CHAPTER 18

AND THEN THERE IS DUMBNESS

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If there could be a degree after superlative, I was in that degree of confusion. I didn't want to make things more awkward by staying quiet.

"Okay... Let's finish the essay," I swallowed everything that was building up.

"Before that... I need to tell you something."

"Go on." I nodded, not looking at him.

"Verena will be here in an hour. She could read your mind for the supernatural risk assessment."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" I yelped. She was a PSB and just the thought of that was enough to interweave my limbs in a blue funk.

"She is human too. She can't help it if she was born into that and she wants to help you. Appreciate that, Margo." He looked out the window at Irsia's house.

"I'll tell her about this later. Don't sweat it."

"I am not worried." He totally was.

I blocked my mind from the thoughts of Verena. I needed to finish this essay. I needed to make it funny. I craved that feeling of accomplishment. A couple of hours passed and we almost finished the essay. Aiden's phone rang. I knew it was Verena.

"She's here. I'll go save her from my mom." He went to the threshold of the room and turned, "just don't panic."

"Okay," I said, already panicking.

I took deep breaths and I kept swallowing whatever was forming in my throat. I heard footsteps and familiar voices. Verena's voice was distantly familiar to me. I realized my face was getting tense and my shoulders tighter. As the sound of the voices neared, I felt my breath zooming.

"Margo Fawn," Verena addressed me with what I thought was some form of excitement.

That was the first time the sound of my name sent a jolt through my body. She looked cool. She looked like she just had plastic surgery and makeovers to boost her confidence. She wasn't like this before. She had hair covering her face almost all the time. She never even talked loudly. In fact, she looked very dashing now.

"How much did you tell her? She looks pasty." She talked to Aiden with her hands tied against her gut, but her right index finger pointed at me with a slight tilt in her neck. Her red hair and grey eyes were just perfect. It screamed supernatural for some reason.

Did Aiden not notice how dashing she looked? Elec and Irsia would be shell-shocked if they saw Verena now.

"She's heard stories and myths of your kind."

"Ouch... my kind?" She gave Aiden a good-natured punch in the gut. "I am human too. PSB is kind of my talent." She shimmered in some form of supernatural humility.

I sat there just watching those two bicker. How did Aiden have the courage to fraternize with whatever she was? Looking closer, she looked human... normal. Or maybe this was all an act. Maybe she could suck all my energy and make me feel like I was nothing or make me feel depressed. I then realized my eyebrows weren't in their position. I put my head down, not wanting to look weird, and brought my eyebrows back to their place.

"Margo, she is offering help. You don't have to worry." Aiden leaned against the door frame.

"I am fine. It's just that this is all new territory to me." I swallowed again, all that was forming in the pit of my stomach.

"Margo, you look like you saw a PSB," Verena said. I think it was supposed to be a joke.

"That's not funny, Arevalo."

"You can call me Verena. PSBs are not bad. Not all of them are. Just as humans crave for power, we crave for power too. That is why PSBs feed on energy."

"What she means is, as there are good and bad humans there are also good and bad PSBs." Aiden didn't have to decode that for me.

"Aiden, stop enjoying this so much."

He chuckled. That chuckle of him was the only thing familiar at that moment. Verena took a step forward. I controlled my movements. I didn't want to move my body a centimeter involuntarily. That would be like an insult to her and I would look so stupid.

"Can I...?" She gestured to the chair that Aiden used earlier.

"Sure." I nodded.

Crossing her legs, she flipped her blood-red hair back with a slacken ease. She narrowed her eyes as if she was the doctor and I was infected with some new disease.

"I know you are scared of me." She sucked her lower lip in; her eyes were still narrow. "But why are your thoughts not loud?"

"What do you mean?" I gasped. I steered my look toward Aiden, who was standing a little beyond behind Verena.

"Just be calm for a minute. Please," he said, trying to sweeten the supernatural platter.

"Can I touch your head?" Verena asked, her palm level with my cheek.

"What for?" The panic couldn't be more pellucid in my inflection.

"I just need to know if you are in danger from the ghost touching you."

"Will I be in danger if you touch me?"

"Are you asking me that if I might feed on your energy? No, I don't do that. If I feed on humans, everyone around me will get tired and eventually frustrated and also could get depressed, leading to suicidal thoughts. I don't want that. I'm not a monster."

She was not a monster. She was just the girl with unusual hair, eyes and ancestry. Just that I was unnecessarily the jumpy babe in the woods, even after she had been nothing but a confection from the minute she walked in.

"Okay. Fine," I muttered.

Her hand swiftly landed over my head as if she was blessing me. I moved my eyeballs to look at Aiden. I was slightly biting the inside of my lower lip and I was picking off my nail polish. Something that I did when I was nervous. She had her eyes closed with her lips slightly parted.

