Episode 2
OUCH!
I mouth to Ryn. She'd just kicked me right in the shin with her steel-toe boot. Not hard, no, but damn those things hurt. I ignored her and attempted to focus back in on Mr. Morrison's lecture. It was hard enough to pay attention as is. He was a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and this impossibly thick mustache. It looked like it was growing directly from his nose in places. A seriously short dude. It was not dwarfism either because everything was proportionate. Just super short. Jessica Morris is this super tall chick. I mean huge. She's on the basketball team and does great. Earlier in the year, Ryn told me she heard her talking about him in the locker room before PE, "Perfect height for a mustache ride!" Funny. I didn't mind the guy, but his voice was so monotone that it made it hard to pay attention. Even the stuff that interested me was having a hard time keeping a hold of my mind. It didn't help that his white button-up and khaki shorts blended with the bleach-white walls and dry-erase board behind him. It was always khakis and a pale-colored or white button-up. Plain. Boring.
Love... The idea of love kept bringing me back into my thoughts. It was in the air, and you could smell it at its strongest in the late spring and early autumn. Yay, I say sarcastically at the animalistic instincts I still have to endure. Though I still couldn't help but wonder if maybe there was a mate out there for me. It was a pipe dream, seriously. Call it the last of my dying wistful adolescence. I used to joke a lot that all the Mate gifting goddesses up there had no idea what to do and whose jurisdiction was who's since were all so muddied. They're too busy up there arguing over who gets Mondays.
Still, I wonder what it would've been like though. It sounds like a mighty force. A real team to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, it was also used as a weapon. People's mates would be taken. Being separated caused immense pain after so long. Any torturous moment that ensued would be felt on each end of the connection. This also holds for pain and death. Depending on how violent the death is, it could cause their partner to go mad and sometimes even die themselves. That's the reason the stories give for the Moon Goddess taking away our mate gift. She had made our perfect matches. Other halves, just for us, and after all the fighting and the wars over the centuries with the bond being exploited, she said, "I'm done. You don't deserve this," and yoink! Gone. It's not exactly like that, but you get my point.
It all must be bogus, right? If anything like that had happened, some science would've been behind it—certain secretions or the releasing of pheromones to attract a mate. The rest was probably exaggerated due to us being supernatural. Play everything up bigger than it was to make us seem special and stand apart from humans. But still, though. What if? I'd be lying if I said I hadn't already felt this strange urge. It's hard to explain, but I'll do my best—constant anxiety and feeling that there's something important that I need to do. There's a heaviness on my chest. Not pain. Just a heavy feeling. Plus, the other urges. I've been practically insatiable lately.
