Becoming- Everhart High Book one

Eyes Wide Open

I was still annoyed when I saw the boy. Ordinarily, I would have ignored the first year that darted around the corner, but the latest events prompted me to follow him. Who knew what was going on. Maybe keeping my guard up would help find out. When I rounded the corner we were in a hall with only a few rooms in use. He was standing with a blank expression on his face near the door to a classroom. I watched as faint blue rings moved away from his still figure. It took me only a second to realize they were sound waves. I rushed toward the eavesdropper, he stopped and tried to run when he heard me, I let him leave but not before carefully making sure he would be powerless for at least the rest of the day. Some powers were just prone to cause drama. Hearing powers were one of them.

I headed to class and cursed that it wasn't Friday, the day me and Kyle met to go over work. I headed to the library, preferring the solitude to work. "Hey, I know you" The voice behind me made me smile before I even saw the speaker.

"Vince!" He sat down next to me.

"So, what's the school's smartest girl doing today?"

"A sort of group project for history."

"Sort of? Lemme guess, some creep guy is ditching you with most of the project and off doing who knows what? Relatable." He grinned and grabbed the paper. "Not that I'm a genius, but hyper intelligence helps with school work."

"Oh, I almost forgot," He reached into his pocket, "I just got my schedule, I start tomorrow."

"Hey, we have History of Heroes together. Sweet. And the same lunch hour. Math together? I thought you said you weren't a genius?" I looked at the paper incredulously, very few people took the math I was in, they even struggled to find someone qualified to teach it.

"Well, I'm not. I'm smart enough but school has never been a priority, I only took that math because it's a challenge, not that it's been boring here." He grinned and nudged my shoulder.

The library was emptying out for passing time before I realized we had been talking for almost an hour. "Shoot, see you tomorrow, I really have to go."

"Bye, good luck with that project." He grinned and I looked down at the work I hadn't done.

I caught up with Kaylee outside. She had a whole story for me about Ben, her current most likable guy smiling at her.

"He smiled! Okay, he's totally the second best guy in the school, Kyle is probably better." She paused when he walked past. "Woah, he's mad, or something, I didn't get a clear reading. I wonder what's wrong."

"Whatever. He's a jerk anyway" I responded.

"Just because he's on the Sisu team doesn't make him bad. Ben's a sweetheart." That much was true, but what I wasn't telling her was what happened, or rather didn't happen last night. I left her and headed to my locker.

On my way, I remembered the powers I had taken from the boy in the hall. I tried to send the waves out in a ring around me. I was amazed at how powerful the sound was. I could hear every voice in the hallway. They buzzed together like static but were easy to pick apart. I could hear some girls talking and their voices had a melodic quality as if they were using autotune. Except for one, it sounded like hissing and grated my ears. I jumped to the next group, one of the boys' voices was gravelly and deep while the other was smooth and reminded me of velvet, I could almost feel it. I tuned in on group after group just listening to the new voices, I finally determined they must have something to do with personalities. I listened to a girl whose voice was earthy and another whose voice made me think of water, smooth and clear. I skipped past a boy whose voice had a metallic sound that hurt my ears, right into the worst voice I had ever heard. It hissed like a snake but worse than the girl, it wrapped around me and the voice seemed to suffocate me. I felt it in every sense, I could taste metal and the hissing surrounded me, I could feel the cold and I began to shiver but I couldn't stop listening. Then I heard what it was saying.