Ethereal

Chapter 5

The more time I spent with Travis, Noah and Jasmine, the more I realise that they are definitely not... normal. They looked human, they sounded human... they just didn't act human. It was bizarre, like they were from another world.  

They were incredibly talented, their table tennis game yesterday could have gone on for an infinite time yet they had never even played before. They were super smart, they could pick up concepts faster than anyone I'd ever met before.

Which, though amazing, wasn't exactly a red light. But, the fact that they had to adapt to things so often, made me question them.

I never voiced my suspicions, wherever they were from, whatever they were... they were the only real friends I had. Besides, it's not like they had hurt anybody. That had saved me and my mother after all... 

So, I was willing to accept them, and help them out. Besides, it made me feel kind of cool to be helping them out, as dumb as that sounds. For once in my life, someone needed me. Not in the way that my mother did, but in the 'we could have chosen anyone, but we picked you' kind of way. 

In fact, they were already waiting for me the moment I arrived at school. 

As soon as I walked through the front doors, the three of them were stood by my side, walking at my pace, following my lead.

It made me feel important, special, even. 

Even now, as we walked into our maths class, they waited for me to select a place to sit before filling in around me. 

Noah sat behind me, Travis in front and Jasmine to my side.

"Today we will be continuing our work on De Moivre's theorem, make sure you don't mess up on your algebra. Turn to page two hundred and six in your textbooks... Z equals r multiplied by cosine theta..." Our teacher, Mr Zieg droned on, I took out my textbook and flipped to the right page before feeling a tap on my shoulder.

Looking back, I saw Noah looking confused. "What is this algebra he speaks of?" He asked, his eyebrows furrowed causing a wrinkle to form between them, somehow causing his eyes to sparkle... 

"Um..." I mumbled, momentarily disoriented, having been caught up in his green eyes. "You don't... How are you in a further maths class?" 

He blinked back at me, surprised. "Uh..." 

"It's just where you replace numbers with letters I guess." Thoughtfully, he turned to look down at his textbook, the cute crease in his forehead still prominent. I forced myself to turn away. 

Travis and Jasmine were both concentrating on their own work, oblivious to the brief exchange. 

After a few minutes I looked back and saw Noah's working, perfectly scripted with no mistakes at all, ordinarily it would make me suspicious, thinking that he had lied about not understanding. Except it was somehow completely believable, that he wouldn't have ever come across it before, and then be able to pick it up so smoothly. 

I sighed and shook my head, wishing that I could do maths as flawlessly as he seemed able to. Looking around, I noticed Travis and Jasmine in similar situations. 

It made my head hurt to think about, so I turned back to my own textbook to focus on the task at hand. 

Pretty soon, I heard the bell ring, and I sweeped my things up, shoving them into my bag before standing up. The three of them were already stood, their items neatly packed away into messenger bags. 

Maybe I was just a slow person.

Walking out of the room, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. Well, not my phone. Mine had died in the lake. But my mum had a spare mobile back at the house, which meant that I would thankfully not have to buy a new one. Not many people had the new number though, which meant it had to be work. They probably wanted me to work more shifts or something...