Hunt Me Down - Chapter 4: Chapter 4

Nathaniel’s POV
“Are you looking for someone, Nathaniel?”
“More like avoiding them,” my sister replied instead of me.
“Avoiding?” Irene repeated, tucking a strand of her dark brown hair behind her ear.
“Never mind that,” I replied, but still kept a look out for the blond boy. “And as I’ve said before, you can call me Nat.”
“Okay, Nat it is,” she smiled one of her subtle, shy smiles, the same she greeted me with when they paired us up in Biology , and kept on leading us towards the lunch room.
“Not very grand, is it?” She asked as she opened the door and the muffled voices and laughter boomed.
“It’s noisier than the last school we attended, but we’ve been in worse,” I commented, looking for a table for me and Val and taking the opportunity to make sure Hunter was not around.
“You could sit with me and my friends,” Irene offered, pointing to one of the tables, on which five teenagers – two boys and three girls – already stood.
I looked at Val who just gave me a shrug.
“Thanks, we will,” I said and let Irene take the lead again.
“Are you getting anything for lunch?” She asked.
“Not from here,” my sister shook her head in disgust then added: “I heard some not so pleasant things about this place.”
“They are probably true,” the other girl said through a giggle. “That’s one of the reason’s I bring food from home.”
“What’s the other?” I asked.
“Mom’s cooking is amazing. Back in Spain…”
“In Spain?”
“My mom is Spanish. Her family moved here some twenty years ago and opened a restaurant. That’s how she met my dad. He’s American but wanted to try traditional Spanish cuisine and my mom, she would help out in the kitchen but just happened to be waitressing when he first visited.”
“Is the restaurant still open?” I asked. “Because we’ve been to Spain and I really liked the food there.”
“I could write you down the address,” she offered, taking a seat next to a pale-looking girl with a lot of freckles. “This is Kaylyn,” she introduced the girl, “and these are Dustin, Matthew, Lauren and Karen, who you might remember from our Biology.”
How could I forget her? She sat on the row next to us and she had not stopped talking throughout the whole class.
“Everyone, these are Nathaniel and Vallery Reed who just moved here from England.”
“I just love your accents,” Karen squealed. “Which year are you, Val?”
“Same as Nat.”
“Really? You are twins?”
“Yep.”
“But you don’t look alike. Aren’t you supposed to look alike?”
“We are fraternal twins,” I clarified, taking a seat next to Irene; Vallery sat opposite me. “We are more likely to look different.”
“But you are, like, really different,” she protested, taking a bite of her salad. “You have dark brown hair and brown eyes and she has light brown hair and blue eyes… You are pretty much the same height, but I don’t know; you look different.”
“They have the same chin and nose though,” Kaylyn noted, her voice meek and tired.
“What is this?” Vallery asked, taking a packet of biscuits out of her backpack and opening them. “A spot the differences between the Brit kids game?”
“Vallery,” I warned, knowing she was about to start a quarrel. “You promised me something.”
“What did she promise you?” Karen asked, completely oblivious to the fact she was annoying me and my sister and although I was harmless, Val would slap her if she kept on attacking us with questions.
“Don’t you think that’s private, Kara?” Irene intervened. “Maybe we should let them settle down before we ask them questions; it’s only their first day here after all.”
I smiled gratefully at her and for a moment I thought I saw her blush, but she turned her head away from me and started chatting with the boy I believed she introduced as Matthew.
“You still want to ask,” Vallery murmured to Karen, who was sitting next to her. The other girl’s eyes enlarged as she exclaimed:
“How did you know?”
“Telepathy,” my sister jested.
“Really?!”
“No, that was a joke.”
Karen burst into a loud laugher, mixed with the occasional snort, and repeatedly slammed her hand on table before her.
“You're so funny!” She croaked, now hitting her knee.
“Nat, this girl scares me,” Val confided, angling her body away from the hysterical girl. “I think she’s lost her marbles. Either that, or she’s been smocking some green.”
“Green?” Karen repeated, her face red from laughing. “I my gosh, do you mean marijuana? ‘Cause we don’t do that.”
“It’s a vile thing, just like any other drug,” the boy with the curly blond hair stated. “God forbids it; it’s a sin.”
“Mathew’s family is, like, so religious,” Karen whispered to Val and me but everyone around the table heard her.
“I never knew drugs were considered a sin,” Val noted, munching on her last biscuit.
