Seeking Haven // s.m.

Four

Wren

You would think that after being shaped by a tragedy like loosing a sister, and spending my entire freshman year questioning how the hell someone as wild and seemingly invincible as Haven was could just up and disappear-- the pointing, the gawking, and the little-too-loud whispering was bound to happen.

Just because I expected it when I first returned to school the next year, still going through the five stages of grief but refusing to publicly show any emotion, well, then, that doesn't exactly mean I prepared myself enough to handle it. And then to still be handling it, two years after that, senior year.

Because even though this is the town over from Chicago, and issues like missing person cases and suicides and murders were no big surprise, that doesn't mean that the people who have never thought twice about me being anything but normal wouldn't all of a sudden change their minds, especially after going through a despair like that.

Assuming this was the year it would finally stop, I whisked through the doors that morning of the very first day, made my way to the commons, and struggled with all of my being to disregard the fact that every single eye within a twenty-foot radius was totally and completely staring at me.

And if there was even one person who wasn't gazing in my general direction just yet, it took a matter of three seconds for their friend to tap their shoulder and point, and then, I could see it on their faces, too: it's her! it's the little sister!

Our district separates the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders from the micro-sized, still-going-through-puberty freshman by turning one of the old, vacant schools into a freshman academy.

At first, I didn't think much of it. But after the whole Haven thing happened, I was partly grateful that I was separated from people who actually used to know her and pass her in the halls and probably hang out with her on weekends.

I certainly wasn't disposed and willing to face the day that I'd have to walk through those doors, deal with those people, feel their stares.

But even though I did, and it was awful, but I lived through it by walking with my face down, staring at my feet as they moved one in front of the other all the way to my next class-- I didn't know I would be repeating that exact same process this year, and most likely for the rest of my life.

But now, barely into the second semester of my senior year here, while the staring hasn't exactly stopped, it did decrease to something I can only hope will lead to a halt.

Now, I'm used to it all, and I've learned to ignore it entirely.

"Hey," Dace meets me at the door, his body clad in dark clothing attire that made his usually inky-brown eyes seem paler and brighter.

I suppress a smile, stopping and waiting for him to walk towards me.

"Good morning," I greet him. We're not normally not so jolly and cheesy towards each other, but he was especially light-minded today, his cheekbones high.

"I have to tell you something," he says, biting his lip to keep from grinning, which made him look incredibly daring and sexy. "Follow me."

He places his fingers on the crease in my back, leading me down the hallway in a half-walk, half-powerwalk. When I look at him, he was looking straight ahead, forced to block me from the eyes just as much as I tried to block myself.