The Secret Keeper

I had to get out of there. I couldn’t sit around that house… so close to Bo… and not be able to talk to him… I would’ve gone crazy, no doubt about it. So I ran.

I was a coward. I was stupid, and immature, to run from my problems. Had I known what was going to happen because of it, I never would have tried to. But I didn’t. So I made the mistake of dashing into the woods.

Admittedly, it felt good to have the trees rushing past me, and the ground crunching beneath my feet. In any case, it gave me something to do to keep my mind off of Bo. And Secret Keeping. And all that other crap in my life.

At least, it did. For a few seconds. And then looking at the trees whirling past me didn’t seem to hold my interest for very long, and my mind drifted to other things. Like Bo, for example.

I sighed heavily and slowed to a stop. It wasn’t any use for me to keep running if it wasn’t going to distract me, anyway. I sat on a fallen log nearby, and pulled out my iPod, something I always had with me. I randomly pressed shuffle, and “Decode” by Paramore blared through the speakers. Ironic.

“How can I decide what’s right,
When you’re clouding up my mind?
I can’t win your losing fight
All the time…”

What was happeningto me? Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I mean, I never thought I’d be in love with someone like I’m in love with Bo. I’m not afraid to admit that now. And I’d totally ruined whatever chance we’d had to be together, all because of Evan.

“Not gonna ever own what's mine
When you're always taking sides?
But you won't take away my pride.
No, not this time.
Not this time…”

I knew one thing, I wasn’t going to fall for that again. Evan would never get to me; I would make sure of that. Ivy must have been right. There’s no way I could fall for someone like him without mind control involved.

I sighed.

That wasn’t particularly true, as much as I wished it was. I was the one who had fallen for Evan in the first place, before all this happened. I had started that relationship. I had ended that relationship. There never should’ve been a relationship in the first place.

“How did we get here?
When I used to know you so well.
But how did we get here?
Well, I think I know…”

I hated this new life. I wanted everything to go back to normal. I wanted Holly back. I wanted to be a normal senior, one that only has to worry about due dates for college applications and who to take to the prom. I wanted Bo and I to hate each other again, so that neither of us would get hurt whenever we did something bad. I wanted Ivy and Arkarian to be my foster parents, not my mentors.

I wanted my old life back. I didn’t want to be a Secret Keeper.

“My thoughts you can’t decode…”

I looked up at the sky. It was a full moon.

My blood ran cold. Oh, shit. I knew the kinds of things that happened on a full moon, and they weren’t good things. They were bad things, very bad things. There was no howling, because the wolf was dead. But there were voices.

I knew those voices. They were the voices of kids I had seen every day for the past four years, sometimes more. They were the voices of my classmates.

I looked around frantically. I could feel my heart rate rising rapidly as the voices got louder. I knew it wasn’t just in my head; the sound of footsteps accompanied the voices. It sounded like… well, it sounded like the din that is usually present in the cafeteria. It sounded like the entire student body of Witch Hazel High was somewhere in that forest. And they were all saying the same thing.

“Eve…Eve… Eve…”

I couldn’t breathe. I froze, hoping in vain that if I didn’t make any noises, they wouldn’t be able to find me.

“Can you see her?” an eerily familiar voice asked. My eyes widened. I knew that voice…

“No,” Another voice responds, over the others’ chanting. I recognized that voice, too. I’d been around it for over a month. It sounded a bit, different, but it was unmistakable. I shuddered. “But I can smell her. Can’t you?”

“Obviously,” the first voice mumbled, barely audible. It sounded like a male, only adding to my anxiety. I knew exactly who the two voices belonged to. I just couldn’t believe it was them…

“Well, then what’s the problem?” the other voice asked. It was high and squeaky, like a voice you would expect to belong to those girls in the bubblegum ads.

“I am trying, Faye! She’s just not here!” Evan snarled.

Uh oh. I felt something tickle my nose, making me want to sneeze. No sneezing! Very bad! Bad nose!

“Not hard enough, apparently,” Faye retorted.

Don’t sneeze.

“You think you can do better? Fine. You find her.”

“Achoo!”

Suddenly the two of them were in front of me.

Evan looked so different than he had before. Instead of his normal healthy self, he was sickly pale and his eyes were, of course, pure black. His hair looked like it was in need of a good wash, and his clothes hung limply around his skinny frame.

Faye, on the other hand, looked positively… well, let’s say inhumanly beautiful. Her eyes held the same black tone, and her skin was still pale. Her hair hung like an ebony waterfall from her head. She was wearing a revealing black dress, with a laced-up corset and a thin skirt. She looked almost nothing like a Creature… But, then again, she had looked fairly similar to one to begin with, so the change wasn’t to distinct.

“I told you I’d find her,” she mocked.

I don’t think my eyes could have gotten any wider. My heart pounded wildly again, and my breath was short and raspy.

“Wha – wha – what is going on here?”

Both Evan and Faye smiled.

In an instant, we were in the clearing. That god-forsaken clearing, the one that had been featured in one-too-many of my Nightmares…

“I suppose you want some explanation, right, Eve?”