Hiya! :-) 

So, here is chapter four in celebration of my being promoted to a monthly writer. YAY!! I'm so excited. After two years on Apricot Pie, this kinda feels like icing on the cake. ;-) *does victory and thank-you-all-for-reading-my-work-what-would-I-have-done-without-you dance* Oh, and also, I believe this is my 102nd post!! xD Which seems crazy.

So, thank you all who are reading Unsortable...thoughts, ideas, rants, and comments (of the critique-ish kind and the compliment-ish kind) are more than welcome. See any typos/misspellings?? Please let me know! Thanks!

-Homey

(P.S. If you have yet to read the first three chapters, they're up on my page!! :D)

Four: Conversation, Emotions, and What-They-Do.

@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }

            Caroline is quiet, blonde, and weird.

            There really are no other words to describe her. She watches me, knees tucked under her chin, as I unpack my clothes, fold them, and put them in drawers. She doesn’t say hello or wave or even smile. She just stares.

            I try not to look, but her eyes are creepy. They change colors abruptly, from dark green to sea blue, to orange, to pink, to red and back to green again. They seem to be swirling, so it kind of makes me dizzy to even look at them.

            At last, I sit down on a twin bed that I guess is now mine. We face each other.

            “I’m Kate,” I say after a short silence. “Or you can call me Kitty, or Kathryn. I don’t really care.”

            There is no answer.

            “What’s your name?” I try, even though I already know.

            Still no reply.

            “Well…it’ll be nice to room with you. At least you won’t be keeping me up half the night talking.” I laugh uncomfortably at my own joke, even though it wasn’t very funny in the first place.

            I don’t talk much.

            I sit up a little straighter as the words reach me. But they…didn’t…come from her mouth. I stare at her, perplexed, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

            Are you surprised?

            “…kind of,” I admit after a second’s silence. “Was that you?”

            She leans forward a little bit as she answers, I can communicate with you through your mind. It’s my only means of talking. I’ve never said a word.

            My eyes widen. “Can you talk?”

            She sighs. I really don’t know. I’ve never needed to try. This…it’s so much easier. All I have to do it stare at the person who I want to hear me and, BAM, they know everything I want them to.

            “Cool,” I decide after a moment. “That’s actually pretty awesome.”

            She picks at the red polish on her toenails. Why are you here?

            “Because…” I begin, thinking of how I should explain. “’Cause like most of you, I tried to run away, too.”

            Most regular-eyed people don’t feel that way.

            I sigh. “Maybe I’m not regular.”

            Caroline smiles. Maybe not.

            We “talk”, or at least I do, for several more minutes. Mainly I tell her about Lynda and Greg, Mom and Dad, and she tells me about her own family. I actually know them. The Petersons. Most of them have brown eyes, which means invisibility. Somehow, though, the gifts escaped Caroline and she ended up with this.

            No one really knows how it happens, she explains. We just kind of miss the mark, I guess. Genetically, something goes wrong, and we end up with gifts. Just not the kind that you normally see.

            The door opens and Endriss--I think?--peeks her head in. “Selena has dinner ready for us. Let’s go.”

            I stand up and start to head for the door, stopping when Caroline doesn’t follow.

            “Aren’t you coming?” I ask, turning to her.

            She just shakes her head.

            As Endriss and I descend down stairs, I ask her about Caroline.

            “Most times Miss Selena has to bring the food to her,” she replies. “Care-Bear--that’s what we call her--doesn’t move much. She’s really very quiet.”

            “Oh,” I say. “Okay.”

            We gather in a dining room, where a long table is set up. Trixie immediately comes over, pulling me to a seat beside her. After a brief shuffling of people, Connor ends up next to me, as brown-hair boy. He touches my arm.

            “What is it?” I say, but when I look at him, I’m facing Gregory.

            “Nice try,” I say with a laugh, scooting my chair closer to Trixie. She squeezes my hand sympathetically.

            “Dinner time!” A woman suddenly chirps, bursting through the French doors and into the room. I stare at her with surprise. She looks young, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, with a thick black braid tucked over her shoulder and descending just past the end of her ribcage. She’s thin in all the places she shouldn’t be, with an angular body but round, warm face. Overall, she’s very beautiful, if not a bit too bubbly.

            “You must be Kitty!” She exclaims, bustling over to me. I shake her hand. It is warm and smells like lotion.

            I gasp a little as she leans over and kisses my nose just a peck, and moves to do the same to Trixie. Connor grumbles a bit as she brushes her lips across his forehead, followed by Uruk.

