Maeve 🌹
My world had shrunk to the two feet of black laminate countertop separating me from a diagram of a cell nucleus. Or, it should have. In reality, my world had shrunk to the six inches of space between my arm and the girl who had just sat down beside me.
My pencil was frozen over the page. The wolf I was drawing suddenly looked pathetic, a cartoon. How could I draw monsters when a real one was sitting right next to me, smelling of cold night air and something ancient, like stone and winter?
"Is this seat taken?"
The question was a velvet rope dropping in a silent room. My throat closed up. I managed a pathetic little shake of my head. My heart was a trapped bird beating against my ribs, a frantic, desperate rhythm that I was sure she could hear. I was sure the whole room could hear it.
"Wonderful," she said, and the word was a death sentence and a love poem all at once.
She moved onto the stool not like a person, but like smoke. There was no scrape of the legs on the floor, no rustle of fabric, no awkward shifting. One moment the stool was empty, the next she was there, a queen on a throne, her posture impossibly perfect.
I felt her gaze on my sketchbook. My cheeks burned with a shame so hot it was painful. These drawings were my secrets, the weird, dark things I kept locked inside. Her seeing them felt like she had peeled open my skull and was looking directly at my brain.
"You have a talent," she said, her voice a conspiratorial whisper that slid under the drone of Mr. Banner's lecture. "You see the world for what it is. Not many people do."
My hand flew to close the book, a purely instinctual reaction to protect myself. But her finger was there, a touch as light as a snowflake and as heavy as a gravestone, holding the page open. I snatched my hand back, a phantom chill spreading up my arm from where she'd almost touched me.
"Don't hide it," she murmured, and the gentle command in her voice made me shiver. "Not from me."
For the next hour, the world outside our table ceased to exist. Mr. Banner's voice was a meaningless buzz. The occasional question from a classmate was a distant echo. My entire universe was the terrifying, magnetic presence beside me. She didn't look at the teacher once. Her focus was entirely on me.
"What's your favorite monster to draw?" she asked, her black eyes fixed on my face.
"I... I don't know," I stammered, feeling like an idiot. "The... the ones with too many eyes, I guess."
"Why?" The question was simple, but her intensity made it feel like the most important question I'd ever been asked.
"Because they can see everything," I whispered, the answer surprising even me.
A slow, devastating smile touched her lips. "I understand that."
She kept asking me things. Simple things. My favorite color (black, like her eyes). If I liked the rain (yes, because it made everyone else stay inside). Each question was delivered with the focus of a scientist studying a rare specimen, and with every answer I gave, I felt more and more seen. More and more exposed. It was the most terrifying and exhilarating experience of my life.
At one point, while pretending to take notes on the difference between ribosomes and mitochondria, I risked a real look at her. Not a panicked glance, but a proper, cataloging stare.
I knew what beauty was supposed to look like. I saw it every day in the halls. There was the intimidating perfection of Rosalie Hale, a girl so flawless she seemed like she was carved from ivory by some mythical artist. Her beauty was something you saw in a museum, behind a velvet rope—symmetrical, classical, and untouchable. Then there was the more common, accessible beauty of girls like Lauren Mallory. It was a trendy, manicured thing, crafted with expensive products and a desperate need for approval, the kind of beauty plastered all over magazines and Instagram feeds. It was loud and bright and designed to be seen.
Duvessa was different.
Her beauty wasn't safe or aspirational. It was dangerous. It was in the razor-sharp line of her jaw, the cruel, elegant curve of her lips, the absolute, light-swallowing black of her eyes. Rosalie Hale was a statue; Duvessa was a panther. You could admire the statue, but the panther made the hair on your arms stand up. Her beauty wasn't something to be admired from a distance; it was something to be survived up close. It was a living, breathing thing, a gravitational pull that promised to tear you apart if you got too close.
And God help me, I wanted to get closer.
I traced the line of her profile with my eyes, from her smooth, pale forehead to the sharp angle of her chin. She was perfectly still, more still than any living person had a right to be. She wasn't breathing. I realized it with a sudden, cold jolt. She hadn't taken a single breath since she sat down.
"You're staring, Maeve," she murmured, her voice a low vibration that seemed to travel through the table and up my arm. She didn't even turn her head.
