It's now the first Monday after Iona has been grounded. She spent her weekend working on catching up on the work she missed on Friday, which for the record only took her three hours on Saturday morning. She then sat down and got a head start on the projects she needs to do this term. In between watching videos on her phone, and reading this took up the rest of her weekend. This is all discounting the number of times she got up and stared out of her bedroom window only to be met by his closed curtains. Having done everything she could for school she had Sunday night to herself. So she curled up on her window seat and read while once again looking across and hoping that he would open his curtains.
Jack on the other hand spent his weekend trying to be as busy as possible. Doing everything from cleaning up around the house to catching up on every bit of homework he missed or just didn't do during the week. All while he tried desperately hard not to open his curtains and talk to her again. He tried to write down the things he'll tell her if her dad will ever let him speak to her again, but even that doesn't go all that well for him.
Our poor protagonists have had a pretty miserable weekend made worse by them both being grounded and left with little but their thoughts. Luckily for them, it's Monday and that means school and that means they're allowed to leave the house again. This time Iona is up and ready in time and climbing into her dad's car by the time Jack is making breakfast for everyone.
This, just as Jack planned, means that he only arrives at school five minutes before the bell rings. Just enough time to move to the other side of the classroom without Iona being able to move as well.
Throughout the day she tries to talk to him but alas he is very very good at keeping his word. Now you should know that it's killing him not being able to talk to her or get too close to her. Moving to sit on the other side of their classrooms. Even their Maths class despite Mr. Miller's rant about no one moving desks. He managed to move in every single shared class except for study. Once again you should know that this is the only way he can stop himself from breaking his promise to her dad. He knows that if he's just a little bit closer to her he won't be able to stop himself from talking to her or from using their Link.
You see dear reader the more time an Esper spends with their Link the stronger that link becomes. Some couples who have spent years upon years together form bonds that run so deep that their Links thoughts are almost indispensable from their own. Which, at first is strange and for some, it takes a long time to get used to but every single Esper always says that they would rather share their Links thoughts than to be separated from their Link for longer than a day.
So to stop their Link from becoming stronger now, to stop her from feeling as much pain as he can, Jack is doing everything he can to make sure that he doesn't strengthen that bond. At least for now he knows that he needs to keep his word. Her father needs to see that he's doing his best not to do anything that might go against him.
It's third-period English and the lesson hasn't started yet. The class is a buzz with chatter. Iona isn't in the mood to really try to make friends today. As always the whole class goes quiet as Jack and his two friends enter the room.
'Why is it so hard to ignore him, even when he's ignoring me?' Iona wonders as she takes her books out. Jack watches her. His face is as blank as he can keep it. She makes eye contact with him for a second and she can feel her face flush. She quickly drops her eyes to her work angry that he saw her looking for him, angry that he was looking at her, angry that he's still avoiding her. 'Well if he's ignoring me then I'm going to ignore him!'
She buries herself in the homework that the teacher left up on the board. The teacher in question hasn't arrived yet for reasons which are better left to the imagination.
"Hey, Iona right?"
At the sound of someone actually talking to her, Iona looks up from her notebook where she's been writing every angry thought about Jack down in.
"Yeah, hi..." She smiles at the boy she recognizes as that-other-guy-who-was-in-the-nurses-office-on-Friday.
"I'm Jesse." He holds his hand out to her as he balances his books in his other hand.
"Nice to meet you, Jesse."
"Mind if I sit here?" he asks putting his things down on the desk next to her where Jack desperately wants to be. Jack is watching all of this play out and he's trying really hard not to move over to the seat so that Jesse can't sit next to her.
"No, not at all," Iona says shaking her head as the teacher finally shows up.
"Cool," he whispers as he sits down taking his books out. The class is finally completely quiet.
Their teacher looks a little flustered and like he ran to class, addresses them, "Good morning class."
"Good morning Sir." the class responds in perfect unis.
"Okay class open your books to page 307 and why don't we have someone tell us what happened in the chapter you had to finish last night." He carries on the lesson ignoring the half-dead responses of his class.
"Come on guys. Did anyone other than Richard actually do it?" he says referring to the only person in the class with his hand up.
