Chapter 2 [The Siren]
Pam is an interesting character, although I don't think you could search one inch of this school or its students and find anything but interesting. As with everyone else here, she had a ‘Uniqueness’.
Pam has a fairytale-like affinity for nature’s creatures. She can understand them, feel their emotions, and if you ever did look for her, she would probably be talking to a bird.
"Hola Davy! ¿Cómo estás? ¿Geraldine sigue robando ramitas de tu nido? Aw come here–"
"If we weren't in school people would think you were a nutcase."
"But I am!" Pam laughed.
That was the sort of quip that kept us as good friends.
See, I have a hard time keeping friends, or making them at all. With people either objectifying, slut shaming or avoiding me, there was a very small percentage of the teenage populus that actually wanted to have a conversation with me, much less be of any sort of acquaintance.
Pam is one of those rarities that actually wanted to know me as more than a statue to gawk at. For that, I'm eternally grateful.
She is, in a way, a fairytale princess – full of charm and innocent beauty that have knights in shining armour opening doors for her while said door slams in my face after her grace makes her exeunt.
But alongside the candyland charm, she has a certain oddity about her that just pulls me in like a magnet. Still, after two years of friendship, I am unable to identify the source of her peculiarity, only that in the little actions I witness every now and then I feel a small smile creep on my face as I think to myself how lucky I am to have the friendship of this odd princess.
I felt that lure when I first met her — a strange girl in a strange new world looking for someone to show her around the twisting grand halls of AIU.
The school was a colossal feat of architecture. A grand building of halls and rooms and facilities for the ‘Unique’. You have your standard gym and science labs and basketball courts, stationed next to grand halls of five metre thick walls for those with more explosive talents to master.
Among the books were swords, and among those were tablets used to rent mechanical floating targets to shoot at with laser beams from your fingers or fire from your toes. No wonder the poor girl looked so lost.
Naturally, being the ever so social person I am, I kept my hood up and minded my own business.
"Miss Jones!"
...so much for that plan.
"Miss Jones, will you please escort Miss Romero to her first class? I have some scholastic matters to attend to."
"Of course Mr Alberfeine."
The lanky man gave me a nod and a lingering smile before walking past me, each stride just as purposeful as the last.
I turned my attention to the girl in front of me. She was short, 5 foot at best, though she made up for it with her baby pink, 3-inch stilettos that had cute little pom poms dangling from the ankle strap.
Great, another self absorbed princess. If I have to keep looking at those purple sequins I will go blind.
"Hi! I'm Pamela, but my friends call me Pam. I'm new here! Although you probably had guessed. I heard your name was Jones, right? Or at least your last name. That's a weird thing they do here, call you by your last name–"
I think I'm going to have an aneurism if she doesn't shut her trap. I mean seriously who needs that many sparkles on one short dress? Does it even cover her ass?
"–my madre always tells me it will take a while to adjust to new schools even though I've was school hopping since I was five–"
Even her bag has sparkles on it. What is up with this chick? Does she think she's invisible or something? Is that her talent? To turn invisible so she has to keep talking to make sure no one bumps into her?
"–Jones?"
Shit.
"Huh?"
She looked sheepish. It was almost endearing.
"I was just wondering what class you had first. Maybe we're biology buddies."
Was that...hope in her voice? No, of course not, why would it be?
"Uh, no. I have literature first."
"Oh. Well that's ok! I'm sure we'll have other classes together!"
Poor girl. She's new, she doesn't know.
A selfish part of me wanted to ride on her enthusiasm, find all the classes we had together and eat crap pudding during lunch as I showed her around the school. A part of me that wanted to keep this precious princess all to myself, finally kidnap someone to call a friend. But my pride and guilt pushed down those horrid thoughts and locked them back where they belonged – in a dusty little chest at the back of my mind.
"Listen sweetheart. You're a nice girl, I reckon you'd be extremely popular if you hung out with the right people. Me? I'm not the ‘right people’. I'm very much the opposite, very much the wrong people. You don't want to be seen with me. In fact, you've already spent too much time with me. You should go."
"But why? You seem quite nice to–"
"Love, don’t bother. Everyone hates me or wants to shag me. If you want even a shred of a decent social life at this school I suggest you stay the hell away from me."
It hurt saying those words, but they were true. At least, they felt true to me.
"No."
Was this chick crazy?
"Did you hear even a word of what I just said?"
"Loud and clear. And I don't care. You seem like a very nice girl and I want to be your friend."
She must have lost her mind in all that sparkle. This was social suicide, the peak of Mount Outcast. She really was crazy.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
"No. You. Don't."
I felt slightly guilty using my powers to seduce her out of her kamikaze mission. I rarely ever use it, mainly to get myself out of worse trouble than I would have been in. But she was diving head first into Outcast Town, population: me. And that population would stay at ‘one’ if I could help it.
"Yes, I do."
I blinked. I blinked again. I blinked a third time and would have stood there all day blinking my eyelashes off if she did not start walking away, pulling me along with her…in the wrong direction.
But I followed her wordlessly as my brain tried to comprehend what had just happened.
How did she resist? No one had ever resisted my charm, save Mr Alberfeine. But that did not really count because he has cognitive talents of his own. But her? Princess Sparkle with her pom pom shoes? How did she not only talk crazy about being acquainted with me, but actually resist my charm? Who the hell is this woman?
I opened my mouth to ask the questions in my mind, but the words got lost along the way. What came out was:
"Not science."
Great job. Smooth. Maybe now she will reconsider that offer of friendship.
"What?"
She stopped outside the door labelled ‘M. Bellona’.
"That's history. Biology labs are upstairs." I blabbed.
"Oh." She said in that same bashful tone as before.
In the last few minutes of our first encounter she had gone through at least 4 different emotions and cycled back through them in 0.2 seconds. If I weren't so shocked about her innate ability to resist my seduction I would have been very impressed, and slightly concerned about her mental state.
But I stood there, staring at her, and I found myself focussing on a small pimple on her porcelain forehead. It was too small to see from afar, but just visible if you looked for a blemish on her perfect skin. Maybe I was looking for a blemish in this seemingly perfect girl, maybe I just had keen eyes, but I felt as I stared at that little red spot that I was at a crossroad.
Do I walk away as I usually do, and let her hurt for a little while before being free to live a happy teenhood?
Or do I take her hand and let her into my cold hard cage of a soul? Do I let her be doomed to a scholastic life of living with the fact that she was associated with me, and risk my heart shattering as it has done a hundred times before when she realises that I am not worth staying for?
I looked at that spot, then I looked at her eyes. They were looking at her shoes before they met mine. In those midnight swirls I saw my reflection, and I saw determination. That little dusty box sprang open once again.
"I'll take you."
I let go of her hand and started towards the grand stairs in the middle of the mansion. Her little legs did a little jog to keep up with my naturally quick pace, and her speeding words started once again.
I caught little pieces of lunch and friendship, but all that was going through my mind was 'what have I done?'