Alive | Jasper Hale | Book 1

5. Fitting In

                                               5. Fitting In

 ** meaning at the end of the chapter. 

As I was sprawled out across my bed, notebooks, textbooks and folders strewn across, time was a foreign concept. In fact. all matters of time were forgotten as my nose was buried in textbooks, trying to finish all the homework I had and study biology and a bit of Spanish.

By the time I had bothered to think about what time it was, my head was pounding with all the knowledge I’d crammed into my brain today. Groaning, I pushed all the textbooks, notebooks and folders off my bed, letting them all slide onto the floor with a quiet thump. Turning onto my back, I stared up at the ceiling.

I couldn’t help but think back to earlier in the day when Grace had driven me home from school. The entire drive, her hands were clenched at the steering while, her knuckles white. Grace ground her teeth as her eyes never left the road. Even when we arrived at our little, powder-blue house, my aunt stormed into her room.

I hadn’t heard her door open or any sort of noise come from her room. If I hadn’t seen her walk into her room with my own two eyes, I would have thought she wasn’t in the house. It was completely silent with exception to my frustrated grunts and scribbling of my pencil.

I wondered, for a moment, why on Earth had gotten Grace so angry. Even I, someone who knew her for less than two days, knew it wasn’t like her to be so angry. Someone or something must have gotten to her, otherwise she wouldn’t be acting like a frustrated teenager.

Just as I was about to roll myself over to find something to eat in the kitchen, there was a knock at my door, followed by Grace’s voice.

“Hollie, can I come in? I want to talk to you,” she said, her voice sounded low and just a tad bit sad.

Sitting up quickly, I stared at the door with wide eyes. I hadn’t heard her door open. In fact, I hadn’t heard any noise from her besides a moment ago. How long had she been out of her room?

“Come in,” I managed to say, pushing back strands of hair that fell in my face.

Grace peeked in through the crack in my door, stepping through hesitantly. Her frizzy, red locks were tied up into a bun, her outfit switched from something presentable to sweats and a t-shirt. There was even a pair of blue spectacles resting on her nose.

As she walked towards my bed, she either didn’t notice my school supplies on my floor or didn’t care enough to comment about it. Grace sat down in front of me on my bed, cross-legged.

“Auntie, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“About earlier...” she began, “I’m very sorry I acted that way around you. You must have thought so many things, I feel so guilty just thinking about it all.”

It was true, I was thinking many things this afternoon about my aunt’s behavior. Most of them centering around what had I done to make her act so awful. There were a few times where I had tried to talk myself from thinking those thoughts, but it was useless. This afternoon was all I could think about until I forced myself to think only about homework, Greyson and Cole, and tomorrow.

“You shouldn’t feel so guilty, Au-”

Grace had caught me off mid-sentence. “Yes, I do, Hollie. It was wrong of me to act that way around you. Besides, you weren’t even the reason I was so angry, although it did involve you. Today, while I was at my spinning class, a few women approached me. They told me how unsettled they felt that you were in school just the day after you were found. Some of their words actually were, ‘it’s not right, Grace.’”