Entangled (Entangled Trilogy #1) (3 page)

As I drew closer to him, he looked
up, straightened up and away from my locker, ceding me space to
open it, which I did. He just stood there the whole time, looking
carefully at everything I do as if he was learning me by heart
which was definitely the most normal thing to do. At last, once I
closed my locker, he handed me a piece of paper that had his number
on it. My eyes grew wide and I didn’t even know what to do now.
Why? I wanted to ask. When I looked up at him, he just smirked
again.

“
Call me if you need anything like
. . . oh, I don’t know, stuff you need to know about me for your
report,” he winked.

“
Why?” I asked quietly again and
he smiled.

“
Because judging by your notebook,
you don’t have any real information about me. No juicy gossip, no
nothing,” he shrugged and left, walking away with style.

I turned around to stuff that
piece of paper into my backpack and forget all about him, but when
I turned around, I saw Maddie approach me with what looked like a
chagrined contortion.

“
So . . . how’d your ‘session’
go?” she asked me, putting air quotations around the word
session.

“
Agonizingly unexciting. He knew
everything about me and had, like, ten pages filled out,” I
replied, filling her in on everything that had happened.

“
Yeah, Mark was so infuriating,
arrogant and an airhead. Jeez, how can someone be sooo cocky? He
had that stupid smirk on his face the whole period that just made
me wanna whack some sense into him,” Maddie had said when I asked
her about her “session”. At least she found out her partner’s name.
I didn’t even know mine.

“
Well, I guess we’re gonna have to
deal with it. Right?” I asked Maddie as we reached our next period
class.

“
Yup. I guess so. It’s just like
high school without the musical. I wish our life wasn’t so freakin’
annoying,” she sighed and gave me a look that said, what can we do
about life?

I laughed, actually laughed for
the initial time in weeks, as we entered our next little
disheartening nightmare. It is only a musical if it is our dream.
Oh how I wish our high school was more like a musical. I would do
anything to have that kind of life.

“That makes two of us,” Maddie
smiles, echoing my thoughts. How did she know?

“
Did I say that out loud?” I ask,
furrowing my eyebrows.

“
Yes,” she smirks and I
sighed.

CHAPTER 2

back to the beginning, hit
rewind

School had not been very kind to
me these past two days. Although, I got to hang out with Elliot
which hadn’t persisted very long after Savvy had called
him.

Savannah Chelsea Grey is my
brother’s classmate/girlfriend who goes to the same school as him.
She has straight, beautiful golden brown hair that falls halfway
down her back. Savvy also had a pair of stunning grayish blue eyes
that somehow darkened whenever she felt like she was in imminent
danger. She has a beautiful round face with pale skin and a few
almost invisible freckles around her high cheekbones. Savvy’s a
great friend of mine who not only “hangs out” with Elliot, but she
manages to find some time for me too.

I authoritatively endure an
antipathy against school. My whole week sucked, a lot. I tried to
get Mr. Moore to change my partner from that freak to someone more
. . . compatible.

Instead, Mr. Moore had just
laughed and told me that was the main reason we had unstable
partners in the first place, to accept them for who they are and
overlook their freakiness. The last person that I craved to see was
had stood by my locker, again, before my next period.

* * * * *

As I went up to my locker to open
it, he stepped aside and beckoned me to open it. I was surprised to
see him of all people to stand by my locker, but I masked my face
with an impassive expression. I will not give him the satisfaction
of seeing me like this. As I unlocked my locker, he just eyeballed
me from where he was standing, trying to find out something about
me.

At last, I couldn’t take it
anymore so I just blurted, “What do you want from me?” somewhat too
harshly. He didn’t even flinch or move or anything. What was his
problem? When he didn’t answer, I rolled my eyes and turned to walk
away.

He seized my wrist and I thought
he would turn me around to face him, but he pulled me to him, my
hands flat on his chest and his arms wrapped around my waist. As
much as I hated this position, this is the only way James can talk
to me without me having to run away and him having to catch me
every time.

Ah, now I could see him clearly.
He had angular cheeks and a pair of full, naturally rose colored
lips. His eyes were a beautiful shade of pale baby blue while the
irises were surrounded by dark, stygian black. Last time I checked,
his eyes were not so . . . pale. I frowned at that, thinking he
might be some sort of freak. Or maybe he just wore contacts he
bought from the store Freaks-R-Us. Suites him though, he is a
freak.

“When is your next free period?”
he whispered in a calm, voice that said “I don’t bite. I just want
to ask you a simple question.” His face was really close to mine
and I could feel his breath fanning my face.

“Why do you care?” I asked, a bit
chary of his intentions. He probably wanted to vociferate at me
about how tedious my life is based on all the statistics he has
congregated about me.

“Because you haven’t called me in
the past two days to get some stuff about me for your essay. I’ll
have you know that I am a very . . . remarkable creature,” he
retorted, searching for the accurate words. When he saw the
expression I was dressed in, he continued.

“Okay. I know that I probably
freaked you out the first day in Biology class so I want another
chance to, you know, make it up to you. You know, a chance to go
back to the beginning, hit . . . rewind? Maybe you can meet me in
the library during your next free period with your blonde friend
and I’ll bring Mark along so we can all ‘study’ together?” he said,
offering me a charismatic smile that was probably meant to make me
fall for him. I bet you he smiled like that in front of every girl
to make her swoon, but it isn’t that easy to get me.

I should just turn down his offer
for calling Maddie a blonde, but I didn’t. His smile seemed to have
left me dumbstruck. He just seemed so inhumanly beautiful and
definitely inhumanly off-the-wall. But I really do need the grade
for the essay. Everyone does deserve a second chance, a chance to
just spool back. At last, I had made up my mind. Maddie would put
up with Mark for me, she’s my BFF. I know for a fact that she won’t
let me down.

