Everything in her pulled toward him. But if she ran to him, everything would lead straight to where she had come from. Stefan dead, Elena dying, Damon broken.
Elena bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, and stayed where she was.
“Who is that masked man?” Meredith asked, and everyone giggled.
“Do you see that jacket?” one of the hangers-on asked. “That’s Italian, as in Roma.”
“How would you know? You’ve never been farther than Rome, New York, in your life!” her friend answered.
Stefan was heading toward the school, a few rows of cars between him and the group of girls. The rhythm of his steps hitched and paused for just a moment. Elena felt a jolt. He had caught sight of her, she knew. There was a moment when he just stared from behind his sunglasses, his gaze burning into Elena. What was he seeing, she wondered? Her uncanny resemblance to Katherine, certainly, but Elena couldn’t help hoping there was more to it than that. Even this early, could Stefan sense something more in her than the looks of his lost love?
After a moment, Stefan began to walk again, continuing smoothly on. Elena stared after him, feeling raw and exposed.
“Uh-oh,” another hanger-on said, a touch of envy in her voice. “Elena’s got that look again. The hunting look.”
“New Boy had better be careful.”
Elena pulled herself together and slapped on an expression of disdain. Tossing her head, she began to walk toward the school. “Hardly,” she said. “I’ve got big plans for this year. And they don’t include some random boy, no matter how nice his car is.”
The other girls crowded behind her in a close-knit pack.
“What kind of plans?”
“Surely you can fit in Mr. Cute-Dark-and-Mysterious.”
Without replying, Elena led them through the front door of the school. A long corridor stretched before them, and Stefan’s lean figure was disappearing through the office doorway just ahead. Some of the other girls were already drifting toward the office window, eagerly craning their necks. “Nice rear view,” someone said, giggling. Caroline was with them, but she wasn’t looking through the window at Stefan. Instead, she was watching Elena speculatively.
Deliberately, Elena avoided her gaze. “Do you have my schedule?” she asked Meredith.
“Sure,” Meredith said after a pause, handing it to her. Elena remembered that her friend had picked it up for her when Elena had skipped orientation. “We’ve got trig on the second floor in five minutes.”
A few of the girls who had been watching Stefan had turned away from the windows now, discouraged by Elena’s lack of interest. Good, Elena thought. She couldn’t have him, she knew, but somehow she didn’t want anyone else going after him.
“Let’s go,” she said to Meredith.
Meredith and Bonnie exchanged a look, and Meredith followed Elena upstairs. Just as they reached the classroom, Meredith laid a cool hand on Elena’s arm, stopping her.
“Did something happen in France?” she asked quietly.
Elena frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Meredith said slowly, her calm gray eyes scanning over Elena. “You just seem different, that’s all. Distracted.”
A semi-hysterical giggle rose up in Elena’s chest—Well, you see, Meredith, I’ve been sent back from the future to stop one of the vampires I’m in love with from killing someone, or I’ll die—and she choked it back and smiled at Meredith instead. “I’m fine.”
All through trig, Elena shut out the teacher’s droning voice, taking the textbook that was handed to her without glancing at it. She knew for a fact that she was never again going to use trigonometry. Tapping her fingers idly against her desk, she tried to plan instead.
She needed to meet Damon. But how? The first time they’d met, it had been partly because she looked like Katherine, but mostly because she was with Stefan, and the Damon she’d met then would be damned if he let his baby brother have her. But she couldn’t wrap herself around Stefan and wait for Damon to come.
If Damon accepted that he was the one she wanted, if she could get him to love her now the way he would in the future, she could keep him from killing anyone. He wouldn’t be so angry. He wouldn’t be ready to strike out.
“Can anyone tell me what the sine function is?” the teacher asked, breaking in on Elena’s thoughts. Mrs. Halpern’s eyes swept over the class, and Elena instinctively hunched a little, avoiding the teacher’s gaze.
Meredith began to answer the question. She was so beautiful, Elena thought, with her olive skin and heavy black lashes. More than that, Meredith looked happy. And human.
She’d had troubles in her life at this point already, Elena knew. A vampire had attacked her grandfather, stolen her brother. But this confident high school Meredith was barely aware of the horrors in her family’s past. She was already moving on.
Here, in this classroom, Elena could see exactly how miserable Meredith was in the future Elena had come from. Elena had known, of course, that Meredith hated being a vampire. But Elena hadn’t seen this contentment in years.
Elena sighed and thoughtfully curled a long, silky strand of hair around her finger. Could she fix Meredith, too, if she could keep Damon from killing Mr. Tanner? The road that had led to Meredith’s transformation was a long and twisting one, but it had started here. If Meredith was kept clear of the supernatural, if she never suspected the dangers beginning to descend on Fell’s Church, maybe she would leave. Go to an Ivy League college as she’d planned, have a successful, human life.