Lola Swan: Trough her eyes (1)

14 Eyes watching, expecting

Jonah stands in front of his school; he has been back for a week. It feels oddly normal but also like it won't stay this way. He thinks something will change, and he doesn't want that.

Paul smashes him on the back. He looks at his friends.

'He, you're just going to be standing here all day.' Jared says.

'We got to go.' Paul says.

They have their first lesson together. And Jonah knows why Paul is urgent to go. 'Afraid you'll get detention?' Jonah says.

'Nah, they won't do that.'

'They will.' Jared tells Paul and starts walking, and they both follow him.

When lunchtime is over, the snow is gone. It's raining again. Lola and Bella laugh but stop when they see Mike glaring at them. 'It will snow again.' Lola tells him. Mike isn't happy about the change of weather. He complains about it the entire way to biology.

It's even worse when he sees Edward introduce himself to Bella. Lola sighs, but she is also happy.

Edwards says something to Bella. Lola looks at her sister, who smiles happily.

Today they have to recognise the different stages of the cell division of an onion.

Lola looks through the microscope and writes something down on the paper: 'Mike, I'm almost sure....' He doesn't react. He holds a pencil and looks at Bella's table. 'Mike!' Lola tries again: 'can you look through the microscope?'

But he just looks at their paper, and when he sees that almost everything is filled in, he just says: 'It looks good to me.' And then he looks back at Bella.

It's frustrating: 'Mike, help me with the last two stages.' He doesn't respond. Lola looks at her sister and sees Bella smiling, which is good for her. Lola looks back at Mike. She looks at him, but he doesn't seem to notice. 'You know what, be an idiot if you want to be.' Lola mutters and looks back through the microscope.

Mike glares at Lola. He takes the paper and scans the answers. 'They look good, but we both know that you're the smarter one.'

'That's not true.' She says, and she means it, it's a matter of working together. In the last part, they kind of work together and when they're done, she looks at her sister and Edward. They're also finished and talking. Edward looks up at her and nods slightly. She would have missed it if she wasn't looking directly at him. His attention returns to Bella, but he is gone as fast as the lesson is over.

Lola takes her books and looks next to her, but Mike is already gone, so she looks back at her sister's table, and there he is.

'It was horrible. Everything looked the same. You're lucky Cullen sits next to you.' Bella looks behind him and sees Lola rolling her eyes: 'You had Lola. She is smart.'

'Uhm, yes.' He says: 'Cullen was friendlier today.'

'Yes, what would have been wrong last week?' Bella answers.

'Does it matter?' Lola says, and Bella laughs.

When school is over, Jonah and Paul go over to Jared's. On the way there, he sees it; he sees someone. Someone is looking at him, following him. He doesn't know who because every time he looks, there isn't anyone there. In the beginning, they laughed. And then Jared changed. He said he noticed the same thing. Just not in the same way and less often than Jonah told him it happened. Eyes watching, expecting.

Paul would laugh: 'Come on, who would want to be watching you two?' And they forget all about it.

When he gets home, he sees it again. His father has the same look. He goes to his room, and he doesn't look back.