GODS AND MONSTERS ↝ P. LAHOTE

[37]

Lark groaned at the sound of her alarm, reaching out and hitting the snooze button without so much as opening her eyes, desperately trying to savor the last few minutes of sleep before having to be up for school. While she was glad to be able to go back to school and begin to learn just what a normal life might feel like by their standards, she wished winter break could have been just a few days longer to collect her bearings.

"Lark, time to get ready for school!" Diane's voice drifted up the stairs from where her mother no doubt stood in the kitchen, cooking breakfast while getting ready for work.

"Coming!" Lark called, forcing herself out of bed and over to her closet to throw on a t-shirt and jeans along with her green cargo jacket, running a brush through her hair to what she eventually deemed as good enough.

Lark rushed down the stairs, backpack slung over her shoulder and she knelt down at the bottom of the stairs, picking up her sneakers and forcing them onto her feet as she hopped into the kitchen for breakfast. She snatched a piece of toast off the plate sitting in the center of the kitchen table next to where her father sat reading the newspaper, a cup of coffee sitting in front of him.

"All ready to head back to school?" Marcus questioned, looking up from his paper, and Lark shrugged in response, taking a bite from her piece of buttered toast.

"As ready as I'll ever be," she said as the sound of a car honking from outside sounded into the Hudson house. "That's my ride."

"Tell Alicia hi!" Diane called after Lark as she bid her parents goodbye, stepping out of the house into the pouring rain and running to her friend's car, holding her backpack over her head in an attempt to shield her from the weather.

"Good morning to you too," Alicia said with a smirk as Lark jumped inside the car, quickly shutting it behind her to keep out the rain, and the Swan girl handed her the other iced coffee cup sitting in the cup holder.

"Thanks," Lark said gratefully, taking a sip of the beverage as Alicia backed the car out of the driveway and onto the main road of Forks. "My mom says hi, by the way."

For Lark and her friends, "business as usual" had never quite meant business as usual. Their business as usual had always kept a door open into the unknown, however, at least for the moment, they seemed to have all the answers to their never-ending stream of questions. In comparison, Lark found that morning moving along painfully slowly, her mind now filled with chemistry questions and trigonometry equations rather than the lore she'd spent endless hours poring over that plagued her mind each night, trying to find answers to help the Cullen clan. Now, everywhere she looked she saw students rushing to greet one another, or friends laughing in the halls, rather than a family that was willing to sacrifice everything they had for one another.

By the time lunch came around, it was as if weeks had passed, rather than a mere four hours, but as she and Alicia stepped into the cafeteria that afternoon and spied the group sitting around their usual lunch table, her heart skipped a beat as her eyes landed on the boy sitting at the center of the table, a Forks High School visitor's pass pinned to the front of his shirt.

"There they are," Paul's voice carried through the cafeteria as the girls walked, Alicia hurrying ahead to hug Embry, and Lark took the empty seat between Paul and Leonora, rummaging through her backpack for her lunch box. "We were worried you'd miss us too much while you were here. It's a miracle the res school's letting us go off campus for lunch these days, right?"

"A total miracle," Lark said sarcastically, rolling her eyes as she leaned back against Paul, laying her head on his shoulder.

"Alright, so I talked to Ana this morning," Alicia began, taking a bite of her apple. "The rest of their..." she lowered her voice so as not to be overheard by the rest of the students in the cafeteria "...visitors left town this morning, so we're cleared to come hang out with her and Emmett after school."

"They're all gone?" Jared asked, breaking out into a wide smile. "I thought the air smelled fresher this morning. What a relief."

The group burst into fits of laughter as Alicia threw a chunk of her sandwich at Jared in response, who expertly caught it in his mouth with a smug, effortless grin, rather than letting it land in his hair, as was the girl's initial target. Paul himself began to applaud his best friend, reaching forward to give the boy a high five at his feat.

"Nice one, Cameron." Paul chided.

"So how do you guys feel?" Leonora asked, keeping her voice low for any of the eavesdropping ears. "Now that it's all over."

"It doesn't feel real, honestly." Embry admitted. "I feel like any minute now, I'll wake up and I'm back on that field."

"It's strange," Paul agreed. "Not being on high alert all the time, like we have been for so long now."

"I keep looking over my shoulder." Jared added. "Just waiting to see if any of them are lurking around."

"You've all earned this break." Leo assured the guys, and Lark and Alicia nodded in agreement. Leonora held up her water bottle in a toast, gesturing for their friends to do the same.

"Here's to the rest of our lives." she said.

"To the rest of our lives," they chorused.

"It's a shame you can't stay." Lark said to Paul as the bell finally rang to signal the end of the lunch period, and she and Alicia had offered to walk their friends to the exit before rushing off to their next class. "That you can't just transfer schools and get to hang around here every day."

"Me, go to the same school as you?" Paul asked, sounding shocked. "I don't know, Lark, the kids here might start to think you have a crush on me or something."

"How embarrassing would that be?" Lark agreed, chuckling as they bid their friends goodbye, Alicia claiming that, if they didn't make it to history class in the next minute, Mr. Harmon would have both their asses in detention for a week.

Lessons of the Revolutionary War and a cooking class in home economics could only do so much for the passing of time during Lark's afternoon, and when the bell rang to signal the end of the day she couldn't be on her feet and out of her seat quick enough. She rushed through the halls, eager to get to her locker to gather her things, and mentally cursing herself for her restlessness. She'd have to finally get used to being at her destination, and learn to take a breather from time to time rather than the constant  motion she'd grown accustomed to in the past months researching vampire hybrids and running with werewolves. A breather now that they were free to live their own lives, and simply be themselves.

Although, maybe her destination hadn't been a destination at all. Maybe it was simply a pause before Lark's next journey in the land of gods and monsters.

And boy, was a life in the land of gods and monsters a life worth living.