            I watch, a little unsettled, as she moves from person to person, either kissing their noses or some other equally personal part of their face.

            She stands back when she’s done, away from the table, smacking her lips together. It’s all rather gross, and I lean closer to Trixie, ready to whisper in her ear. But I am interrupted as Selena speaks.

            “Wadell,” she says, looking at orange-eye boy. “You seem rather upset about something, dear, what is it?”

            “Nothing,” he mumbles, looking down.

            “Oh!” She pleads, reminding me of a little kid. She goes and touches his cheek. “Tell me sweetie, what’s wrong? Remember, we’re all here to help you.”

            He lowers his eyes. “Um…okay. I guess, I was upset, because my parents haven’t been to see me in over a week.”

            “Awe!” Many people exclaim, the majority of them girls. I find myself ‘awe-ing’ right along with him. I know how Wadell feels, or, at least I think I do. My own mother didn’t even say bye to me today.

            “What does Selena do?” I ask Trixie as the happy woman hurries from the room.

            “She tastes emotions.”

            My eyes widen. Will I ever get used to this?

            “Like…taste, tastes them?”

            Trixie lowers to head to the table, pressing her cheek against the cool wood. “Mmhmm…more or less. Sad is salty, happy is floral…depending on where she kisses you, she gets a stronger emotion. The noses are the strongest, for some reason, and the foreheads. That’s what she tells us. So does this every night, just to be sure we don’t have any feelings of unhappiness, so we won’t try to run away.”

            I stare around at the people around me before I speak again.

            “What happens if we try to escape?”

            When Trixie doesn’t answer, I know it must be bad. Really bad.

            “It’s not that bad,” a boy suddenly says. I turn to him, trying to recall his name.

            “What’s…not bad?” I ask.

            He smiles. “What they do to you.”

            Kiev glares at him. “Edgar, she really shouldn’t know.”

            Edgar. I shuffle the name to the back of my mind.

            “It’s okay,” I say helpfully, smiling at them both. “I’ve heard it all by now.”

            “Not this,” Connor says. I turn to him, frowning when I see pink-hair. For some reason, that ‘form’ just creeps me out. “This is bad.”

            “Won’t anyone tell me?” I ask, looking around the table.

            Trixie raises her head ever so slightly. Her eyes are flashing.

            “Fine. You want to know? They. Kill. Us.” With that, she scoots her chair back. We all cringe as it screeches against the hardwood flooring. She turns on her heel, sprinting from the room. We are silent.

            I look down at my hands, fumbling with my fork. Connor puts his hand on my shoulder. I don’t look up at him.

            “That’s a sore spot for Trixie, Kathryn. It’s nothing against you.”

            “Then why?” I ask, a little choked up. So far I’ve made one friend, and I already blew it. Wonderful.

            “Something…happened. A long time ago. To one of us.”

            I swallow, finally meeting his eyes. It’s not brown-hair or pink-hair or even old-guy I’m looking at when I see his eyes. It’s just him. Connor.

            Suddenly I’m throwing my arms around him, and I don’t even know why. I just want to hug someone, and he seemed so nice and…

            I pull away to find people staring at me, Connor included.

            “Excuse me,” I say abruptly, standing up. I drop my fork and jog from the room, keeping my head down. On my way, I bump into Josh. Literally.

            “Ouch!” I cry as I go sprawling across the floor. He grunts and rubs his arm, not offering to help me up. I huff my way into a standing position.

            “You might want to be a little less klutzy,” he snaps, running a hand through that green-black hair of his. It reminds of Halloween.

            I don’t answer him, just start to shrug past. Suddenly, I stop, and spin around.

            “What do you do?”

            He studies me a good while before speaking. “It’s nothing special.”

            “I showed you.”

            He smiles wryly and steps back, holding out his hand. Suddenly, the hall that was so filled with light before goes completely black. From above me, light bulbs pop and shatter, sending sparks and glass raining down on us.

            The window in front of us doesn’t let in any sun, and I realize it is nighttime. The moon is shining, just enough for me to see Josh’s face. He’s not smiling.

            “They won’t be happy with me now,” he mutters, pushing me to the side. I stumble before falling back down onto my bottom. But I don’t care. What he’s just showed me--what I’ve just seen--is actually really cool. I grin at him.

            “Thanks, Josh, for showing me that.”

            He shakes his head a little, more to himself than me. “Yeah, whatever.”

            And with that he’s around the corner, taking a little piece of magic with him.