Location: School, Library
Time: 11:37 AM, 11/15/2103
“So this is where you’ve been!” Lucy made her declaration while slamming her tray of food on the table I was using; completely ignoring the atmosphere of the room.
She was wearing the same gym uniform she had on the first night I met her, with her hat covering up her extra set ears.
“Have you been looking for me?” As far as I knew, there wasn’t any reason for Lucy to need me.
“No, not really. I just thought it was strange that I never saw you at lunch.”
So she was looking.
“Well, mystery solved. There’s no reason for me to hang around the cafeteria, so I spend my lunches getting homework done here.” I gestured to the library surrounding us, hoping she might pick up on some of the atmosphere.
“What? The cafeteria is great.” Lucy’s loud voice flowed out through bites of a lunch that seemed to consist entirely of meat.
“Not for someone like me. It’s not like they serve blood down there.” And even if they did, I couldn’t afford it. “Besides, this is a great time to get my homework done.”
“Sure, they don’t serve it, but it’s not like you couldn’t drink any.”
Apparently, she was completely unable to recognize the message I was trying to give her.
“Huh? Are you suggesting I get some straight from the neck? That would definitely save me some money, but I don’t think it would end well.”
“No, definitely not. Don’t even joke about attacking a normal person. I’m just saying you could bring it in a bottle or something.”
“Ah, that makes sense, but still, there wouldn’t be any point. It’s easier to just drink it on my own. Besides, this way I don’t have to try and get my homework done while riding my bike to work.” My coordination was fairly good even before becoming a vampire, but no reason to push it.
“Ignoring that last part, even if you don’t have to, wouldn’t you rather spend lunch with your friends?”
“Friends? Do they count as tax deductible?” What was she talking about?
“I already knew you were a loner, but don’t get confused by the word itself!”
“I’m just not the kind of person to have any personal relationships like that.” I mean, I guess Josh counted as a friend, but there was no way I was going to try and sit with him and Jess.
“Yeah, but why no friends? Isn’t that a bit extreme? Aren’t you lonely?” Lucy started looking at me as if I was an abandoned puppy.
“Don’t give me that look. Sure, I don’t have any friends, but I’ll have you know that’s a personal choice. I don’t have them because I don’t want them.”
“That’s even weirder. You seem social enough with Ellie and me, why don’t you want friends?”
I took a moment to consider how I wanted to answer Lucy’s question. I didn’t have any real reason to tell her the truth, but it’s not like I was trying to keep it a secret either. Besides, I’d already explained it to Elodie. I wasn’t sure what the relationship between the two of them was like. It wouldn’t be strange if Lucy learned about things from Elodie even if I lied to her about it.
“It’s complicated. Let me ask you this: Do you believe in fate?” That might seem like an unrelated question, but I wanted to set some groundwork before getting to the main point.
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“Huh?”
“Fate. Destiny. That kind of thing. Do you believe that everyone has a set path, and that there are people who can read your future?” I recognized that the second part of the question was a bit more of a leap than the first, but I wasn’t going to wait for the conversation to naturally reach that point. Unless I sped things up it seemed likely that I’d be solving equations on my handlebars in a few hours.
“Ah, um, maybe? I don’t know. I feel like I’ve heard of people with augmentations that let them look into the future, but I don’t understand how it works.”
“Neither do I, but my family puts a lot of stock into those fortune tellers. Every child born into the family gets their destiny spelled out for them.”
I was ten when I got my fortune told. My older sister got it done at the same time, while my older brother had it done years before, and my younger sister was deemed too young. She’s probably had it done since then though.
“And your destiny is why you don’t want friends?”
“Yeah.” I was glad she was following along.
“Was it really that bad? What they told you.”
“In a way. Rather than a single thread, slowly unwinding and occasionally splitting, that old crone told me I was a jumbled mess of knots.”
“And that means?”
“That it’s my destiny to get wrapped up in everything. That I’m a person who will always find himself in the middle of things. My family proudly declared that I was going to become a hero, but really, I’m just a person who can’t keep out of trouble. I guess the easier way to explain it is that even before becoming an aberration, I was an augmented. And somehow my augmentation always turned me into the main character.”
That’s why I had to leave them. Forget becoming a hero just because that’s what I’m supposed to do. I would have gladly left my original augmentation behind as well if that was possible.
“That’s why I can’t have friends. If I get close to someone they’ll end up being an international assassin or they’ll get kidnapped and held for ransom.” Both of those things happened by the way. “It’s always something like that. If I don’t keep people at an arm's length away it will only be trouble for everyone.”
“I don’t really get it, but what about me? It doesn’t seem like you’re trying to push me away.”
“Because you played your part. Or have you already forgotten that you’re the werewolf that started the chain of events leading to me becoming a vampire?”
“Ah, hahaha, sorry.” She looked down and somehow conjured the image of a rain cloud hovering above her head. Although even while trying to look remorseful she was sneaking pieces of bacon into her mouth.
“Don’t worry, I’m not holding a grudge or anything.”
I really meant that. Living the life I have made me realize that it’s pointless blaming others. If anything, I should have been the one apologizing to her. It’s possible that the whole reason she was born as an aberration might have been in order to play a part in getting me turned into one myself.
“Nice, that’s good.” Her rain clouds turned back into rays of sunshine. “Our work might have been difficult if you had something against me. And besides, it would be nice if we could get along sometimes.”
“Our work?” I had three stable jobs, but I hadn’t heard anything about Lucy working at any of them. Maybe she was going to apply at the butcher shop.
“Yeah, you know, working for Ellie. I don’t know what kind of stuff she’ll have you do, but I’m sure we’ll be working together for some of it.”
Ah. So that’s what it was.
“Wait, you work for Elodie? I seem to recall her smashing you through my bike.”
“Oh, that? That was just training.”
“Training, huh? She seems to have a high opinion of herself, but is Elodie really such an important person?”
“Absolutely! Elodie is super important to most aberrations living in the Empire. Don’t you know who she is?”
“I know she’s one half of the pair that owes me a new bike, but that’s about it.”
“Hey, I know you said earlier that you didn’t hold any grudges against me, but I’m starting to think that’s not entirely true.”
“It’s not a grudge, just a tab. Don’t worry about it.”
“Hmm?”
“The interest rates aren’t very high.”
“Okay, I’m worried about it. Just ask Ellie to buy you a new one. She’s got more than enough money to go around.”
“That’s not going to happen. You seem to be making a bit of an assumption here. Sure, Elodie offered me a full time position, but I turned her down. It doesn’t matter how good the pay and benefits might be. Accepting a job offer from someone like her is exactly the kind of plot development that I need to avoid.”
I wasn’t willing to risk having a casual conversation with a classmate, did she really think I’d be willing to become the right hand man of such an ambitious woman?
I tried to explain that to Elodie on the night she tried to recruit me, but that just made her want me more. She wasn’t anything like my parents, but they had more than enough in common. They shared the one factor that I wasn’t willing to overlook.
They were both incredibly willing to use my supposedly unavoidable fate of becoming a hero as a springboard for their own ambitions.
Well, that wasn’t happening.
I was nothing more than Henry Henderson. Just a perfectly average person trying to make ends meet.