'You should take part. We both know you did it last night. Yes inner me I did but then I what would be the fun in that.' Iona starts the internal conversation that gets her through these lessons. She knows that Jack did it last night. She could hear him reading Animal Farm out loud to his brother, and just like that her thoughts are back to him and she stares off into the distance allowing him to fill her mind for a moment.
"Miss Blake did you or didn't you do the homework?" The sound of the teacher's voice forces her back down to reality.
"Oh sorry, Sir." She looks frantically down at the notes she made while listening to Jack read.
"Well did you?" He asks annoyed at the whole class. It makes me wonder why he's even a teacher. Then again what do I know about what drives you, humans, to do anything?
"Yes. Sorry yes, I'll recap now." Ina says as she goes on to retell what happened in the story for all those who didn't do the reading.
The lesson carries on and by the time she's done, there's a note on her desk. She looks over to Jesse and he just smiles at her.
It reads: Have lunch with me today? With a multiple-choice 1 no, 2 yes, 3 maybe.
She smiles at the note and she's tempted to tick 3 when she hears another voice in her head causing her to freeze.
'Choice 1. Say. No.'
'What was that.'
'Don't sit with him.'
Jack forces himself not to look at her while he breaks the rules he set for himself. Iona goes quiet trying to match the voice to its owner because that's better than believing that she's going crazy.
'It can't be Jack.' She rebukes herself for even thinking that she really heard someone else's voice in her head. 'I've just been thinking about Jack a lot. That's all this is. Jack doesn't seem like he would want me to sit with him so I'm just hearing those thoughts in his kind of voice or something. There's no such thing as telepathy in real life.' She tries to convince herself.
'Awe, come on you know that that's not true, but that's not important right now. Look you just have to trust me on this. Don't sit with him.'
'I'm going crazy.' Iona thinks to herself, and can you blame her, 'I've completely lost it. One weekend in my room alone and I've lost my mind!'
'You're not crazy. This isn't going to make any sense but you really shouldn't be around this guy. Please just trust me. He's bad news. Don't let him hang around you.'
Iona stays quiet as she tries to ignore him. It's defiantly a guy's voice. She's convinced of that much at least and as far as she can tell the voice isn't coming from inside her own head. The voice respects the silence. Of course, we know the voice is Jack's but when someone else's voice is inside your head you'll also find yourself second-guessing everything and I bet you wouldn't be able to do any better at figuring out who's voice it is.
After a moment Iona makes a fourth box and ticks it before passing it back to Jesse. She can feel that it's annoying whoever is talking to her and she finds that she's more than okay with that because he's really making her mad by not telling her what's going on and not telling her who he is. A part of her is almost convinced that it is Jack but another part of her is telling her that that's just wishful thinking so she dismisses it.
'Why did you have to do that?' The voice is back.
'Why don't you tell me who you are?'
'Because I can't.'
'Why not?'
'I just can't. You just...' Jack feels frustrated at her, at himself, angry at Jesse, but mostly just angry at himself for making that promise. 'You really shouldn't have done that. You're going to regret it," he warns.
'Maybe.'
Iona doesn't say anything back to the mysterious voice that she wants to believe is Jack's. She focuses on the new chapter and questions they have to do now, 'So that I can try and block out Mr.-annoying-voice-in-my-head.'
She reads through the next chapter quickly so that she can listen to it tonight again when Jack reads it to David. She plans to listen closely to his voice to see if it matches the one she's sure she's hearing.
She picks up her pencil to start the questions when she sees that Jesse has passed the note back. She opens it up and reads his answer to her alternative. Next to the 4, she wrote down; yes if you tell me what happened between you and Jack.
Reading it again now he wrote back; okay see you at lunch, with a smiley face.
She's happy either way to sit with Jesse at lunch since it seems to make her newfound "friend" slightly pissed, and if she can get any more information about Jack then why not. She smiles at Jesse and nods as the bell rings telling them that they have five minutes to get to their next class. As she's walking out passed Jack she can see him scolding, and it's just enough for her to start to really believe that it's his voice in her head.
The problem with this though is that she's now forced to ask how this could be possible, and even if it is possible why is he so against her making new friends when he clearly doesn't even want to be anywhere near her. At least she's about to get a half answer to one of these come lunchtime.