Chapter Three

chapter three of my book, Scarred... my friend helped with this one, so I'd like to give her some credit. =)

                                Chapter Three

 

 

 

 

“Pick you up? Why?” I rolled my eyes at my uncle’s skeptical voice. Look, I know that it wasn’t very common for me to call like this, all demanding and such, but he was smart enough to figure out why I needed him to pick me up.

   “I’ll tell you when you get here. Please, just come?” I asked again, stifling a short sigh.

   “Fine. I’ll be there in around fifteen minutes. You think you can occupy yourself until then?”

   “I’m good. Thanks, Uncle Paul.” The line went dead and I snapped the phone shut, shoving it in my pocket as I sat down on a large boulder that was nearby.

   Wait " this boulder wasn’t here yesterday, was it?

   Standing up again, I turned around to see if there were any sort of tracks left from the oversized rock being dragged here or something to the effect; there were none.

   “Huh,” I muttered to myself, walking back towards the rock. Before I sat down again on the smooth, hard surface, I noticed a few tiny marks on the face of the rock. My brows furrowed and I bent down to my knees to examine the markings more closely. They were written in a perfect script; one that no human could possibly possess. The print was so small I could barely decipher the letters, let alone make sense of the word they formed. After leaning my face in closer to the rock and squinting my eyes as small as I could in an attempt to read the words, something clicked. It was like the sudden closeness to the rock made something in my brain go off, a short tingling sensation ran through my head and the words seem to float off the boulder’s surface to float in a cloud of mist that was suddenly in front of me. This, thankfully, enlarged the words, making them able to read.

   They formed something that sounded like a prophecy:

 

   There will be one

 One undefined, one whom betrayal shall fall upon

 One who shan’t be trusted

  Lest peril fall upon the colony

 

   No, not sounded like a prophecy. This was definitely a prophecy. But, what kind of colony was it talking about? Like the thirteen colonies or something?

   And who the freak was this ‘one’ person? If they were a person in the first place, of course.

   This whole thing probably didn’t concern me, anyway. It was probably some idiot kid trying to be funny and scare the community senseless while thinking about this ‘one’. The mist-cloud-thing was probably only me hallucinating because of not eating lunch at school. But, should I tell Paul?

   Just as I turned around to sit on the rock again, his old clunker of a car pulled around the bend, turning onto my street. He stopped directly in front of my place on the grass, the brakes squealing in protest. Instead of just getting in the passenger side as I usually would have done, I motioned for him to get out of the car and come over to the rock.

   “What?” he asked as I pointed to the big, gray lump.

   “There’s, like, words on it. I don’t know what they mean, but it’s kinda freaking me out a bit,” I replied, trying to find where the words had been inscribed on the rock. I pressed my finger to the exact place where they had been, only to find that they were gone.

   “There’s nothing there, Harley. What is it that you saw?” Uncle Paul asked, his black brows furrowing in concentration.

   “Some sort of prophecy,” I murmured. “I don’t really know. It was… weird. Something about ‘one not being trusted unless peril falls upon some colony’. It sounded like something from the 1600’s, almost.” I paused and looked up at him. “Should we go?” Paul thought for a few seconds before he shook it out of his head and nodded.

   “Sure thing. You need to tell me why I had to come pick you up, anyway.” He gave me the signature smirk before starting back towards the car. I followed him willingly, sliding into the passenger seat and flipping on the radio to the rock station.

 

   “You exploded at school? Seriously? Harley, you didn’t!” I looked up at my uncle before nodding sheepishly.

   “Yeah, I did. I swear, it wasn’t my fault " that stupid teacher ticked me off again.” I think ‘ticked off’ is a bit of an understatement, I added in my head, thinking of how peril-stricken Mr. Bran was after seeing that.

   “They expelled you, I assume?”

   “Yup, they did.” I sighed at the familiar question and answer. “Although, thankfully they didn’t think it was me who was the wolf. They thought some wild animal broke into the school or something stupid like that. Idiots, huh?” I tried to hold back a laugh at my own comment. Uncle Paul nodded and laughed once in agreement.

   “But if they thought it was a wild animal, why’d they blame you?” he inquired, all traces of laughter gone, except for the laugh lines he always had on his face. I shrugged my shoulders, looking past him through the window in his little, bright kitchen.

   “I’ve got no idea. They probably saw my old school records and figured, ‘oh, this girl’s been expelled six times. She probably set this up somehow’. Thought, how they think someone could’ve set up a wild animal attack, I don’t know.” Right as Uncle Paul was about to answer, I saw someone walk by the window and glance it quickly. The girl, seeming to be around my age, looked strangely familiar. I was positive that I hadn’t met her; maybe she just reminded me of someone at my school.

   “Harley? Hey, you alive in there?” Paul’s voice broke through into my head, interrupting my thoughts.

   “What?” I shook my head. “Oh, yeah, I " I’m alive. Hey, do you mind if I go outside for a little bit? I want to cool off a little,” I said, trying to find some excuse to go talk to this girl. Her curious expression was making me nervous; I needed to get some answers here.

   “Sure, go ahead. Don’t stay too long, though " we’ll go out for dinner or something,” Paul replied, standing up. I nodded.

   “Sure thing. I won’t be long.” At that, I pushed my chair in, ignoring the squeal of protest from the old, scratched-up wooden floor. I opened the screen door, letting it slam shut behind me as I approached the girl.

   “Hi,” I greeted her, stopping a couple feet away, as if not to startle her. She whipped around, her eyes frantic. Okay, maybe my plan on startling her didn’t go to well.

   “Oh, um… hey,” she returned calmly, after she had cooled down from my sudden appearance. “Who are you?” I internally smirked at her question. You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that, little girl.

   “I’m Harley. You were, uh… looking in my window a few minutes ago. I just wanted to come and introduce myself, you know.” I smiled at her, hoping that it would make me look like a nicer, warmer person than I actually was on the inside. The girl mirrored my smile.

   “I’m Lila. Nice to meet you.” She held out her hand in an offer to shake mine. I took the offer and shook her hand. “Are you new here? I haven’t seen you around,” she added.

   “No, not really. I come here every once in a while to visit my uncle,” I replied. “You live here?” Lila nodded.

   “Yeah, with my mom and twin sister. I had a brother, but, um… not anymore.” She shifted uncomfortably.

   “Really? What was his name?” I asked, hoping to lighten the mood. Lila looked back up at me after glancing away to the ground.

   “James. James Hartford,” she said quietly. Hearing the last name, something went off in my head.

   Why did that name sound so familiar?

Author's Note

okay, i just realized that in chapter 1, it says Harley was adopted my her grandmother. Now it says her aunt. So, um... ill fix that later XD As for anything else, you know, the usual. Please ignore any possible typos, and thats pretty much it! Thanks for reading!! =D