Keep Calm

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

An hour has passed since she placed her palms against mine, and we have gotten nowhere. I was starting to think my magic was broken and that's without some of the blame going too my rapidly beating heart. I was convinced that inside of me, I must have the spirit of a racing horse.

"Okay, this isn't going to go anywhere if you don't stop thinking." Selena suddenly spoke up.

I jumped at the sound of her voice and opened my eyes to stare at her.

"Haven't you learned anything from me since I got here? The first thing you should have done was shut down and let your body adjust too its surroundings. Your body will slow down it's blood circulation on its own if you would just give it the chance. Understood?"

I blinked twice before smiling apologetically.

"Honestly, you might as well be speaking Greek too me." I admitted.

Sighing, Selena pulled her hands from mine and rubbed at her temples. She mumbled a few curse words. Finally she lowered her hands into her lap and looked at me again.

"Okay, let's try this another way." She acknowledged. "Have you ever been to the beach?"

"No."

She furrowed her eyebrows.

"Damn, your father must have been overprotective to keep you from something like that."

I just arched up an eyebrow at her words.

Didn't we already pass over that subject before?

"Okay, have you ever been mountain climbing?"

When I shook my head, her face dropped a little.

"Hiking?" She asked hopefully.

"No, never before." I answered. "I did go running once, but that was before I jumped off the cliff of a mountain." I added helpfully.

"Yeah, that's not exactly what I'm looking for..." She trailed off.

Leaning back against the wall, she assessed me critically. She started chewing on the inside of her cheek, pulling her face into a rather awkward angle. Eventually, she just straightened out again and leaned over with intense eyes focused on me.

"When you were younger, you must have been scared of something at one point?" She asked. "I'm not talking about a small fear, like for spiders or something like that. I'm talking about an event taking place that had an irrational effect on you. Something that made you run away and hide?"

I thought about it for a moment, coming up blank.

"There was that one time..." Annabelle trailed off behind me.

I turned to face her, for once, not glaring but waiting for her to continue.

"We were twelve at the time." Annabelle started, looking a little uncertain. "We were talking about boys we were crushing on when Jasmine, Zach's girlfriend back then, walked into the room and started laughing at us. She heard when you said the name of your childhood crush and started mocking you, threatening to tell..."

She trailed off, glancing over at her brother uncertainly.

Nodding, I picked up the story where she left off. Instead of looking at Zach, who was now more than a little confused, I turned and made eye contact with Selena.

"Jasmine heard me telling Annabelle that I had a secret crush on Zachary back then." I stated. "She walked off, saying that she was going to tell Zach about it and I turned tail, scared out of my mind."