess you'll have to give me your number so I can locate you. I might just die if I don't get to spend more time with you!"

I chuckle, give him my number, and watch him walk away. I turn to walk into biology and immediately get a massive migraine. I lose focus and stumble, but I quickly regain my balance. I take a deep breath and walk into class. Mr. Johnson asks me why I am late, and I tell him about my fall and my migraine. I didn't want to lie, but I didn't want to explain myself either, because I can't even explain what just happened and what I just felt to myself, it's all utter confusion.

Mr. Johnson was in a pretty good mood, his four-year-old daughter wrote him a note in her adorable four-year old handwriting and he had found it. It had made his day better because earlier he was late to work and his boss was not too happy, neither was Mr. Johnson.

I read the emotion of Elizabeth, the junior I sit next to in my AP biology class. I am a sophomore, actually the only sophomore in this class other than Michael. Elizabeth is having a hard time coping with the loss of her mother. Her mother was driving her drunken friend home and got distracted. Things did not end well, and it is very hard on Elizabeth.

For some odd reason my migraine gets less painful with each emotion I read.

I turn and look at Joel: careless and worried. The careless part goes towards what Mr. Johnson is saying right now. The worried part goes to his mom's lung cancer.

Thomas: heartbreak. Vanessa broke up with him; it was a bad break up. Isn't it sad how one person was always more attached? He looks up at me and I give him a sympathetic smile. He doesn't know that I know, he hasn't told anybody.

"What?" Thomas snaps at me.

"Nothing." I say and turn myself away from him in hopes to not give away me knowing anything else. More often than not, I get involved in drama of "who told you?" shit. It gets complicated and I'm usually pretty good at keeping it cool and playing dumb, it's for that reason that people find it shocking when they find out how smart I am. Ouch, my head. My eyes go blurry for a second, and then are back to normal.

Michael: excited. He's engaged in conversation with his lab partner Amelia; they're very interested in the lab Mr. Johnson is explaining to the rest of the class.

Amelia: in love. You don't have to have my vision or readings to see that Amelia is in love with Michael. Okay, maybe you do. But at times it is as obvious as the color red in a sea of blue. Well, unless you're color blind.

My migraine is almost completely gone, now it is just a slight headache.