Mountain Butterfly

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

The week continued as if nothing was different. I walked to my classes with my head down, and everybody just walked around me and didn’t pay any attention to me. I was glad to see my life was returning to normal, or as normal as my life could be. I had completely pushed Peter Trigitt out of my thoughts. He still sat at the desk next to mine, but I ignored it. I hadn’t heard him say anything else about me to anyone, so I assumed he had decided to take heed of their warnings and ignore me like everyone else. Which was a good but still painful.

When the weekend came Sam,Connor,and I went up to the mountains surrounding our house to train. Sam practiced her insane speed and strength. Sam is a medium height and build. The stereotype when people think of superheroes with superhuman strength is always the guy but that’s not true, we’re not superheroes so maybe only the guy superheroes can have strength. But Sam is a Balmty girl with MUSCLE.  Connor worked on perfecting the size and quality of his force field. Connor is a bit of a perfectionist sometimes. He also practiced controlling the objects around him. Did I mention he had telekinesis? I practiced my speed while flying, I may not have crazy running speed like Sam but I can fly pretty fast and I wanted to be able to fly full speed and not get tired out quickly, so I was working on building up my stamina. I also did a little bit of target practice. I would set up a target, usually a rock in the middle of the river, and I would practice throwing my fire at it. I put the rock in the river because I didn’t really want to start a forest fire by hitting a tree with fire. To practice my aim, distance,and speed of the throw I would fly by the rock at different speeds and altitudes to see how well I could hit my target. We did our various training for almost 17 hours that weekend. So when Monday morning rolled along you could imagine how reluctant I was to wake up, but I did and I went to school.

The week proceeded as the week before. While walking to Friday's history class I was feeling pretty good about life; my life was back to its routine. I was also happy because in this weekend’s training session Connor, Sam, and I were going to have a scrimmage of sorts between the three of us in preparation for the Mountain Games. I even had a smile on my face as I walked into Mr. King’s classroom. I am almost always the first one to class. I use the time away from everyone at the school, away from my family, away from all the distractions to just think. For 5 minutes I would stare up at the mountains and think about all the different things going on in my life. But today there was someone already in the classroom before me. There sitting at his usual desk was Peter Trigitt, I couldn’t imagine why he was here so early; most people spend the time between classes to hang out at their lockers and talk to their friends. I take my seat as if I didn’t notice he was sitting there but I have and its unnerved me, I really don’t like changes in routine. I decided to not let his presence bother me, so I take out my notebook and begin to sketch more details on to my most recent picture of the mountains. I was jarred out of my concentration when I heard Peter say, “Hi” to someone.

It took me a few seconds to realize he was speaking to me. I raise my head slightly to look at him. As almost every other teenager in America he was wearing a pair of jeans paired with a t-shirt. When I look at him he opens his mouth as if to say something but loses his nerve and turns away. I roll my eyes and turn back to my notebook with a look of indifference on my face. I couldn't let him or anyone else know how much it hurts me to know people are afraid,or embarrassed, to just talk to me. Halfway through class Mr. King dismisses us early from class. There were rumors that he just wanted to get ready for his date tonight with Mrs. Puitt. I have no idea how accurate the rumors are but no one needs to coax me to get out of class, I was all for the idea. As everyone gathers their things to leave the class Mr. King calls out, “I’m being nice to you guys by letting you out early, but you need to be quiet. There are still other classes going on. Don’t make me regret my generosity.”