[right][color=f28500][h2]Jamie Drummond[/h2][/color][/right]
Jamie’s injured cheek glistened in the light with whatever cream the school nurse had plastered over it intensifying the grease, like suncream. It hurt – Agnelli had sharp nails, after all – but his mind was elsewhere, presumably with the anxiety gnawing at his chest. He bit his lip and held his tongue. His fraying nerves couldn’t take much more of whatever [i]this[/i] was, the whole supernatural phenomenon surrounding it, so he closed his mind off and thought of the sea, of warm ocean currents and beaches and soft shallows.

As always, Ash was sitting beside him on the bench for the seniors. They’d both come down from the same class after all, Art and Design. His knee brushed against hers and he managed a weak smile. Though he could pick out her worry from the mix more easily than he could his own. Assemblies always were dire, especially when they were surely about something bad – like death. Last year, the announcement that they had found Natalie’s body had gone much the same way: nightmarish, for an empath.

He figured it was something like that. Down somewhere in front of him, white flowers wilted into grey; the ozone crackled as it did before a storm; circus music turned into the mad Varsouviana and right up there with the teachers, Miss Standiford’s canvas was splattered with enigmatic blue ink, thick and opaque and meaning nothing at all. For anyone else, Jamie would consider that anxiety or sadness or fear, but he wasn’t sure his mentor was capable of any of those. And, if she [i]was[/i] – if she was just good at hiding them in the past – that was even worse, because what could possibly scare her now?

[b]”As many of you are aware, Arro Jenkins went missing Monday morning. I am saddened to announce she is gone forever. She was found today–”[/b] The pause meant nothing to Jamie but a needless building of tension. He already knew the answer, he’d known since yesterday. His schoolmates knew the answer. Even if the rumour mill hadn’t been circling (which it had), the whole thing was much too sombre for it to be anything else. [b]“Dead.”[/b]

Jamie kept his eyes pinned on Miss Standiford, who was sitting there with her brow furrowed and one hand holding her elbow protectively. The other reached up to touch her nose where sticky blood was collecting. She looked up in alarm. He had two seconds warning above everyone else. The psychically inclined were hit by it first. The world tilted sickeningly to the side before all hell broke loose.

Human beings weren’t designed for this. That was the thing about emotions: for some people, those he wasn’t concentrating on or those who were naturally muted, they drifted into the background to the point where Jamie could only hear a faint buzz from them. But this panic, this chaos, was a natural disaster itself. Feelings erupted from the room that only Jamie could unpick, and while he’d experienced similar situations before – a winning score at a football match that caused him to faint from jubilation; a sad funeral song that he just wouldn’t stop sobbing at – this time it was a [i]tad[/i] more difficult. If previous encounters were addition, this one was theoretical physics.

His body felt like it was burning before a boy a few rows down from him was set aflame. No, he set [i]himself[/i] on fire without matches or a lighter. Of course, he should have seen it.

One of the younger girls turned into a [i]dragon[/i], and Jamie wasn’t drunk enough to deal with that, yet. Sparks flew, everything was decidedly wet and the sweet, sickly scent of flowers bloomed around the gymnasium.

He saw his roommate from two years ago confirm his previous suspicions by crushing the edge of the bench with his bare hands. His panic was like a weight pressing down on Jamie’s spine before he shook his head and tried to move on.

Agnelli, a few seats over, cried out, [color=3dbd91][b]“No!”[/b][/color] And whilst his gaze slipped from her instinctively as if she weren’t even there, hidden behind a curtain, what he felt from her was worse than anything he had previously. Unconditional and unrequited, or doomed to be forever now. Because Amy Snow [i]was[/i] dead. Jamie pressed his palms to his eyes to hold back tears that were definitely not his own. After one more surge, he stuck his head between his knees to hold back the bile rising up, hooked a foot around Ash’s ankle to make sure she was still there and he [i]wasn’t[/i] going mad, and then let his consciousness slip away.

[hr]
But he found himself in a library. It wasn’t real; it was vast and incomprehensible. The titles of the books were in gibberish, the shelves towered to the ceiling – which Jamie couldn’t even see – and the hall stretched on and on to infinity. Some were being thrown from their shelves, others torn to shreds. Some bits and pieces of paper shoved themselves through the walls and floors, secrets to be dealt out to the students of Northwood.

And Jamie knew, he just [i]knew[/i] that this was Amy Snow’s doing.

One was stuffed into his hand, crumpled but no less there than he was. On it was a note in plain English. [b]You’re not supposed to be here[/b], it read. It was true, he shouldn’t. He half-expected this whole illusion to have something to do with both fainting and his empathy, which was on overdrive.

A few lines below, it read, [b]Don’t trust your mentor. You can keep an eye on her, but don’t trust her.[/b] Amen to that – Jamie didn’t trust Aveline Standiford as far as he could throw her, which was–

[hr]
He blinked back into a world turned topsy-turvy. Blood rushed to his head dizzyingly as he forced himself up. How long had he been out for–? It couldn’t have been more than a minute, not when the madness was still going on.

[color=f28500][b]“I need out of here,”[/b][/color] he muttered, and started to push his way along the bleachers towards the exit, his head pounding with the force of all sorts of thoughts and feelings.