Walking With The Outcast

Chapter 2 - Lucilia

To most people, Mondays are the worst. You have to wake up at an early time after getting a lovely weekend respite from school. Then, you have to get ready to spend a whole day trying to learn, even though every part of you wants to go home and sleep. Yeah, most people don't like Mondays.

I guess I'm not like most people.

You see, Mondays are the same as every other school day to me. I just don't see a difference. It's true that I have to wake up early and walk to school, but I don't mind school. I'd go as far to say that I even like it most days.

Waking up on a school day with a smile is an average occurrence for me. I don't know why I wake up happy, especially since it's 5:15 in the morning. I guess I'm just ecstatic to be around so many people, even if I don't talk to them. Or maybe it's because I get to see him.

My heart pounds rapidly as I jog to the kitchen, paying special attention not to fall to the ground. After I eat, I again challenge myself to what I have dubbed the "step challenge". Then, upon entering my room, I go to my walk-in closet, grab a pair of dark jeans and a plain red t-shirt, and change. I skip to the bathroom, the smile on my face growing the closer it gets time to leave. Once my teeth are brushed and my hair is in a side braid, I grab everything I'll need for school and slip on my tennis shoes.

Closing and locking the door behind me, I begin my long journey to school. The walk itself takes about an hour and a half, hence the reason why I start it at six o'clock. Our town's only school begins at eight every morning, so I could leave at a later time and still be fine, but then I would have to give up walking with him. That's a horrendous idea. I thought to myself.

I remember the first time I glimpsed the "him" that overtakes my thoughts. It was when my family moved to this small, everyone-knows-everyone town. I was about eight or nine years old, and he was in my class. I never payed much attention to him then; I didn't really become friends with many people, especially not guys.

However, when rumors started spreading about him in high school, it was impossible not to know him, his reputation, and his possible criminal tendencies. So, I finally put a name to an unknown face: Ace Lancaster, the sheriff's son. A strange name for an equally strange boy. Though, I suppose based off of the rumors he can be a wild card sometimes. But they're rumors, speculation, the fantasies of girls with a liking to bad boys.

That was the first time I had heard of him, but that wasn't even close to the time I first met the bad boy. No, our meeting came when I was sixteen, almost seventeen, which was about a year ago. It was a few months after the night that scarred me, and we met in the most coincidental way: I was walking to school.

I used to get car rides from my parents whenever I wanted to go places or hang out with friends. That changed not long after the incident, like many other things in my life. As I was saying, we met when I was walking early to school. Normally, I would try to stall going to school for a long as possible. That time, though, I was choking, suffocating on the silence that enveloped me in the house that's no longer a home. My closing airways needed fresh morning air, or I knew that I was going to pass out. So, I left early and walked all the way to the crossroads that lets you go into the tiny town or into more farm and woodland that's practically uninhabited. I turned left and saw him.

He was a dark form in the distance, merely a shadow it seemed to me. I had never seen someone walk on that road, besides me. Seeing only his back, I couldn't determine his age, but by the smooth, unhindered gait, the perfect posture, and the defined back muscles, he didn't look old. To soothe my curiosity about the unidentified man, I continued my walk, which conveniently followed him all the way to school. At some points during the walking spy mission, I had needed to quicken my pace, his stride well past the length of mine. Luckily, I kept him in my sights the whole distance, and imagine my surprise, when our destinations were the same. I had never seen this man on my walks or in the school hallways.