Sanity By Jo Lockett

Chapter 1; Fallen

~ ·❤· ~ ·❤· ~ ·❤· ~ ·❤· ~ ·❤· ~ · ❤ · ~ ·❤·~
It started on the first week of the second month.
The need. The voices.
The urge to kill.
Mother told me that if I didn't follow the Rules, it would come back to haunt me. I never believed her.
Until I met him.
He was a Graduate of the 5th class. I wasn't supposed to fall in love with him. I was supposed to be his friend.
He was standing by the Vending Pail. Carab was the first one to notice him.

"Hey," she said to me.

As she sat down, flipping her hair out of her face, her brown eyes suddenly pierced my gaze.

"What are you staring at?" she asked.

Her voice was like a shot of vodka. You would expect her to have the 'Angel' type of tone. After all, she did look the part. Her long red hair curled into soft tames, and she just had that thing that you felt that you had to do everything to protect her as soon as you saw her. Her personality was bubbly; she never went a day without a smile or hugging someone. It wasn't in her DNA. Her eyes were puppy brown, and could trick you into thinking that she was right, simply because they were adorable.
But her voice... her voice was that of someone who had been through too much. It was deep, and had sadness behind it, hidden with witty comebacks and compliments to make others smile, although she never smiled for herself.
I looked up, startled, and noticed Carab smirking at me.

"What're you smirking for?" I said, offended.

Back in the 2nd Graduation, Carab and I hated each other. We couldn't even be in the same room without getting into a yelling fight. But that all changed when the Sightly decided we would become best friends.

"Oh, no reason," Carab said mysteriously. As she grins at me contagiously, I find my smile again, and ignore the urge to pounce on her, the image of tearing her limb to limb fresh in my mind, the satisfaction of her blood-
No. Stop thinking about it.

"No seriously. Tell me!" I say. My smile isn't as big as it was a minute ago, but Carab didn't make some bright remark about it, which usually means that she didn't notice.

I put my hand on the table in a fake show of anger, to draw her attention back to me, and I whack the table harder then I intended to. Tears spring to my eyes.
Nonono, I think, horrified. Not here. Not now. But especially not here.
As my injured hand slowly starts turning bright red, Carab looks down. I can see the wheels spinning in her head, as she assesses the slight dent in the table, and the side of my hand, now going into some sort of purplish red.

"Hey, are you oka-" she begins to say.

"I'm fine," I say quickly, cutting her off. "It's just a slight bruise, that's all. Nothing to worry about."

I shut my eyes tight, and concentrate on what Mother told me. Don't think about the pain, don't think about the voices. Don't think about the pain, don't think about the voices, I say to myself. Don't think about the pain, don't think about the voices. Don't think about-
My hand throbs, and it turns into an eggplant just as I open my eyes.

"Grace, you su-" she starts again, then falters.

My eyebrows furrow together in utter confusion. Carab nevers stops herself in the middle of a sentence.

"What is it Car?" I ask. I try to ignore the thudding in my hand, but as an especially hard throb occurs, I can't help but flinch, and I let out a little gasp of exasperation as I bite my lip in concentration.

Carab glances down at me quickly, then goes back to staring.

"Car," I say, a bit annoyed. The fact that she ignored me makes a little pang go through my heart. I twitch my nose, ignoring the sharp pain.

Although some people may see me as this pacific person, someone who doesn't really care about anything, I care a lot. I do. I just tend to hide my feelings. Or, should I say, ignore them. Ever since the voices began speaking, I've told myself I don't have any emotions.
I lie to myself all the time.
But I never believe me.

"Dammit Grace," Carab mutters under her breath. "If Danny wasn't already my Chosen, I'd be all over that guy."

I twitched my nose, a surefire sign I was majorly confused.

"What are you talking about-" I falter, as I turn to see what
Carab was looking at.
Suddenly, nothing else mattered. He was everything.
My eyes felt as if they were connected to him. I couldn't tear myself away.
5'6. Brown hair. Big brown eyes. Hair that was tousled in a I-don't-care sort of way. And a cap, half thrown on his head, almost as if he was running. Or running away.
The weirdest thing was, he wasn't staring at his plate of food, the steam rising up as it came through the Vending Pail.
He was staring at me.