Enlightened Part 2 - Chapter 35

Lauren sat in the cafeteria on Thursday with the rest of her homeroom classmates eating her favorite lunch but she could taste none of the normally delicious Mac & Cheese. Zach sat at the opposite end of the table from her and she couldn't stop her eyes from lighting on him for the umpteenth time during her meal. He wouldn't even look at her. He'd been avoiding her since they got back and he'd only ever answered her numerous texts with a "busy". She was starting to feel like a class "A"creeper, stalker girl, but how was she supposed to feel? She'd been ghosted, by her best friend. The worst part about it was that he was still right here. She wondered for the hundredth time what she could have done to make him hate her so much.

Her reverie was interrupted when Zach started to speak. She wished she could say that the sound of his voice didn't make her heart leap with joy in her chest, but if she did, it would have been a total lie.

Zach cleared his throat to get everyone's attention and turned to look her straight in the eyes. Lauren felt his electric blue stare all the way down to her toes; and admonished herself when like a complete dweeb she blushed furiously.

"Lauren would you do your thing?" he asked nonchalantly.

Lauren racked her brain to recall what her thing was. Looking like a moron when he had to clarify.

"You know your anti-eavesdropping thing."

Lauren's duh moment was profound and she blushed even more heatedly then when he'd looked at her. The words 'Stop it stupid before you make a complete fool of yourself' might have crossed her mind.

No friggin' way are you going to let that happen. She berated herself.

But when she finally tore her eyes away from Zach she realized that everyone was now staring at her like she had two heads.

It was at that time that she began to wish the floor would open up and swallow her whole.

"Oh" . . . yeah . . . right . . . that thing." she laughed nervously to try and hide her embarrassment about being caught staring at Zach and muttered the incantation.

Afterward, Lauren went back to dejectedly shoveling tasteless pasta back into her big fat piehole and staring at her plate like it was going to do a trick and she was afraid she would miss it.

"I've been thinking a lot about what happened this past weekend," Zach began, "and I know a lot of you know what I told the council's guard that I thought it wasn't necessarily politically motivated. The council seems to think that the attack was done by someone trying to derail the peace talks. I think it was something else."

Cam sat forward in his seat eagerly and asked, "Who do you think did it?"

"I'm not sure, but I can tell you what I do know, the night school kids had something to do with it."

"What makes you think that, why would they even care about a war between two fullblood tribes?" Marley asked as she spooned all her vegetables on to Liv's plate, while Liv spooned all her meat on hers.

"That's just it, I don't. I think they wanted to send a message to the council in the most brutal way possible." Zach continued.

"But why, if they're halfbloods like you think, why would they want to hurt us?" Meg asked.

"I've been racking my brain for a motif. What would they gain from hurting us, but then it dawned on me they don't care one way or the other. We were just collateral damage. They saw their chance to strike at the council by killing a couple of fullbloods and they took it."

"There's no way Brah that a couple of high school student's hatched an evil genius plan like that." Kyle interjected before stuffing an entire hotdog in his mouth.

"I agree with Kyle," Travis jumped in as he loaded the 3 hot dogs on his plate with the works, "even a fifth year would lack the magical cahoonas to put one over on the council and the guards"

"Do y'all even know what's in those things?" Kelly bit out with her deep southern drawl.

The look she gave the offensive wieners was laughable.

Kyle's reply around a mouthful of Oscar Meyer of, "Yummy goodness," actually made her gag.

Zach got them back on track by saying, "think about it guys," he gestured to them all, "That's what made it a perfect plan. The council wasn't prepared for something like that. They didn't have the kind of security screening they would have had at another event. It was a teenage dance for Heaven sakes."

"Okay say we buy into your theory," Quinn added," You can't seriously believe they could pull it off alone. Somebody else must have snuck adults in posing as teens."

"Yeah," CJ interrupted, "don't forget we live in a world were fullblood immortals can look like teenagers."

"Plus they wear masks, no?" Donnie added.

"No it was halfbloods for sure." Zach continued, "Delphi even said the five guys I saw leave where from the night school. "

"That brings us back to why." Connor said matter-of-factly from behind Brenna.

"Well it's gotta be about the way Halfblood are treated, don't you think?" Ryan pointed out, looking to Zach for confirmation.

"Even if we do figure out who did it. What are we going to do about it; inform on a bunch of Halfbloods that are trying to stick it to the council?"

Lauren took a deep breath as she saw Zach clench his jaw. She knew that look, and whatever he was going to say to Xander she was certain that Zach intended to rip him a new one. He grabbed the bridge of his nose before he began to speak. Oh yeah here it comes.

"Xander this wasn't 'guess who's nipple' on Instagram or a peaceful Occupy Wall street protest. They targeted us: now eight people are dead and they nearly killed twelve more. You can be damn sure I won't be 'informing on them', if I get my hands on them they'll be lucky to walk away." Zach growled.

Xander had the good sense to look shamefaced.

Kelly narrowed her eyes at him until they were nearly slits and stood up to say indignantly, "Now you listen here Noob. You can't talk to him like that."

Xander just took her arm and sat her down gently beside him and said," No he's right. They need to pay for what they did to us." He turned to Zach then and said," I'd like to help in any way I can."

"Me too," Quinn added, "I'm ready for a little payback." He rubbed his hands together gleefully with an evil grin on his face.

Brenna decided to be the voice of reason and spoke up," Zach I know you want to find the guys that did this, but we're never going to be able to do that unless we have a lot more to go on."

Lauren watched Connor look at Brenna like he thought she was the smartest girl on the planet and he was the president of her one man fan club. Oh God please don't let me start looking at Zach that way. That unrequited love thing is bullshit.

Liv spoke up and suggested, "Why don't we check the magic Library or ask our mentors if they might know why the kids attacked the dance. Someone has to know something. "

Lauren interjected excitedly then, "Zach and I have Clio's class this afternoon we can ask her if she knows anything and I can ask le Fay after training today."

She looked over to Zach to see him quickly turn away and thought:

Damn he doesn't even want to investigate with me

He cleared his throat and said reluctantly, at least it looked that way to her, "It couldn't hurt."

"Let's all ask around and we can let each other know what we found out tomorrow at lunch."Zach suggested

Quinn quickly added, "Tune in tomorrow SAME BAT-TIME, SAME BAT-CHANNEL," as the bell rang to signal the start of afternoon classes.

Everyone just groaned and threw their dirty napkins at him before clearing their trays and heading to class.

Tune in tomorrow where you will get to see the magic classes of Haven High through Lauren's eyes, and get a much closer glimpse of the other character's of the school.

********************THANKS FOR READING***************

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