Sammy stands behind me with a half-smile spread across his face. He adjusts his collared shirt and raises an eyebrow at me.
“Just heading to the bathroom.” I lie.
“Ahhh…and using the restroom requires looking around a corner suspiciously at…apparently nothing at all?”
“I was watching for the hall monitors.” I shrug.
Samuel looks down at the pass I am holding in my hand and his smile fades.
“But you have a bathroom pass.” He presses.
“You know the hall monitors hate me.”
“You set the locker room on fire once.”
I throw my hands up in defense.
“There was no proof it was me!” I hiss at him, my face growing red.
Sammy folds his arms across his chest and I know I’m busted, but he doesn’t press the issue any further.
“Well while you’re out would you care to walk around?” He asks.
My eyes search the empty hall way once more and I sigh.
“I can’t we are working on this super hard project in math.” Like he’ll ever believe that. He knows math is my least favorite subject.
“Really? Your big excuse is math? Come on Izzy I know you can’t sit still and you and Mr. Burrell hate each other. So what are you rally doing out here?”
I tug at my navy-blue pea coat and kick at the floor. My shoes are cracked and old and full of holes on account that my mother refused to replace another worn through pair.
“Well if you really want to know I was following someone.” I say honestly.
Samuel gives me one of his famous skeptical looks he usually reserves for Garret when they get into an argument. I feel like a little kid caught with my hand in the cookie jar at this point.
“I never took you as the stalker type.” He say’s with his eyebrow still lifted and his arms crossed over his chest.
“Purely for research and out of curiosity.” I say with my hands up in surrender.
“Who are you ‘researching’? Is it a boy?” he asks.
I scrunch my face and shake my head.
Gross.
“Then a girl?” He presses.
What am I supposed to say? Eve Is a vampire and I think she’s going to suck the life out of Julian or possibly turn him into one of her undead minions. Yeah that will fly real well with him. Mr. Prove all Garrets outlandish space alien theories wrong and Mr. skeptical. What would he say to my own crazy claims? Probably that I read too many fictional novels, or watch to many supernatural movies. The last thing I want is Sammy’s disapproval.
“It’s classified, until I can gather enough evidence.” I say shrugging.
“Okay then. This isn’t about Eve an Julian is it?” He asks, putting that look back on his face. The look that reaches deep into my soul and reveals everything I have been thinking about. Maybe even things I’m not thinking about.
“No!” I say a little to loudly “Why would it be about them? That’s crazy!” My voice cracks and I wince.
Why am I such a bad liar?
Samuel shrugs uphazed.
“Anyone with half a brain can see you are a little jealous. Whether it’s because Julian might be taken or because of Eve, either way you can always talk to me. But you already knew that.”
I nod as my cheeks catch on fire.
“I’m not jealous!” I shoot back at him, a little too forcefully before catching myself.
Maybe I was a little jealous.
Of who though…
I shake my head. That was a road I wasn’t sure I was ready to travel yet.
“Any luck in wooing that boy you’ve had your eyes on?”
It’s Sammy’s turn to blush. I’ve known him for years now so it came as no surprise when he came out over a burger at our favorite diner. His parents had been super supportive and he knew our group would be too but outside of his family I was still the only one who knew.
I wondered if it had anything to do with his friendship with Garret.
“Don’t try to change the subject! But no, not yet.” Sammy shakes his head. “Back to Eve, I thought I saw her walk by not too long ago, and then here you are pressed up against the freshmen locker looking like you are up to no good.”
I stand completely silent, not knowing what else to say.
Sammy just sighs and runs a hand through his hair, trying to fix it before he turns and looks back in the direction he had come.
“I better get back to class then.” There is a look in Sammy’s eyes that are begging me to be honest with him, but I know if I told him what I really thought he would just think I was crazy.
“Yeah, I better get on with my thing too.” I say taking a step away and waving as Sammy walks away.
“Don’t get into too much trouble Izzy, we aren’t in middle school anymore.” He calls over his shoulder as he shuffles back to class.
I wait for him to round the corner before I return to scanning the halls once more. A quick movement up ahead catches my eyes as it darts around the lockers and I follow it out of curiosity, but turn into another empty hallway.
My mind drifts to Sammy and his insinuations.
Eve Sammy and I have all been friends for a long time, the idea that I was somehow jealous of Eve was crazy! She’s my best friend for crying out loud (and possibly part of the undead, what else could explain all the weird shenanigans going on).
