Untitled. 2

Everyone knows Stories don't exist. They're urban legends, something the newsfeeds discuss late at night when people want their hearts to pound a little bit. No one ever wants to admit it, but everyone's told or listened to a legend about Stories every now and then.
I think I grew up hearing about Stories more than the average person. Mostly because of my dad. He had an interest in Stories but unlike most people, he didn't care who knew about it. In fact, he broadcasted it. Lou and Ben got sick of it after a while I think but no matter how old I was, I was always dad's audience for Stories.
"No one knows what Stories really are," he told me. "All the usual legends about them are wrong but no one wants to listen to the truth. Ironic, isn't it?"
Dad's talks usually looped around like that. He'd tell me something he knew about Stories and then come back to how he was the only on who knew any of it. I once asked him where he found out all the stuff he knew. That might have been a mistake.
"Your mom," dad sighed with a faraway look in his eyes. "Your mom told me about it first." I didn't ask anything else. I had never met my mom but I knew dad didn't like talking about her.
Anyway, back to Stories. I liked listening to my dad talk about them, especially because they weren't what I had heard all my life. I liked the feeling that my dad and I shared a secret that the who world wasn't privy to know. I never thought there would be any truth to the secret though.
It happened some time when I was ten. I was right in the middle of a test at School and it was boring as usual. I had finished the test before everyone else so while pencils kept scratching around me, I doodled in the margins of my paper. I was so absorbed in doodling that I almost missed her.
One minute, the room was full of the dull hum of testing and the next...everything changed. I sensed a change in the atmosphere of the classroom, like a lively, inviting heat was radiating from the front of the room. I glanced up and that was the first time I saw Lithia.
She was lounging in front of the whiteboard, hands shoved in the deep pockets of her jeans, one knee bent as she rested her weight on her right foot. She tilted her head from left to right, surveying the room like she was deciding which wall she wanted to get rid of. She was older than me, I guessed about High School age. Her piercing eyes occasionally stopped on one of the other Students for a moment before moving on. She looked at the students strangely, I couldn't place what was strange about it but I got the feeling she was looking for something. What caused me to stare at her for so long though was her hair. It was snipped short in frizzles around her head and was the exact color of an apple from those posters they use to teach little kids colors. I was mesmerized by someone who was brave enough to wear their hair like that. That's why when she looked at me, our eyes happened to lock.
She held my gaze longer than she had looked at anyone else and I gazed back.
"Pfft, no way," she scoffed, broke my gaze and began strolling around the room.
My cheeks heated up and I felt my eyebrows knit together as I put my focus back to doodling. I tried my best to ignore her but it wasn't easy. She didn't make a sound as she moved slowly around the room but I could feel that same heat from whichever direction she was in. I refused to look at her again.
Suddenly, the heat was right behind me and I could feel her looking over my shoulder. I kept ignoring her. I could feel her studying the area just over my shoulder.
"Not sure if I'd call it art but whatever,"
She had said this to herself but I had heard it and it was the last straw for me. I whipped around in my chair and hissed, "If you don't like what I'm drawing, keep it to yourself."
She startled back as though I had smacked her. She stared at me now, really stared at me with complete confusion. I returned the heat she had given me with an equal stare.
"You're kidding," she said. "The first one I find is a kid?"
"Yes," I smirked having no idea what she was talking about. She blinked and opened and closed her mouth, seeming to have trouble forming words. Finally, she laughed.
"No way! That's not going to happen. Jeez, I should have turned around when I got here."
"What's your problem?" I demanded.
Her face became serious in an instant and she gained a more authoritative posture. "Listen, kid," she said. "You should think twice about talking to me. You don't want any of them to think you're crazy do you?"
"I'll talk to you if you're being annoying,"
She sighed. "You don't get it. Check out where you are before you do something stupid, kid. You'd just get me and yourself in trouble, I'm out of here."
I was about to snap back at her when I felt something else in the room, arrows pointing from the edges of the room straight at me. I looked around and realized every Student in the room was staring at me. Right after that, I realized that the girl with the dyed hair had vanished. I looked around the room for her but she was nowhere to be found, the door looked untouched. I gave one last glance to the kids around me before stiffly looking back at my test. The doodles in the margins seemed bolder than before as if they were yelling at me for doing something wrong.