It's barely first period, again, and though today I've already made it through the entirety of a triple-shot topped with French Roast, I can barely process my Profesora Blanca's request to abren los libros. My pale fingers shake a little as I try to locate page 135, scanning the room as I do for any sign of a certain teacher's aide. I see none and resume my fumbling attempts. Having stayed awake counting raindrops until 4:45, I jolted awake terrified and horribly conscious of the fact that I woke up a half-hour later than intended. As Brad and Margot have each got a zero period class, there's no recourse for me if I should unluckily miss the bus, which, thankfully enough, I did not (though the dripping-wet hair hanging lankly in front of my bleary eyes testifies to certain necessary concessions).

As Profesora Blanca so thrillingly explains the subjunctive tense, I find that I am too exhausted to even bother with my usual doodling. Perhaps lack of sleep coupled with caffeine overload is actually conducive to better study habits; the intensity of focus required to understand even my teacher's frequent English allows for no possibility of distraction. And of course, running late, it was all I could do to remember my textbooks, much less any more interesting volumes.

I haven't yet encountered Brad this morning, which bodes ill for the possibility of escaping the bus ride home, unless Margot can be coaxed out of ensemble practice--which, if attempted, would probably just lead to me being coaxed into practice as I quit the group just before Winter Break (especially given her berating me on the subject this morning):

“Granted, Bulmer is a douchebag, but he's good at what he does... please, Selene. Just at least till the competition in March...not to be a jerk, but I'd hate for there to be only one flute player, and for it to be..well, not you.” This said as we walked to her locker to retrieve her Calculus notebook—set so neatly in its lined shelf; surrounded by immaculately organized containers of pencils, erasers, and a few novels with tasseled bookmarks draped artistically over their sides. Altogether a far cry from the slobbish pile of forgotten forms, old projects, pages of ramblings and doodles that occupy my own infrequently-visited locker. At this point I am halfway through my coffee, so I'm able to construct something of an intelligible reply.

“He's vain and too demanding—I don't mind being challenged, but not merely for the sake of someone else's ego.” Not the most difficult reply to come up with, given that I thought up this justification weeks ago, knowing that it would be needed for eventual self-defense.

“You know that I don't disagree. But that isn't the point—you've been a part of it since we were freshman. Why now? I mean, Selene—I don't want to be critical. But seriously. What's going on? Why is nothing mattering to you?”

A question I wish I could answer, but I know she's already made her decision and answered it for me. And for heaven's sake, it's not true. It's nothing to do with Joao or any other male—that is all as much a symptom as my quitting the ensemble while the real disease...the cause remains elusive. Adolescent apathy...achievement avoidment. This is not the right time for me to attempt to self-analyze.

“It's just that--”

“You didn't apply with me—I mean, not that you're tied in away to my plans, but there's funding available, you know that. And we'd planned to go to San Diego if we're both accepted for so long...” Margot's blue eyes injured, quizzical. And she's terribly right, and, worse still, I cannot come up with any answer for her.

The worst part is that none of it is new—not a product of male distractions, my parents' separation, my father in the war, money troubles, or any other easy explanation. None of it has ever mattered, and it is only now, at the decisive moment, that I realize it fully. Even in my addled state, I am appalled—as frightened by my own weakness, my own insupportable excuses as I ever could be by some self-concocted dream.

(What the hell am I intended for—more importantly, what the hell do I intend on doing?)

And though I am entirely zeroed in on the lecture, that feeling remains with me now, a half-hour later, settled uneasily in my gnawingly empty stomach. A self-centered mystic from childhood; though I've now utterly lost any true sense of self-righteousness, the apocalyptic fantasies are harder to kill off. Is that what gives me the right to apathy—the constant sense of impending catastrophe, the knowledge that all reality can be ripped to fragments at the sound of a trumpet's call?

Suddenly, I realize that in an instant I've instead entirely lost the direction of the lecture. Now somewhat resigned, I let my eyes close for an instant, only half-convinced that I can will myself not to drop off completely.

“And while he delayed, they slumbered and slept...” I jerk up suddenly with that unmistakable paranoid feeling that comes from having someone staring while one sleeps. But as I look anxiously to la Profesora, trying to gauge the extent of my offense, I realize that she has in fact caught a similar offender in the front row, and is, in fact, not paying attention to me in the least. Relieved and resolved to let my second chance be well-used, I take the opportunity to reach into my bag for some Penguin mints. I am arrested (nearly in a cardiac sense) as, turning to do so, I catch a glimpse of Peter Sariel occupying Hal's desk next to mine.

A stack of quizzes is stacked neatly before him, and his face is unnaturally pale. The short space between us feels frigid, brittle—and there are no words I would chance shattering it with, anyway.

Of course, he would be more bold, though his whisper is cautionary to a degree that even the possibility of Profesora Blanca's wrath cannot fully justify. “You look half-dead.”

“Thanks for the compliment.” I reply acridly. “I don't suppose you ever considered the possibility that I'd take anything you said seriously?”

Peter pauses for a moment; his expression undecipherable to me (however much that means, given my perceptually-challenged condition). As I stare at his elegant features, waiting for him to stop biting his lip pensively and say something sensible, I try to reconcile what I think I've always known—but was too intellectually ashamed to admit—about him with what he superficially seems, what it would be so convenient if he actually was.

“I'm...sorry about yesterday. It was all a bit absurd. There is no explanation.” He turns away, as if the conversation is ended, though he cannot honestly believe that is the case.

“No, there is. There is something, and I've...I've known it always somehow. I realized that early this morning, while I was busy not sleeping. The only parts that don't make sense are the ones I don't know. You're here...you're here to tell me something about myself—and not just—” At this point, my voice has finally gotten high enough to attract Profesora Blanca's attention.

“Isabel! Attencion, por favor.” Her pale eyes bore into mine, clearly disapproving of my unkempt form and undoubtedly somewhat wild expression.

“Si, lo siento.” I turn neither to right nor the left for the rest of the period (and Peter has smoothly made his exit by the time the bell rings) but as I shuffle down the hall to Economics, I find a small note folded into my mint tin; the letters strangely angular though impeccably neat:

The field by the grinding-rock. 3:30

As Brad so accurately predicted. However popular in the summer time, no one ventures forth to that park this time of year. An excuse would be easy to manage—especially as my mother doesn't exactly know that I've quit ensemble yet. But it would be idiotic, even if Brad were to take me. Even if my too-convenient theories were true, where would that leave me? Ravenous of flesh and blood, deceptive and cunning behind a facade of romance and glory, the Watchers and their sons are hardly the most innocuous of mythical creatures.

All foolishness, constructed from coincidence. Yet there is something, something more than my safety, that dangles over the edge of all this, ready to fall at the slightest misstep...