“That’s what our pastor says,” Matthew insisted. “You should come to church this Sunday.”
My sister snorted. “I’ll probably burst in flames if I stepped into one of those places.”
“The salvation of your soul is not something to joke about,” he resented. “You shouldn’t…”
“So let me get this straight,” my sister began, placing the empty biscuit wrapping on the table. “So you go to church every Sunday, you pray to a guy who never replies and you don’t do drugs. Is that right?”
“Just because He does not speak directly to us, it doesn’t mean we can’t interpret His will by what happened to us.”
“I’m taking that as a ‘yes, Vallery, you got it right’. Does that mean you’ve never gotten laid?”
“Vallery!” I shouted.
“Such physical contacts before marriage are amongst the greatest sins that you could commit!” Matthew had also raised his voice.
“Too bad. You are kind of cute with that messy blond hair of yours…”
“Vallery, that’s enough!”
“You too, Matthew,” Irene intervened. “Remember that not everyone shares your views but we must be tolerant to each other.”
“I’ll pray for your soul,” the blond boy said seriously, looking my sister straight into her eyes.
“What makes you think I have one?”
“Okay, that’s it; we are leaving,” I rose and hoisted Valery up by her hand. “Sorry, Irene,” I apologized as I dragged my twin out of the lunch room.
“Did you have to do that?” I asked her once we were on our own.
“You know how I feel about these religious types that go around claiming ‘this is a sin, that is a sin’, Nat. Who are they to tell me what kind of person I am or what soul I possess?”
“I know you feel that way, but did you have to provoke him?”
“Why? You thinking about getting chummy with the guy? Making friends never worked out for us before.”
“I’d like not to have to fight with people all the time,” I replied, knowing she had a point.
“Is that why you are so friendly to Irene?” She grinned at me.
“What are you implying, Val?”
“She’s cute, bro, and you deserve some fun. And I deserve a break.”
“Vallery, you promised not to ditch classes…”
“I was thinking about going to the gym after school, actually,” she reassured.
“You already found one?”
“Of course. You know that if I don’t get my daily dose of exercise, I’ll flip and murder someone. Me going to the gym is my version of being a model citizen.”
*****
Even though the house I just entered could not be called a home in the traditional sense of the word, it still provided me with shelter from the rest of the world. Our first day at school had gone relatively well with the exception of the Hunter and Matthew incidents, yet I craved nothing but locking myself inside my new room and staying there until it was time for dinner.
“Nathaniel, Vallery,” my mother’s voice called from the living room. “Is that you?”
“It’s just me mom. Val’s at the gym.”
Just as she’d intended, my sister had gone there straight after school, seeking some WO&R. That acronym, which she’d made up herself, stood for “Workout and Recreation”, Val’s way of coping with stress, anger, boredom… Everything.
“Well, come in here and meet our neighbor Miss. Harris and her nephew who lives with her!”
I dropped my messenger bag on the hallway floor and headed for our living room.
Harris… Harris… I repeated in my mind. Didn’t mom mention her this morning at breakfast? But I think I’ve heard it somewhere else as well. Where have I…
“Hi,” a raspy male voice greeted me as soon as I entered. I turned my head towards it and my gaze was held captive by a pair of grey, lit with amusement eyes. I stared at him with my mouth slightly agape until I heard my mother’s voice:
“What is the matter with you, Nathaniel? Aren’t you going to greet Hunter? ” She questioned disappointed at my lack of manners.
“I’m guessing they’ve already met,” his aunt remarked in that hoarse voice, typical of habitual smokers. I looked at her in fear.
How did she know about the night I became un unwilling witness to her nephew’s make out session?
Or maybe she’d found out what happened today at school.
What if she told mom?
I instinctively turned to Hunter. He was looking at his aunt and seemed even more amused than before.
“You know me so well,” he told her with a smile and then turned to my mother. “It is true, Mrs. Reed, I’ve already met Nathaniel. The two of us go to the same school.”
“Oh, how lovely!” My mother beamed. “That means there will be someone to show him around and help him out.”
“I would just love to show him a thing or two,” he announced, winking at me as soon as he saw my mother’s back.
“I’m sure you would!” His aunt muttered, but apparently mom didn’t hear her.
“Well, don’t you just stand there, Nathaniel; sit down,” my parent ordered, gesturing to the empty spot on our couch - right next to Hunter, who was smirking.