Enders

Enders (4)

It was a little strange, having all my friends back. I was so used to being the only one there other than Hank and Nay that sometimes I got caught off guard when I heard other voices. Sometimes I'd think someone had broken in, but then I remembered my friends had just returned.

Like one night, I got up to use the restroom. I heard footsteps coming from the exercise room and immediately went into defensive mode. I made my way quietly and slowly into the exercise room, undetected by whoever was inside. I jumped out at them and immediately got their attention, causing them to scream.

Turns out, it was only Aiden getting water. And I gave him a good scare, too. I definitely enjoyed that.

The only person I had been used to having around was Lena, so when she came over to hang out it wasn't very different from how it'd been the last couple of months. But now that Dex was back, Lena seemed to have a bone to pick with him.

"Just because your boyfriend is back around doesn't mean you can just abandon your best friend, got that?" she said to me with her hands on her hips, and it wasn't much of a question as it was a statement.

I felt my cheeks turning red. "He's not my boyfriend."

Lena rolled her eyes. "Whatever you say."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I think you know what it means," she sighed, clearly thinking I was the stupidest person on the planet. "Even if you can't call him your boyfriend now, you definitely will be able to."

I didn't know what to say to this. I didn't know what it was like to have a boyfriend... It was kind of a scary thought.

I was seventeen, along with the rest of my friends. Having a boyfriend or a girlfriend at this age wasn't abnormal, but it was such a strange concept to me that I didn't like to think about it. Not that it was a bad thing... but I had other things to be worrying about than having a relationship.

"You've seriously never thought about Dex as a boyfriend before?" Lena asked me, as if reading my mind. "Like, never ever?"

I didn't want to have this conversation. I would have really rather been doing anything else other than that. It just made me feel so awkward.

"It's to something I'm worrying about right now, Lena," I sighed, pushing myself up off my bed and over to my dresser, not necessarily looking for anything in particular, but just trying to busy myself with something. "I'd like to focus on myself for a while before I even think about having a boyfriend."

Lena nodded, understanding completely what I meant. No one really talked about it much anymore, but the fact that I was an Ender was always in the back of my mind. Mostly because I still didn't really understand what it meant. I knew that I was powerful, and I got a few extra little powers. But what was so important about all of that?

Did I even want to know? If Redrum could possibly come after me, that meant that it was something valuable. But I still just didn't understand what. And that was what was driving me crazy.

And what also was awful was that I felt like I couldn't talk to anyone about it. No one understood what I was going through, at least no one that I knew. I knew that there were other Enders out there, but I had no idea where they were, or even who they were. I felt completely alone even when I was surrounded by my friends.

It was almost as if I was trapped back inside my room, all alone with no one there for me. My foster parents didn't care about what I did, all they did was make sure I was fed so they wouldn't get in trouble and then ignored me completely other than that. They would tell me to go to my room and stay there; I was never welcomed outside. They didn't want to see me. I had no one else to share my problems with.