My head snapped back to my notebook so fast I think I pulled a muscle. My face was on fire. My heart, which had settled into a merely frantic rhythm, kicked into a full-blown panic. She knew. She knew I was watching her, dissecting her, and she wasn't angry or annoyed. She sounded… amused.
A cold dread and a secret, thrilling warmth bloomed in my chest. She saw everything. Just like the monsters in my drawings.
The blush that had been a fire on my cheeks became a full-body inferno. I was certain I was glowing red, a human heat lamp in the cool, sterile classroom. My own body felt clumsy and loud in comparison to her impossible stillness—the frantic beat of my heart, the hot rush of blood in my ears, the shallow little puffs of air I had to keep taking. She didn't seem to need air at all.
I expected her to mock me, or at least to turn away, her point having been made. Instead, she shifted on her stool, a movement so subtle and silent it was more like a shadow lengthening than a person moving. The few inches between us shrank to one. I could feel a strange, radiating coolness from her skin, a stark contrast to my own feverish heat. The air between us grew thick and heavy, charged with a silent current. Her scent intensified—that clean, cold smell of winter stone and something wild, like the air after a lightning strike. It was a scent that made me want to close my eyes and just… breathe.
"I don't mind," she murmured, and her voice was not just sound, but texture—like running my fingers over cool, smooth velvet in a dark room. "Tell me what you were looking at."
It wasn't a question. It was a demand wrapped in silk. My mind went completely blank. *Her eyes. Her lips. The fact that she's not breathing. The fact that she's the most beautiful and terrifying thing I've ever seen.*
"Your... your hair," I finally managed to choke out, the lie tasting like ash in my mouth. "It's very dark."
A slow, knowing smile played on her perfect lips. She knew I was lying, but she accepted the tribute anyway. "It is. Do you like the dark, Maeve?"
The way she said my name was a physical sensation. It wasn't just a label; it was an arrow, shot from her lips directly into the core of me.
"Sometimes," I whispered, my eyes fixed on the meaningless scrawls I was making in my notebook. "It's quiet."
"It is," she agreed. "Everything honest happens in the dark." She leaned a fraction of an inch closer, and I had to fight the instinct to either bolt from my seat or simply melt into a puddle on the floor. Her voice dropped even lower, a conspiratorial secret meant only for me. "What about the rain? You said you like it. What does it feel like to you?"
No one had ever asked me a question like that. To my parents, rain was an inconvenience. To other kids, it was a reason to cancel plans. It was just weather. But her question assumed it was more than that. It assumed *I* was more than that.
"It feels..." I struggled for the words, my gaze drifting to the window where the sky was a flat, boring grey. "Like the world is being washed clean. Like for a little while, everything gets a fresh start."
"A fresh start," she repeated, savoring the words as if they were a fine wine. "And do you feel like you need one?"
My breath hitched. The question was too sharp, too close to the bone. It saw right through the quiet, weird-girl facade to the lonely, aching thing underneath. I couldn't answer. I just stared at my notebook, my knuckles white where I gripped my pencil.
I felt her shift again, and then her hand was on the table next to mine. She didn't touch me. But it was close enough that I could feel the absence of heat from her skin. She slowly traced the wood grain of the table with a long, elegant finger, her nail a perfect, pale crescent. I watched the movement, mesmerized.
"You're afraid," she stated, not unkindly. It was a simple observation. "You're afraid of me. But you're not *only* afraid, are you?"
My heart hammered a frantic, traitorous rhythm against my ribs. *No,* it seemed to beat. *No, I'm not.*
"I saw your drawing," she continued, her voice a hypnotic caress. "The woman with stars in her eyes. Is that how you see me?"
I finally found the courage to look at her. Her black eyes were vast, endless. There were no fluorescent lights reflected in them, no image of the classroom. It was like looking into deep space. I felt a dizzying sense of vertigo, as if I could fall into them and never be found again.
"I don't know what I see," I confessed, the words barely a whisper.
"Then let me help you," she said. Her smile was a slow, dark promise. "Look closer."
The bell shrieked, a brutal, ugly sound that shattered the spell. Chairs scraped, people started talking, and the mundane world came rushing back in. I flinched, my whole body jolting as if from an electric shock.
Duvessa rose in a single, fluid motion. For a moment, she just stood there, looking down at me, her expression unreadable. Then, she turned and walked away, disappearing into the stream of students leaving the classroom.
