No Ordinary Girl

Chapter Thirty-Five

I snuck Leo up to our common room at around eight o'clock. I was still wearing my dorky uniform, while he was wearing the hottest plaid shirt I'd ever seen, and cool dark jeans with the silver chain hanging from his pocket. He looked a lot cooler than me, and I regretted not taking five minutes to slip into some jeans, and one of my rock bands t-shirts.

"It's a little tradition of ours," I explained as I buttered the toast. "Grab us some milk, will ya? You drink milk, right?"

He smiled. "Of course. I'm a growing boy."

I wondered if he had much more growing to do -- he was already about six feet tall. I didn't want him to grow taller. I was afraid that if he grew any more, I couldn't reach up to kiss him. Kissing him was still on my mind, obviously.

He pulled the milk carton from the refrigerator and poured some into the travel cup I handed him. "So you're pretty tight with your little sis."

"We are," I said. "How about you?"

He nodded. "Yeah, we're pretty close, too, but sometimes I feel like the odd one out. They outnumber me three to one."

"Are they all like you?" I asked. That was the common question when talking about siblings. Psychic powers are hereditary for the most part, but like anything else, like eye color, height, hair texture, just because one child inherits the gift, it doesn't mean their siblings will.

He put away the milk. "My sister Natasha is like me," he told me as we headed to the elevator.

"She goes to RAMS, too?" I asked, curious.

We stepped out of the elevator, and headed towards the tube. "She did... she's my oldest sister. She's eight years older than me and she's already married and working as a nurse. She chose a very normal life."

It did seem like such an ordinary life for such an extraordinary girl, but she was probably much happier for it. "She's happy?"

He nodded. "She seems to be," he beamed. "What about Kylie? Is she like you?"

"Not that we can tell so far," I told him. "For a lot of people, onset is at puberty. For me, it was much earlier, which is why I had so many problems. I was too small to process it all."

"Yeah, that would have been hard." he said." It started for me at around ten or eleven years old."

"I hope she never becomes like me," I said to him. "It's not all rainbows and flowers... you would know."

It was a gorgeous day. Walking through the tube was always spectacular, but never more so than on a gorgeous fall day. I wondered what it would look like on a snowy winter day.

"It's definitely overwhelming... wanting to help everyone, but not being able to. To run away from people, never being able to get a moment's peace. Your mind is always running at full speed."

"Tell me about it," he said. He understood me as well as Cedric. There weren't too many people who did.

I smiled. "Yeah, it's kind of annoying that I can sometimes foresee horrible events, and sense people's innermost conflicts, yet I can't tell if I have spinach in my teeth, or when my shirt looks awful with my pants. I need Alicia or my little sister for that."

He laughed. "Yeah, I can never tell if I'm going to crash into someone around the corner."

I smiled. "That happens to you a lot, doesn't it? I see you around the halls, you're always zooming off."

"What?! I don't like to be late."

I thought about Ace who always ran late, like he couldn't have cared less, like his time was more important than other people's. And there was Leo who was always punctual. I winked at him. "I like it. Punctuality is super sexy."