Tuesday, October 9, 2012

19: Half - pt.2


   By the time she got to high school, some of her classmates' clocks had run down to mere days or months. Some of them were even at zero, and they sat with their apparent soulmates at lunchtime, blatantly freaking out over each other.
   But Eve sat alone. She didn't really like it and didn't really dislike it. It was just one of those things.
   The general population - with their olive skin, dark brown hair, and nearly black eyes - seemed to be afraid of her, and she couldn't blame them. She had dodged the civilization's constantly recessant genes and received pale skin, light blue eyes, and fiery red hair, as shiny and bright as copper. It had come from her mother. She loved looking like her mother. She just didn't like being different.
   She picked at her sandwich, but she wasn't hungry anymore. She stood up and dumped it into the garbage with disgust. She began walking towards the exit, gaining speed, almost feeling like she was suffocating, and she didn't take a breath in until she reached the cool spring air outside.
   She fled from the lunchroom to her hidden spot, nestled in a corner of the grounds. It was an old wooden bench swing, a rickety wooden structure that threatened to give more splinters than it gave her comfort. But she didn't care. It was her special place, and she didn't believe that it would hurt her.
   She sat down heavily on the bench, not caring if the skirt of her airy floral dress snagged on the old, rough wood. She bent over for a while, catching her breath and enjoying the sun on her back.
   It was a beautifully sunny day, and the overgrown grasses and flowers that were interspersed around the swing waved in the breeze and brushed her legs. But she barely felt it as she stared at her clock. Sometimes she felt a sudden, sharp spurt of pain from it, spasming up her entire arm, as if it had begun to eat her flesh. But today it was normal, painless, average.
   She rolled her eyes and tore her gaze away from the clock, resting her elbows on her knees. The numbers read thirteen years.

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