I remained frozen on my stool, my heart pounding, my skin tingling. The air where she had been still felt cold. My hand was still resting on the table, next to the space where hers had been. The biology lesson was over, but I felt like my own personal dissection had just begun.
If biology was a focused, silent dissection, then seventh-period gym was a chaotic, brutal autopsy. The girls' locker room was an assault of noise and smells—the clang of metal doors, high-pitched gossip, the cloying fog of cheap body spray failing to mask the scent of sweat.
I changed in a corner, my back to the room, a familiar ritual of self-preservation. I was an island. I'd been the "weird, quiet girl" for so long that the other girls' avoidance was as natural as breathing. But it was different now. Before, I was just an oddity they ignored. Now, since the Cullens arrived and Duvessa had… claimed me, in a way… I was an object of intense, suspicious scrutiny.
"I don't get it," I heard Jessica Stanley whisper, not quietly enough, from two rows over. "She doesn't even wear makeup. It's like she's not even trying."
"Mike thinks she's hot," Lauren Mallory added, her voice dripping with disdain. "He says she has 'tragic artist vibes'."
A snort of laughter. "She's just tragic."
I pulled on my faded grey t-shirt, the words stinging more than they should have. They weren't wrong. But the sting was dulled by the memory of Duvessa's voice. *Tell me what you were looking at.* She hadn't cared about my clothes or my lack of makeup. She had looked past all of that and seen… me. The part I kept hidden in sketchbooks.
The gym itself was a cavern of echoes, the squeak of sneakers on polished wood a constant, grating soundtrack. Today's activity was dodgeball. A game that was less about sport and more about a socially-sanctioned opportunity to inflict pain and humiliation.
When it came time to pick teams, Mike Newton and a jock named Tyler Crowley were captains. The popular kids went first, then the athletic ones, then the friends of the athletic ones. I was, as always, one of the last dregs left standing under the fluorescent lights, a human participation trophy. Mike finally called my name with a sigh, his eyes flicking over me with a mixture of pity and clumsy attraction.
"Alright, Maeve, you're with us. Just… try to stay out of the way."
The game started with a whistle's blast and a mad scramble for the red rubber balls. I immediately retreated to the back line, my default position in any social situation. My goal wasn't to win; it was to become invisible.
Mike was in his element, a golden retriever in human form, all boundless energy and loud encouragement. He was the star of our team, whipping balls across the center line with surprising speed. A few times, he glanced back at me, a hopeful, expectant look on his face. "C'mon, Maeve, get in the game!"
I just gave a weak, noncommittal shrug. How could I explain that the chaotic blur of flying balls and shouting teenagers felt like a different, more boring kind of hell than the one I'd just been in? My mind was still back at that black lab table. *Everything honest happens in the dark.*
Jessica, on the other team, made a point of aiming for me twice. Both times I managed a clumsy, last-second sidestep, the ball smacking against the wall behind me with a loud *thwack*. She glared at me, annoyed that I'd even bothered to move.
Eventually, inevitably, it was just me and Mike left on our side. He was a whirlwind of motion, dodging and throwing. I was a statue in the back corner. The other team, smelling blood, advanced in a solid wall, all their attention focused on him.
"Maeve! I need some help here!" Mike yelled, ducking a low throw.
But I was gone, lost in the memory of black eyes that held galaxies. *Is that how you see me?*
The world came rushing back in a flash of red rubber. I saw it coming but my body refused to react. It was thrown by Mike, aimed at one of our opponents, but it was deflected, sending it spinning wildly in my direction. It hit me squarely in the thigh with a dull, stinging impact. It didn't hurt much, but the shock of it was profound.
"You're out!" someone shouted.
The other team cheered. Mike threw his hands up in frustration before jogging over. "Oh, uh, sorry about that, Maeve. You gotta keep your head in the game."
I just stared at him, at his flushed, sweaty, perfectly normal face. He was smiling, trying to be nice. He was everything a girl was supposed to want—popular, athletic, handsome. And I felt nothing. Less than nothing. An absolute, hollow void.
I walked to the sidelines, the sting on my leg already fading. I sat on the cold, hard bench, wrapping my arms around my knees. I was surrounded by people, by noise and life, and I had never felt more utterly, completely alone.
And for the first time, I realized with a terrifying clarity that the monster's attention was better than no attention at all.