My cheeks won’t stop burning as I scan the hallway before taking the long loop back to class.
My search has left me as empty as a man who went to Vegas with his bonus paycheck.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken the gamble and left class. If Mr. Burrell saw fit he could send me to detention after school for being out of class this long, but it’s not like that had stopped me in the past. My parents were, of course, going to murder me.
I walk slowly, passing by the back end of the school where it let out into the student parking lot and just beyond that, the sports fields.
One of the fluorescent light’s overhead flickers on and off as an involuntary chill passes up my spine.
Something shuffles behind me and I spin around, eyes darting back and forth like a soccer player running up and down the field during a game. The hairs on my arm are all standing on end and I take a deep breath trying to calm my pounding heart.
A hand gabs my shoulder and I duck out of the way as instincts take over. I throw up my fist and jump back, trying to put distance between whoever tried to grab me.
“Easy Isabelle!” Eve says as she takes a step back and smiles. “Ditching class again?”
I try to shrug off the fear and the chill that is shaking me to the core but I can’t. It feels like a giant rock is sitting in the pit of my stomach and I begin to regret consuming so much garlic pasta at lunch.
“What are you doing out of class?” I ask noticing a small red drop below her lip. “Better yet where did you even come from?”
“Just going to the bathroom.” She says.
I know she is lying because of the way she blinks when she’s finished talking and because she grabs her left arm with her right hand and doesn’t make eye contact with me.
“Oh, I didn’t know there’s a bathroom around here.” I say staring at the smudge of red beneath her lip.
“Yeah just around the corner. You should know that, I always catch you and the soccer team coming out right before practice.”
The locker room is close, but it’s also on the other side of the hallway, in the direction I had been traveling to begin with. Eve wouldn’t know that though because she’s in band and not sports. Then again she could be telling the truth and took the long way around like I did.
My brain is on overdrive now as I tap my foot with nervous energy.
“You have something on your lip.” I move my finger along my lower lip around where the drop of thick red gooey stuff is and watch as she dose the same.
“Oops, I must have squirted one of the gushers I was eating earlier. Thanks.”
I notice a gusher packet sticking out of her pocket and sigh.
Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe not.
“I better get back to class.” I say with a heavy awkward sigh.
“Yeah me too! I’ve already missed enough as it is.” She says.
I turn to leave but remember that I had a question to ask. My mind is just itching to know how her talk with Julian went. I look behind me, but Eve is long gone and I shuffle my feet against the cold hard linoleum tile.
“How does she do that?” I ask outloud, but my mind is already coming to the same conclusion it had earlier.
The bell for the end of school rings and I am snapped out of my head and back into reality and rush as fast as I can back to class before I am trampled on by the stampede of bustling teenagers.
I reach the classroom in a huff, just as all the kids are cramming out the door that is only meant for a maximum of two people to squeeze through. It’s like watching a clown car full of clowns empty all at once.
Mr. Burrell is standing with his arms at his side like a frozen statue, staring at me with an annoyed grimace.
“Ms. Cooper.” He says as I grab my backpack and head to his desk to get my notebook back.
“Mr. Burrell.” I say as I look first at him and then at my notebook that he is gripping in his hands like it’s some kind of deadly weapon.
“Quite an imagination you have.” He says holding up my book of ideas and doodles.
“Uhh…thank you.” I say as he hands it to me.
“That wasn’t a compliment. Imaginations can be dangerous sometimes, be carful that you don’t let it get out of control. Please be aware I will be contacting your parents soon about your lack of participation in class, you should really learn to focus your attention on the more important things, and less on the extracurricular activities you seem to drown yourself in.” There’s a sharp edge to his monotone voice and I look up into his cold greyish green eyes. “Detention starts in five minutes.”
I groan as I look down at the notebook and notice a detention slip written on top of it. I take it and begin to protest.
“I have soccer practice in ten!”
The idea of being cooped up in this stuffy bland classroom any longer makes my heart race as anxiety begins to take over. There was a reason I was enrolled in sports to begin with.
“Well you should of thought about that before you decided to take off down the hall.”
I grumble all the way back to my desk and toss my bag on the floor as I spread open my notebook and pull out a pen. I had another reason to add to my growing list.
6. Eve disappears and appears out of thin air. (She’s really fast)
I prop my head up on the desk using my hand as support and stare at all the robot throw up splatted across the whiteboard.
“Vampires.” I grumble.
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