Perpetual Midnight by Rosaline Saul

Ethan was standing with his back against the wall, talking to the new kid who had arrived just over a week ago. He could not decide what the story was with Andrew. Usually, people had an innate fear and avoided those who were like him, but Andrew was persistent, seeking him out at every opportunity.

Andrew was asking, “There’s a good-looking blonde girl I saw in town yesterday, have you maybe seen her?”

Ethan shook his head as he scanned the group around him. Most of them were the same group of people he had been with for a long time, and all of them had dark hair. He had known them since, sometimes it felt, the beginning of time.

There was a movement at the far end of the quad, and he looked that way, seeing the blonde girl Andrew must have been talking about immediately. He nudged Andrew. “That one, there?”

Andrew looked in the direction where Ethan was looking, and immediately his eyes lit up with excitement when he saw Cathy and Zoey. “Yeah, that one.” Andrew was more excited to see the dark-haired girl than he was to see the girl standing next to her.

“The blonde one looks high maintenance,” Ethan told Andrew.

Andrew laughed as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard, and Ethan laughed with him. Not because he thought it was funny, but because Andrew’s laugh was infectious. It was as if Andrew had found the most important thing in his life.

The girl Ethan was engrossed by, though, was not the blonde-haired one, but the dark-haired, pale looking girl standing beside her. She was looking at Ethan as if he was her missing piece, and Ethan felt the exact same thing. For several seconds he was stunned. He knew very well the danger of showing too much interest in a human girl.

When she smiled, he abruptly turned his back on her.

He had to get out of here.

He did not have to be here.

There was nothing school could teach him that he had not already learned or lived through. The only reason he came here night after night was because it was a great gathering place where he could meet up with his friends and doing mundane things like all the millions of people his age was what made him feel normal. Made him feel as if he belonged. Made him pretend he was not the monster he was.

He left the school grounds and walked to the riverbank across the way from the house where he lived with Molly and Seamus. It was difficult to think of anything other than her. He felt as if there was a fire burning in the pit of his stomach. Could this be love he was feeling?

After he pushed through the brush on the side of the road, he walked through the knee-high grass. The smell of the river filled his nostrils, and he could hear insects scurry on the ground to get out of his way. A cloud of mist hung over the water of the river. He stood on the riverbank, taking it all in.

To live each day, from week to week, year to year, with no defined future, sometimes seemed impossible, and even though the future had always seemed bleak and empty, he still had the innate will to live, the inherent hope that someday he would meet someone for whom he would be willing to give up his immortality.

Then, against his better judgement, he decided to go back to school. He had to see her again. It was not as if he could never go back to school again. People will wonder what had happened to him. The school administration would start paying more attention to him than was safe to keep him and everyone he knew safe.