Waste
When I told my mother that I didn't want to attend Kent anymore, she made it clear there would be no arguments. It had taken me a month to gather the courage just to approach her, and she had shut me down immediately. My mother did not waste movements. With a single one of her glaring looks, the carefully rehearsed words died in my throat, unsaid. She always had that power over me. I couldn't tell her that every day was a battle, and every day, I lost. Instead, I accepted her decision, but there was no reining the seething hatred I had for her, the school, Jade, myself. My mother wanted me to suffer, and I hated her. I hated sensitives. Extremes were the worst.
Especially my sister. Jade eyed me from her position as still as a statue. Like our mother, she wasted no movements. Even though Jade was the younger by a year, genetics had gifted her not only the advantage of sensitivity, but also the advantage of height. Flanked on both sides by her best friends, Amber and Ivory, near-equals in her strength, Jade wielded her power over me.
"If you were planning to eat, I suggest not choosing the garbage on the floor," she said. "Unless, that is, you enjoy the taste, being such yourself."
My lunch, my books, and my body lay sprawled in the space before her. She had tripped me, but as always, her moves were calculated. No one else had seen it happen, or if they did, they would remain silent, and she would have done it during a blind spot among the roving security cameras.
I didn't bother to look at her. I never had anything to say. Anything I said or did would have been used against me. As much as I wished to be able to talk back, I had learned early that I lacked the mental capacity and speed to come up with a witty retort that might have shocked her into speechlessness. Then again, nothing would have shocked her. Sensitives predicted far too well to ever be surprised.
"Your mother should have named her Shoeshine for all the time she spends kneeling at your feet," Ivory remarked. Jade didn't laugh, but beside her, Amber did. The three walked away, probably to terrorize someone else. I silently cursed my mother for naming her firstborn such a ridiculous name, though I realized that they would have been able to come up with all sorts of derogatory terms no matter what my given name was.
Others had seen the exchange but stayed out of it. No one, including the staff and even some of the teachers, crossed Jade Worthington for fear of gaining her attention. Extreme sensitives were capable of far more than just tripping someone during lunch. Today's incidents against me ranked low in comparison to others, but the day was only half over, and she likely had more planned. Despite knowing her attacks would come, I lacked the sensitivity to predict Jade's next move, or any of her moves, and I cursed genetics all over again. The only retaliation I had against her was to mentally file the location and the time for the future. I robbed her of using the exact same trick on me more than once.
I began gathering my things, leaving the food where it had fallen. The janitor had already left to fetch his mop. Some of the papers from my books had fallen out, and they were now marked in the grime of dirt tracked in from the yard and splatters of the sauce from the lunch meat.
I stretched my arm to pick up the last piece of paper, but an unfamiliar hand reached it first. It belonged to a boy with dark bangs that fell in his eyes. He wiped at a fleck of stew on the page, which made the stain worse. I noticed the immediate reaction of his flushed cheeks for a moment as he recognized his mistake, but the color faded quickly. He smiled as he handed it over. I accepted the sheet gingerly and said nothing. I knew who he was. Jett Hewnly was a year ahead and had a reputation as an oddity at school. He was always smiling. There had been gossip that both his parents had passed away recently, and he now lived with his grandmother. Everyone coped with grief differently, and no one questioned his constant smile. People left him alone, and he seemed to prefer it that way.
"It's hard to believe that you are related," he said, revealing that he knew who I was too. He picked up the milk carton as he straightened. The drink was the only item from my tray that had mostly survived the fall - only one corner had been dented.
Jett offered it to me, but I shook my head. Since I had to get food again, I didn't need the old milk. Trying to pretend this wasn't a routine, I stood up and walked over to the lunch line. Jett followed me to the end of the line, where he opened the carton with ease and began gulping the contents. After he was done, he crushed the carton in his hand and tossed it toward the nearest recycling bin. His makeshift ball fell in without touching the rim, and he smiled.
The line moved. Jett remained behind me, getting his own lunch. He followed me to an empty table and sat down next to me with a smile. I usually ate lunch alone, and his presence made me uneasy. I didn't understand why he was sitting with me.
We ate in silence. When I finished, I picked up my tray and started to stand, but Jett put a hand on mine to stop me. I sat back down and released my tray. His hand felt warm against my skin, and he didn't remove it. Jett said, "You need to fight more."
Inexplicably angry, I lashed out at him. He didn't know me. He was just a random boy. I couldn't believe someone would dare give me such advice, such a command. "What do you know? You don't live with her," I spat out bitterly and slapped at his hand. I didn't strike him very hard, but he instinctively pulled his arm back.
His eyes flashed with hurt, and I regretted my words. The random boy hadn't deserved my anger. As though there had been no outburst, Jett smiled and said, "I know you never fall in the same place twice." He pointed, indicating the three incidents this week. He had been watching. He continued, "But that isn't good enough." My eyes narrowed.
"Then what is?" I questioned.
Jett shrugged, still smiling. "You're smart. You can figure it out."
I frowned. "What does that mean? Everyone knows why I'm here, and it's not because I'm smart," I pointed out. My mother had changed the rules to get the school to admit her low-sensitivity daughter. It was one of the reasons that she refused to listen to my request to transfer. She would have wasted her time and effort getting the rule passed just to see the lesser Worthington not attend her alma mater. My mother did not waste anything.
Jett looked me in the eye and gestured toward my empty tray. "Sensitives don't waste," he said concisely, enunciating each syllable clearly and purposefully, all the while smiling. I didn't know how he managed to smile while talking, and I wondered if he had practiced that strange skill.
I looked at him carefully now, at the stupid grin he kept plastered to his face. Moments passed, and we continued sitting there facing each other even as the warning bell rang and students began filing out of the cafeteria. Jett smiled the entire time. The realization slowly dawned on me. His grin grew wider when he knew that I knew. I understood that he fought his own private war ever since he lost his parents.
Still keeping that smile, Jett nodded at me. "I win," he admitted quietly. "I win every day."
For the first time in weeks, I smiled.
Aug 2015
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