"Are you done?" I kept my tone feeble.

She didn't answer. She took her hand away as if she had experienced some static electricity, and looked at me with a look as if she was in befuddled awe. She wet her lips and shook her head.

"What is it?" Aiden and I asked in unison.

"I could hear only parts of your thoughts. Others are blocked," she faltered, still with that look.

"Verns, I think you still need practice." Aiden scoffed. Verns? Virtual eye roll.

"No, you don't understand. She can block thoughts."

"Block my thoughts?" I thought I did that to calm myself down in order to focus on important things.

"Yes..." She laughed in bemused excitement. "Bewildering, Margo. How do you do that?"

"I don't know." I breathed, shrugging in an unnecessary irk. "Am I in danger or not?"

"Maybe but I can't find that until I can tap into your whole mind." She still couldn't wipe that awe reaction from her face.

"You are useless." Aiden crossed his hands.

"Can you bring me a glass of water? Tea maybe?" Verena asked.

"Sure. Don't scare her." Again, with the mocking. I have got to slap him once.

"Get out," she scoffed, softly. The offhanded way they both talked felt like something that I could never get used to.

As Aiden walked out, she leaned back, watching Aiden walk down the stairs. As he climbed down the stairs and as his head disappeared, she leaned forward and looked at me.

"What?" Annoyance danced in my voice. It was the skeptical look she gave.

"Why have you blocked the thoughts about Aiden?"

"What? What do you mean?" I sort of knew what she was talking about.

"I saw how you both walked home that evening, how you defend him, how he said that he hit Kyle for you... all that..." She gave a flick of her wrist. "What I couldn't see in your mind was your specific thoughts about him. Why's that, Margo?"

I scoffed. I shrugged. "I don't know what you are talking about." I gave a hasty look at the stairs if Aiden was returning.

"You are over Kyle. I can see that. You have addressed that internally. But you don't address what you feel about Aiden. For the second time, Margo, why is that?"

"I think you need more training like Aiden said." I tried to brush it off.

"End the denial, Margo. You keep blocking his thoughts whenever his actions send you a sign that he likes you way too much."

"You are being ridiculous." I may have raised my voice. I took another quick peek at the stairs. Aiden hadn't come up to the stairs yet.

"Margo, I may not be able to read your blocked thoughts but I know body language." Her assessing eyes irked me more.

I suddenly had the courage to stare at her. I felt violated. I shouldn't have let her read my mind.

"Don't try to read my mind again," I growled; really low.

"Why are you getting so defensive? I know you know that he likes you. He hasn't told you that yet. Has he?"

"Yet?"

"He has liked you since forever. Since you were with Kyle, he didn't want to come in between you both. Kyle knew this too."

I knew my eyebrows weren't in their place again. "What do you mean?"

"You are so dumb." She shook her head in slight disdain.

"No..." I shook my head rapidly, being overly obstinate. I looked at the stairs. All hasty and frantic. God would know if I looked like an agitated parakeet looking back and forth. There was no sign of him yet.

"Yes... I think he even warned you when he knew Kyle was rolling in the deception mud."

"When was he not?" I couldn't believe I just said that and laughed. Then it hit me. It was Edric who warned me. Not Aiden.

"You passed out at school. Do you remember that?"

How could I forget that? I saw pictures of Kyle and Sophie. Fiona showed them to me. I didn't even remember how I got to Elec's car that day.

"Aiden carried you out," she declared in exhaustion to make me understand that I was in denial.

"He carried me?" I croaked.

"Yes... Fiona took pictures of that. It circulated through our school page for a few hours. Aiden got into a scuffle with Kyle that day and Edric fed his charms to Fiona to take down the pictures. That scuffle was the precise reason for the onslaught of the rumors."

I recalled the day I fainted at school - the day we found Damon dead. That day, in all the empty blankness, there was a similar memory of me being carried with my head hanging. So, it was the memory of Aiden already carrying me. I felt so senseless. I had to prioritize which memories and thoughts to ignore and block and which to let in and ponder.

On hearing the footsteps of Aiden, we shushed each other, not wanting him to know about what we were talking about. A flood of thoughts rushed in my mind now. I wanted to go home and think about it. I wanted to go over everything that had happened between Aiden and I to fathom what signs and flags I had been missing. I was also scared that if I went over the details and mull over the gestures of him... what if... What what if? Margo, get over yourself – I said to myself. Could that picture of Fiona in a near moment of kissing Aiden be an accident? (or) What if Fiona had made up that moment for some incriminating reason that only she could explain? A virtual facepalm for myself for concocting these thoughts. But I knew Fiona was capable of that, but I didn't know where Aiden stood with it. I just knew that there was no prospect for an if. Too late for that. He had moved on. He was with Fiona Raddix.

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