Colour My Shadow

Chapter Four - Steven

I bent over my desk, trying to ignore the nudges in my side that meant Storm was trying to get my attention. There are times and places for chats with Shadows, and during a Chemistry exam, in a room full of people, is not one of them.

Especially when I've forgotten to revise, so I only half-know what I'm being tested on.

I decided to leave the question on examples of energy transferal until the end and move on to elements and compunds, but the page was pulled back, and words appeared in the gap, in a passable imitation of my handwriting. 

I glanced around, alarmed, but no one was staring at the floating pencil, they were, thankfull, all focussed on their own tests.

There's kinetic energy, transformed into electrical energy by a wind turbine.

Coal, oil, and natural gas, when burned, turns chemical energy into heat energy.

Happy??

I scowled at the page, scrubbing out the last word, then writing a faint 'thank you' over it, before rubbing it out again. He stopped nudging, satisfied. 

I'd woken up this morning, after falling asleep talking to him, my arms clutched around the notepad, which had just two more words written on it - Sweet Dreams - and was relieved to see no Shadow.

I loved them, sure, and Storm seemed nice... but watching me sleep would be slightly creepy.

He appeared as I stepped out of the door, but, head buried in my bag to make sure I had my keys, I hadn't noticed him holding them out for me. Then he'd stuck by my side for most of the day, seeming to not be affected by the boredom that covered me. 

Focus, focus focus! I chanted to myself. Get to the end of this and you can go home. Which is all I really wanted to do. Home, where the house would be mine until Aiden got back from football. And I didn't need someone else doing my test for me.

"Rosa?" I turned round, smile already in place. I'd been planning to sneak somewhere deserted for a Shadow talk before walking home, but Hazel intercepted me on my way. 

"Oh, hey. Don't you have a bus to catch?" She ignored my unsubtle attempt to get rid of her, dismissing it with a typically best friend manner.

Sometimes I love her so much, but coupled with an almost psychic ability to read my mind, she's ust as annoying as lovable.

"Steven's looking for you, you know." She pointedly glanced back the way I came, and I sighed, hiding my smile. Well, I was happy, but she didn't need to know how happy. I waved to Hazel, telling her to have a good weekend, and raced back off to find him, forgetting almost completely about the Shadow trailing behind me.

Steven... Ah, Steven. There he was, leaning against my locker, waiting for me. 

"Rrrosa." he rolled the 'r' on my name as he often did, moving out of the way so I could open my locker. I didn't really need anything from it... it was just best that I didn't look at Steven too much when I was around him. Symptoms included falling over, walking into things and forgetting the simplest things. LIke my name. Or how to blink.

He sighed. "I was just thinking that you walk home alone most days, well all days, but... oh, y'know." He fiddled with his keys, making them jangle against each other, then waved his arms around in a exasperated way. "I was wondering if you wanted to walk home with me, because I don't live too far away from you."

Like I was going to say no. 

"Yeah, sure no problem," I said, finally managing to find my maths book, which was wedged underneath my PE kit and the coat that I couldn't be bothered to carry home. "What brought this on?" Clipping the lock on, I turned properly to face him and smiled up at him.

He grinned back, shrugging and meeting my gaze with his dark eyes. I'm never quite sure what colour eyes he has, sometimes they look black, sometimes dark blue, and even, when its light enough, greyish blue. They're gorgeous, though, which is what really matters. 

"Come on then. Unless you want to stay at school all night." 

"Nu-uh." Swinging my bag round and hitching it up higher on my shoulder, I began walking back down the corridor, passing the pairs and threes of people clustered round the lockers they had next to each other. In contrast to popular clichés, Steven and I's lockers weren't next to each other but in completely separate blocks.

He followed me, staying slightly behind me as we navigated our way out of the block, trying to avoid the biggest groups of people. And a quick rule - the bigger the group of people, the less you want to walk into them

We walked in silence until we left the school, walking through the gates in the fence that surrounded us. I hated that. Them locking us in, as if we couldn't be trusted to stay in school.

Okay, so a lot of people probably couldn't, but still.

"How was your day?" He asked me.

"It was okay, I guess... do you have any idea who Ciara is? She was on the register, but wasn't in school, and no one seems to have any idea who she is." 

He shrugged. "Nope. But she'll turn up in the next few days, you know. They often don't actually turn up for the first day."

"Yeah I guess." Awkward silence time; God knows what he was thinking. 

"So..."

Twenty minutes later, we reached my house. Seven had said he'd pick me up for school tomorrow, and I agreed, a little too eargerly. He smiled wryly, and left, back the way we came.

"See you tomorrow then." I smiled as I smelt the roses that covered the wall around our door. I unlocked the door, quickly shut it again, and collapsed against the wall, not daring to look back. 

"Who's he?"

I groaned, pulling the earphones out of my ears. "A friend, Aidan, now go away and leave me alone. Please."

Aidan grinned at me, easily dodging out of the way of my feeble punch. "Ooh, Rosa's got a boyfriend. Rosa's got a boy-friend, Rosa's got a bo-oy-fri-end." He made it into a song and dance.

"Aidan, if he were my boyfriend, wouldn't he have done a little more than just say 'bye'? At the very least, a kiss on the cheek? He'd've held my hand, maybe?" 

Aidan looked momentarily stumped. Maybe logic would finally work on him. 

Or maybe not. "Whatever. You still fancy him though." Yes, well done, brother of mine. He turned and stalked out of the room, thank God. Brothers never know where to stop. 

It annoyed me to no end that he'd been right with his parting sentence; he hadn't meant to be, he'd just meant to upset me and have the last word, but still... he'd hit home. I flopped back down, my head hitting the pillows with a muted thud. 

Storm was watching me speculatively.

I rolled over, balancing on the edge of the bed and fishing around underneath for the notepad, and handing it to him. He stole a pen from the pencil case on my desk and began writing, crosslegged on the floor. I watched him, feeling vaguely guilty. 

"I kinda abandoned you today, didn't I?" 

Now lounging on the floor, he looked up at me, and nodded. Then he began writing again and ignored me. Dang. I'm rubbish at apologies.

"Thank you so much for the help with the test. I would've failed so badly without you, you know. You're amazing. And I'm so sorry, watching me do homework can't be fun, and neither can watching me listen to music.

"And, did you know, I was about to talk to you... but I got, well, sidetracked with Steven." Storm looked up at me and winked. 

Haha, you owe me one now. It's okay, and I understand about Steven... your brother wasn't too far off the mark, was he?

I glared at him, resisting the urge to laugh at his impish grin, and fighting a blush madly.

"He was miles off the mark, as a matter of fact." 

I sounded snooty to myself, but shook my head and heaved mysef up. "Come on. We can watch a movie or something, if you want? Or outside and talk, but it's pretty cold." 

Storm shivered, and shook his head. Movie, I think. You're right, it's freezing out there.