Phoenix || Malia Tate

03

Malia doesn't tell the pack about the boy. She doesn't tell anyone. She doesn't know who he is or what he wants or why he knows what he knows. The entire day, he occupies her thoughts. She hates it. When she's in school, she needs her thoughts to be occupied by the work, and when she's out of school she needs her thoughts to be occupied by integrating back into the human life. But he's there, in her thoughts, in her mind, never letting her breath.

Stiles notices that she's distracted. When they're in mathematics and the teacher is facing the board, yammering away, he taps her shoulder. "Hey, everything okay? You're kinda distant."

She nods. She wants to smile, but the panic of the boy knowing who she is - what she is - weighs her down. "I'm fine," she tells him. "Just didn't sleep well. Too cold."

He doesn't believe her. Stiles is not a werewolf or a coyote or a banshee, but he is one hell of a human lie detector. Malia knows this. She doesn't expect him to believe her. "You sure?" He asks. There's an undertone. She can tell him anything, she knows, but she cannot tell him this. Not yet.

"I'm sure."

He leans back into his seat, and they don't talk about it further.

The boy is still on her mind. She wonders about who he is, where he comes from, and how he knows about the eight years. She wonders if she'll ever see him again and if she even wants to. She wonders if he'll tell everyone about who she really is and if the government will come for her and prod her like she's just some specimen and not a seventeen-year-old girl.

She doesn't want to think of him anymore.

The whole school day Malia is careful, more careful than she has ever been. She pays extra attention to her heart beat, keeps her emotions in check, and even strikes up a conversation with Greenburg to work on her social skills. It is awkward but awkward is normal and she needs to be as normal as possible. Does she want to? No. Hell no. But with this green eyed kid seeming to know everything about her, she has to at least pretend.

*

It's hard to pretend, she decides at the end of the school day. It's hard to fake a smile and fake conversation and fake being normal. She does not want to fake it anymore. Scott invites her to his house, where the whole group will be going to watch a movie. She declines. Instead, she runs.

All the while, she considers turning around, considers returning to the Tate house, considers not going back home. He could be there. And if he is there...

She doesn't know what could happen. She doesn't want to think about what could happen.

But the woods call to her. They call her home.

So she runs and runs and runs until she feels nothing but sheer adrenaline. It is the happiest she has been all day. She doesn't stop running until she reaches the inside of the den. Her heart is hammering in her chest, and sweat drenches her hair, and her breathing is extremely heavy, but she doesn't focus on any of that. She turns around, looks and searches and focuses on trying to locate a heartbeat that isn't hers. There isn't one.

He isn't here.

Malia is not sure if she is relieved or disappointed.