“Fine, I guess everyone deserves a
second chance. I’ll meet you in the library with my friend Maddie
who will definitely be there,” I said, sealing my date for the
essay in the library with a guy whose name I still didn’t
know.

“It’s James by the way. See you
there, friend,” James finished off with a chuckle. How did he
always read my mind and just answer my thoughts?

* * * * *

I snapped out of my daze as I
entered the library with a cantankerous Maddie, grumbling on and on
about why I had dragged her here.

“Hey! I help you out all the time
and the least you can do is put up with Mark so I can get a decent
grade on my essay,” I told Maddie for like the millionth
time.

“Fine,” she said finally, sounding
like a little girl who had just been disciplined about
imperturbability. She always acted like a little in dire need of
discipline, but . . . that’s Maddie.

When we arrived at the library,
Mark and James were already conversing and waiting for us. When
James saw us, he waved off Mark and made his way over to where I
was standing. That’s when he did the unforeseen, leaving a
bewildered Maddie standing there beside me, gawking at
James.

He just hugged me like we were
long lost Grade A mates while I just stood there, still trying to
piece the events together. Why did he just do that? We just met for
God’s sake. James had this weird habit where he would do something
you least expected. Oh well, guess I just have to keep expecting
the unexpected.

Once he pulled back, he just stood
there for a moment, smiling down at me. Out of the corner of my
eye, I saw that Maddie had already taken her seat across from Mark
who was smirking, leaving Maddie scowling at him. So . . . I guess
there were just me and James standing by the doorway.

“You made it. Yay! I am so pleased
that you also fetched your little blond friend with you so Mark
won’t trouble us,” he said, making it very clear that he was
perturbed by both Mark and Maddie.

“Yeah, I guess,” I responded,
still trying to convalesce from the shock of his embrace. James
walked us over to our table, four seats down from Mark and Maddie’s
seat. James sat on Mark’s side of the row while I sat on Maddie’s.
Before beginning, Maddie looked over at us and mouthed good luck to
me. I would definitely need all the luck I could have.

The library was probably the
happiest place on Earth for me. Probably? I know for sure that the
library is the happiest place on Earth for me. I loved coming here
whenever I had the time and getting a book. I even sometimes helped
Mrs. Lauren, the librarian, out. The walls of the library were a
pale blue color with a few posters on the wall. One of them read,
“Ha! Ha! Made you Read!” with two guys standing under the text,
laughing and pointing to the reader. The room was filled with rows
and rows of books and several tables and chairs by the window. The
librarian’s desk was wooden and big and circular. I sometimes
wondered how Mrs. Lauren would get in there. Besides all these
other things, the room was pretty spacious, making you feel at ease
in seconds.

Mrs. Lauren was a 33 year old,
short blond lady who would frequently take off her glasses and put
them back on. She was usually very forgettable, always asking where
her phone was even though it was right in front of her. Despite all
of this, she was very kind, sarcastic and very witty. Mrs. Lauren
was so down to earth, if a meteorite were to hit and blow off the
whole school, she wouldn’t notice.

“So, do you have any questions for
me before we begin?” James queried, still in an idyllic attitude.
What could I ask him? Why are you so creepy? Yeah, maybe then, I’ll
have a whole page written about him.

“What is your name? Why did you
invite me to bring Maddie? You didn’t have to bring Mark with you.
So . . . why’d you do it?” I catechized, biting back my last
question, Why are you such a freak?

“Okay; one at a time please. First
of all, my name is James Chauncey Saunders. And Mark is my best
friend. In case you’re pondering what his name is, it’s Mark
Williams Matterazzi. I told you to bring your blond friend ov—,” he
continued.

“Her name is Maddie,” I said
through gritted teeth, trying not to go overboard with the
correcting.

“Yeah, whatever. Any who, where
was I? Oh, yes. I told you to bring your friend over because I
wanted to make sure that Mark wouldn’t annoy me and he seems to
quite enjoy her presence,” James finished, gesturing towards Mark
and Maddie’s seats.

Yeah, okay. He really was enjoying
her presence because her face was buried in her hands and Mark was
leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, smirking
and all as if he was satisfied by Maddie’s reaction to whatever it
is that he had said. Poor girl; I’ll do anything to make it up to
her.

“Anything else?” James asked once
more.

“
How do you know so much about me,
Mr. Saunders?” I retorted, trying my best to be courteous and get
all my suspicions out of the way because there was no way I was
going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me calling him James
as if we really were friends.

When I looked up to see his mien,
his lips were compressed into a thin line, his brows rutted
together as if he was trying to find out a way to answer my query
without giving too much away like a movie trailer would.

Finally, he looked at me with a
penetrating glare, not the immoral kind and undeniably not the
ethical kind either.

“Do you have any concepts about
what you think I am? If you do, feel free to share,” he told me
like a wise philosopher. Well, now that he has mentioned it, I did
have a few theories in mind. James could be a vampire since he was
so insipid. But then again, he could be some kind of a superhero
who just happens to read mind. Or he’s probably some sort of god or
something due to his inhuman structures. Or maybe he was just a
mind-reading psychopath. Or maybe he was just a
pretentious.

“Umm . . . A vampire?” I asked,
inaudibly cussing myself for my qualms.

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve
got?” James laughed. Even his laughter sounded inhuman. His voice
was always like honey and whenever he laughed, it just felt as if
his voice was dripping honey. There was no way you could have ever
been able to repel James, the way he would just communicate to you
and make you, under duress, utter out whatever it is that you were
keeping veiled. His voice would just make your whole essence
melt.