The Destiny of the Half-Bloods

Chapter 3

SERAPHINA:

“I’m Dameon,” the boy with raven hair says to me as I clutch my guitar and shrink against the icy stairs. He clearly thinks he is God’s gift to women, but I just want to be alone with my guitar. 

Music is the only thing that makes this life bearable to me. Somehow playing my guitar makes me feel closer to the life I know nothing about. The life I must’ve had before being thrown into foster care; a lonely existence of being tossed from home to home, family to family. None of those people really wanted me. I’m fully aware that I was just a paycheck to them. Some were more cruel than others, forcing me to retreat deeper and deeper into my shell every day. I still can't bear to be touched.

Getting a scholarship to Defton College was the first glimmer of hope that I've ever experienced. I'm finally living free and alone, and I'm finally able to get the therapy and medication I need to cope with the scars my childhood left me with. The medication does help a bit. It calms the pain of feeling unwanted, but leaves me feeling numb. 

So I find myself here on these steps, looking up at this handsome boy and wondering why he won’t go away. The familiar tingle of anxiety begins to crawl up my neck and to my scalp. My heart begins to race. I grip the guitar tighter. Why won’t he just leave me alone? 

I’ve seen this boy around campus often over the past year. He's usually followed by a gaggle of swooning girls, and always shadowed by my haughty  and terrifying neighbor Lamia. I’ve managed to remain invisible to him and everyone else since freshman year, so why is he looking at me now? What does he want? Is he going to make fun of me? Is he going to hurt me? The hurricane of questions and fears swirl violently in my head. I feel my heartbeat in my temples.

He steps closer to me, and I wish that I could melt into the wall. My stomach is doing gymnastics, and I want to vomit in the nearby snow. Somehow, he notices me shrinking away and mercifully stops his advance. 

“That was the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard,” he says quietly. In an instant his bravado is gone, and I find it very disarming. I relax slightly.

“Please, keep playing” he implores, almost as if his life depends on it. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

I don’t ever play in front of people, I reserve my music for the quiet times alone in my room. But this morning I felt an almost supernatural urge deep within me to fill the air with music, so I brought my guitar outside for the first time. This mysterious boy is probably the first person to really listen to me play.

I take a deep breath to calm myself. It’s so hard to bring myself back from the edge of a panic attack, but this boy heard me sing, and he liked it. So I look back down at my guitar and prepare to play for him again.

As my music fills the air, he sits as still as a beautiful Greek statue. He seems to be aware that any movement will break the magic of this moment. Part of me feels like a doe being eyed by a hunter, ready to spring away if he moves too suddenly.

But he doesn't move. He just listens to me. 

My music swells through the winter air and fills the empty space between us with dancing vibrations. It's almost as if we are in our own little snow globe, isolated from the world around us.

I don’t know how much time passes before I stop playing, but Dameon remains completely still the entire time. 

The final vibrations of the music still hang in the air when I finally put my guitar down. I take a breath and look up at him to search for some sort of reaction. He doesn't say anything, so I start to worry again. Did he hate it? Is he going to tease me? I shouldn't have played for him. 

But when our eyes connect I feel like I've been struck by lightning. He's looking at me with a yearning and passion I've only ever seen in the movies. Suddenly I realize that I feel it too. The magnetism between us is palpable. I feel noticed, heard for the first time in my life. We both sit motionless, gazing into each other’s eyes. I'm not leaning closer to him, but I'm also not running away. That's never happened before. 

I’ve never felt the urge to touch another person before. Touch is pain. Touch is overwhelming and terrifying. Touch is anxiety. But now, I want to be touched. I want him to touch me more than anything. My eyes drift down to his perfectly drawn lips which are parted as he breathes heavily. The smoke of his warm breath on the icy air drifts over to me, giving me goosebumps as it grazes over my skin. Am I crazy, or does he want to touch me too?

We each wait for the other person to break the frozen perfection of this magical moment, but neither one of us moves.

Suddenly, the door behind us begins to open and Dameon leaps over the side of the staircase with impossibly superhuman agility. Instantaneously he’s gone, and I'm shaken out of that perfect bubble we had created. The black emptiness I feel at his absence crashes down around me with the weight of a thousand worlds. 

I was seen, for the first time in my life I wasn’t invisible. I'm holding back tears that sit on the edges of my eyes as I watch him run away.

Professor Frost emerges from the door behind me, clambering down the steps in a panic. He pushes his oversized bifocals up his nose and adjusts his suspenders, which don’t really secure the pants that hang from his diminutive frame. Even he doesn’t notice that I'm sitting right in front of him. He just runs down the steps away from me. Everyone just runs away from me.