Chapter 16 I stay with myself
The weekend passed by uneventfully. Izabella managed to rest and she actually focused on her school work. The last thing she wanted to happen was for them to expel her because she was a bad student or unable to catch up to the others. Zeadore Academy had very high standards and it already happened that students were expelled due to their inability to keep up. This meant that they weren’t worthy of the attention the Academy awarded to only the best.
On Monday morning, Izabella finally felt like she was ready. It’d been a week since she’d been there and even though she didn’t manage to obtain any information regarding her brother or the book, she was hopeful that by attending the Witches’ Sabbath on Halloween, she might learn something new, something which might show her the way.
Her Monday classes were easy and she was extremely attentive during every single one of them, answering the questions her teachers asked with elaborate explanations, which left quite an impression on them. She was surprised to realize how much she’d missed this aspect of her life, just going to school, like every other kid, not thinking whether she needed to be somewhere else, saving helpless humans from vampire attacks. She enjoyed learning more about the things she liked, such as literature, geography and history, as well as the things she knew less about. Brandon had been doing a great job home schooling her but the experience simply couldn’t be substituted with anything other than the real thing. She was just like everyone else here. Not better, not worse. They were all the same and this feeling, even though it was a fleeting one, felt soothing.
By the end of the day, Izabella didn’t really feel all that tired. She was thinking of
maybe going to the botanical garden, hoping to stumble into Thorne again. She’d enjoyed talking to him, even more than she should have.
As she slammed her locker door soundly, a familiar face popped up.
“Hey you!” Reeba chirped with a sweet voice. “You up for a walk around the lake?”
“Actually, I’ve been thinking of going to the botanical garden.”
“Botanical garden? Why?” Reeba asked.
“I like it there,” Izabella shrugged her shoulders. It was true. “And besides…”
But, she wasn’t allowed to continue, because a new face emerged from the crowd, squeezing itself between Izabella and Reeba. Izabella had no idea who he was, but he was already leaving a bad impression.
“You, scram,” the guy said, pointing his finger at Reeba.
Izabella immediately frowned, getting ready to kick this guy to the curb but before she could say anything, Reeba bowed her head down and disappeared.
“Well, now that I’ve got you alone…”
The guy leaned onto the lockers, blocking her path. He was grinning at her, a row of perfect pearly whites, with a smile to die for. His hair was the latest fashion scream from any hairstyle magazine, with every single hair in place. His skin was glowing. Izabella thought he was probably one of those guys who never goes to bed without hydrating his
skin first. She hated his kind.
“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” he was flirting with her shamelessly.
“Oh, really?” she couldn’t think of anything else to say, which wouldn’t make her sound too pissed off. He was already making a horribly bad first impression and it was only going downhill.
“I’m Raphael,” he cooed, “and I swear, you’re the prettiest girl in the whole school.”
Izabella burst out laughing so loudly, that a few students turned around to see what was going on.
“Don’t tell me that actually works?” she frowned, disbelief written all over her face in permanent ink.
“You’d be surprised,” he grinned.
“No, I’d be an idiot,” she corrected him and he actually smiled genuinely this time.
He looked almost likeable without that arrogant grin on his face, when he was just smiling like a normal person. She wondered why he couldn’t be like this all the time.
“Lucy, right?” he asked.
“Mhm,” she replied.
“It’s always nice to see some fresh blood here, especially this beautiful.”
“Oh wow,” she nodded, “actual gradation. I’m guessing by the end of this unpleasant conversation, I’ll be gorgeous?”
“You can be gorgeous now, if you want,” there was that grin again as he spoke and he went back to just being a jock douchebag.
Of course, she recognized now who he was. The whole school knew him.
Raphael Ferranti.
With a name like that, he didn’t even have to be hot but he was. Despite her unwillingness to do so, Izabella had to admit to herself that he really was the epitome of a handsome guy. A Renaissance God. It was like Da Vinci painted him and then Raphael just effortlessly walked out of his painting and into real life but she would be damned if she’d ever say such a thing to him. His head was already too high up in the clouds and he was talking like he owned the whole damn school and everyone in it. So annoying.
“What I really want now is to be gone,” she told him. “Could you please move? I’ve got places to be.”
She could see from the look on his face that he didn’t expect this. No one ever talked to the awesome Raphael Ferranti like that. Everyone melted at the very mention of his name, let alone at his actual presence. Well, she wasn’t impressed and she was about to punch him in the face for being so rude to Reeba just now. Who did this guy think he was? Asshole.
“Yeah, sure,” he moved a second later, sounding a little confused by what had just
happened as if it took his brain some effort to figure it out.
“Catch ya later!” he said, a little too loudly, apparently so that those around him could hear that he was still in full control of the situation.
So pathetic. She snorted as she walked past him, pushing him to the side aggressively with her shoulder. She hated guys like that. Cocky, asshole, pretty boys who thought they owned the world. A part of her actually hoped he had something to do with Dante, just so she could kick his ass. She didn’t want to kill him. No, that’d be too harsh. She’d just like to slap him around a little, to teach him a lesson, never to treat any woman like she was a plaything.
As she walked down the hallway, she knew he was watching her. She had learned to recognize that burning sensation on the side of her head, a heatwave that arose from a simple stare that was hot enough to burn a hole in her head. It was a skill she desperately needed in her line of work: awareness of a gaze. It had saved her life more than once.