Nothing Super [COMPLETED]

Chapter 5 - "I'm not alone."

Taylor placed her coffee cup inside her locker and dropped her backpack to her feet. Around her, the clang of lockers, the rise and fall of conversations interjected with laughter was a dull roar in her ears.

Slipping off her jacket, she shoved it inside her locker, on top of her teetering line of textbooks. Her body ached from the day before but Taylor did her best to ignore it, adding it to the list of things she couldn't focus on.

Without warning, a girl appeared by her side. The girl was thin as a pole with almost translucent skin, wispy whitish blonde hair and a pair of glasses that were taped on one side.

"Hi, I'm Bailey," she said, her voice as airy as the realm she seemed to have escaped from.

Without responding, Taylor went back to sifting through her textbooks.

"We have physics together," Bailey went on.

"I'll take your word for it," Taylor said, managing to dislodge her copy of Pride and Prejudice from the group.

Bailey fidgeted and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, which escaped a second later.

"I wanted to warn you about Elena," she said.

Frowning, Taylor faced the girl.

"Who?"

"The girl you embarrassed yesterday."

Taylor dropped to a crouch, stuffing the book into the confines of her cramped backpack.

"I didn't embarrass anyone yesterday," she said.

"The girl who was talking to Dominic."

Finding a tinge of annoyance in the circular motion of the conversation, Taylor paused and tilted her head up. The angle only accentuated the slight frame of the girl.

"I asked her to give me a minute to talk to Dominic," she said.

Bailey offered a vague shrug of her shoulders as if she didn't see the offense either.

"Well, it's going around that she's going to return the embarrassment."

"Okay." Taylor dropped her gaze, ejecting the information from her mind. "Thanks for the warning."

Bailey shuffled her feet as if more words were trapped inside, but instead of speaking she spun away and was swallowed by the crowd. Taylor's eyes flickered to the retreating figure, before falling back to the task at hand. Sliding her backpack onto her shoulders, she snatched her coffee and batted the locker door closed.

As Taylor cut around a group of rowdy boys, Dominic popped up in front of her. Startled, she jerked to a halt, her coffee sloshing out of the opening. She jumped back, hoping to avoid the worst of the spill.

When she looked down to access the damage, she was surprised that there were no stains on her open flannel shirt, her white tank top beneath, or her pants. She raised her head and found Dominic watching her as he brushed his hand on the side of his jeans like he was wiping something off.

"Got a minute?" he asked.

Taylor let out a sigh, it was too early to deal with one of her top problems. Though awake and her mind relatively clear, saying she was up for dealing with this issue was like saying since she was standing on two legs she could run a marathon. Still, it was a problem that had to be handled.

"Sure."

She followed as Dominic led them to a storage closet and closed them inside. This particular closet had a strong scent of paint, the array of tin cans on the shelves acting as the source. The pair took spots opposite each other.