The Search For Peace 2

Chapter 1

The morning wind was chilly, baring the dry trees of their remaining leaves. It was mid-November, yet the sky already looked ready for its first snowfall. Harmony pushed herself back on the swing in the park outside her apartment building, leaves crunching under her soles as she did. With her legs completely stretched out, she thrust forward and let them off the ground, the swing escalating with a squeak of its old chains. 

To keep it up, she folded her legs in and kicked them out, grateful to her brother Austin for teaching her how to do so when they were kids. As she waited for her bus to arrive, the sky above flooding her eyesight, her mind wandered. 

It wandered to the incident that took place in her school a few days ago. The Autumn Dance that should've been a normal, enjoyable evening for the students, turned into a bloody dance of invisible beings that bit into their throats and poisoned them. Besides the people of the Clans, the affected were lead to believe a stray wolf or two had attacked them, and even if some suspected that that wasn't true, their memories were too hazy for proof.

Harmony was glad the Virgos had healed them all and was even more glad she had found Kevin when she did. Or else Sanjay would've died. She stopped swinging all of a sudden, the thought of Sanjay causing a strange tingly feeling in her stomach. She had told him everything that day, or more like he had forced her to spit it out. It was a rather emotional moment, and just thinking about it made her face flush a hot red. 

A horn sounded in the distance, pulling her out of her thoughts, and a yellow bus drove its way into her apartment complex. With a deep breath, she stood, picking up her backpack and leaving the squeaky swing behind her.

_--------_--------------_----------------_---------------_---------_-----------_-----------_----_-------_-------_-------

"Psst...Ultima!" Harmony whispered during English class, desperately trying to get the attention of her best friend who was sitting right beside her yet not replying to her at all. It made sense though since the teacher had told them to read the boring book assigned to them as silently as possible. And knowing Ultima, she was going to do just that.

The brunette sighed and sunk into her seat, balancing the book on her face. She liked the musty smell of the pages, but the book itself, she didn't like at all. Which is why she had attempted to bother Ultima, although that had backfired pretty quickly. 

As she straightened herself, an eraser hit the back of her head. With a scowl, she slowly craned her neck, giving Charlie Dexter, the boy who was seated behind her, a nice long glare. "What?" She hissed as he grinned mischievously at her. 

She watched his fingers slide a folded piece of paper in her direction. "Your boyfriend told me to give this to you."

At first, she was a little appalled, but then, she realized he was probably just messing with her, being the annoying clown he was, so she pulled the note from under his grip, rolling her eyes as she turned around. 

But to her surprise, the note really was from Sanjay. Not that she was thinking of Sanjay when he said 'boyfriend', of course.

Gulping, she hid it in her palm without reading it, suddenly afraid of what it said. It was a good thing she did so, too, since their teacher had decided to take rounds. She pretended to be engrossed in her book, and, when the woman finally sat back down, she held her breath and proceeded to open the note once again.

In all honesty, she didn't really know why she was so disappointed when she, at last, read the thing. She guessed it was because of Charlie's baseless assumption that she had been caught off guard. It was clear they weren't like that. Why would they be, anyway? They didn't have anything going on in between them besides their twisted past. Then...why had she been so excited? And why was she so sad now?

Coming back to reality, she wrote down a plain old 'okay' under his neat writing and passed the note to Ultima, since it was directed to her as well. The girl's face was pinched as she read it, but she shrugged and wrote her reply down as well, before passing it back down to the next person in tow.

Harmony fixed her elbow on the desk and rested her face on her hand, flipping a page. They wanted them all to meet at the 'cottage' after school, huh? What had happened this time?