Chapter 25

I froze on the red couch and Chase noticed my change in movement - or my lack of movement. He sighed,

"I knew this would happen. I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have let you read it. You probably think I’m a monster." He went to take the journal away from me but I held it away from him.

"I don’t think you’re a monster, Chase." I managed to choke. It was just a bit of a shock that the happy Chase I knew would be capable of murdering somebody.

"Of course you do," He told me. I looked at him,

"No, I don’t. The only thing that confuses me is..."

"Why I was in love with a vampire?" He sounded disgusted with himself and then Tikaye returned into the room,

"No, who was..." Tikaye had new wallpaper rolls in her hands and smiled,

"Oh, don’t mind me, guys. Just wallpapering." She said it good-naturedly, rather than snapping like I would have done because we left her out. Tikaye began her wallpapering and then my voice turned into a whisper,

"Who was she?" I was cautious not to say the name, just in case I struck a chord. He buried his head in his hands and murmured,

"She... Serenity was made into a vampire by Tobias Valeska. He tried to kill her at first in the hopes of becoming a human again, but..." Tikaye overheard this and joined in the conversation,

"Serenity Mavra? She was originally from lycan descent but she was part of the generation that skipped the ‘lycan gene’ and so, the bite did not kill her as intended, but made her a vampire." She smiled. I was thankful Tikaye was here; she tells it how it is. Chase’s expression had turned cold when Tikaye said the name. "No-one believes that stupid legend," she shrugged. Legend? Exactly how long ago was this? Chase was getting really mad at Tikaye; I saw his fists clench tightly on the couch beside me.

"Thanks Tee. Enough about that legend. Just read, Avril." He started reading mine again and then Tikaye began to wallpaper again. I began to read again.

He smiled as he put up a resistance. I slowly eased the knife into his heart, making him feel every drop of blood that ran through his body slip away; dissolve and waste away like raindrops on a rose petal. I twisted it and smiled as he yelled in pain. I was to have my revenge. It was an eye for an eye. He made me break something that I held closer to me than death and so, it was only right that he face the pain I went through at that loss. As I removed my hand from the dagger, I noticed my skin was burning, like it had just been set on fire. Silver is bad for lycans, I thought to myself, as I left the cave.

I took my dagger from the man’s heart and ran to the lake just outside of Skeldergate forest. Throwing the dagger into the lake, I yelled in frustration. How could somebody do that on my behalf? Make a decision that could affect the rest of my existence? I ran from the lake and back into the forest, trying to find her, but when I reached the clearing, she was gone.

The next eight pages were blank. I flipped through them and then, I saw that he had written this month in the past seven days. He hadn’t written much in his journal at all. He’d only written about ten pages the whole time he’d been keeping the journal anyway.

April 2011

Tyler Connors was at Saint Rurik’s Academy for another year. He’d hoped they’d release him soon. His parents were off in Australia on a business conference. That is what they had told him four years ago; when they had found out he was a lycan. All they had left him was credit cards. They did not care for Tyler because he had brought shame to the Connors’ family name. He and Ashley remained there because now they were both lycans - only Ashley was newer to this than Tyler. He had come to know many brilliant people in his time at the academy, but he had always wondered whether he is worthy of their friendship. After everything that had happened in his past - if they knew - they would not even want to look at him. Nobody could ever know anything about his past. It was something that he would take to his grave. He had gotten used to the swing of the academy and was starting to warm up to the idea of it.

Out of nowhere, one day, a girl showed up in his Vadim dorm that he shared with another girl named Scarlett Petrovensky. Scarlett was not with him in the dorm; she was elsewhere. She was hardly ever in the dorm, which in a way saddened Tyler because he would be left alone with himself; his thoughts, his memories.

This new girl had a blonde and black jagged hairstyle and much like him, wore black jeans and a black shirt, except hers had a band’s name on it. Her Dock Martens were loosely tied and she flung herself on her new bed, like she had hoped this was all a nightmare. Tyler could not help but approach her, "bad day, huh?" he asked, but she just muttered,

"You don’t know the half of it." But what she did not know was that he did because whatever she faced, what his first day was like was one-hundred times worse. She looked up and Tyler almost struggled for words, but made a quick recovery by treating her as any normal person, rather than one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen. some new girl that was an alien to everyone else. Her face looked like it was carved by angels, perfectly sculptured cheekbones and a perfect complexion. Her hazel-chestnut eyes glowed with an intensity that he could not quite describe. Her name was Avril and Tyler thought the name is perfect for her. They are both very alluring. she is lucky. She never had to change her name, as far as he knew anyway. Tyler had to change his - to escape the demons from his past. Tyler wanted nothing more than to know this girl some more. She was a refreshing change so new to this school and she looked like she needed a hand learning the ropes.

It was interesting to see what his view on me was. I’d always thought of myself as... Avril, but he described me as some sort of exotic princess or something but it was crossed out, so perhaps it was a mistake. I shrugged it off and continued to read.

April Sixth 2011

Scarlett thought Tyler should ask Avril to the ball, but he was sceptical. He did not care much for dancing and he was sure Avril would not either. So, it would just be the two of them in the Vadim dorm. They were both on the organising committee for the masquerade ball with Tikaye Rani and Chelsea Writhestone. It was not that they wanted to be on the committee, but it was a punishment for them. Tyler had done something highly out of line but he maintains it was in fact an accident.

I found myself snickering at that last sentence as I read on,

Avril had punched Chelsea Writhestone in the face and the result was the organising committee. Tyler had always wanted to give Writhestone a piece of his mind, but he followed a certain code that his parents had raised him with, "Never hit a woman." It was one of the few things his parents had raised him with. He was seventeen when they left him in Skeldergate and fled to Australia on their business conference and so he really had no reason to stay at Saint Rurik’s Academy. He was now twenty-one, but he looked seventeen and he would forever. He sighed to himself. That night, he sat in his dorm, writing but when Avril came in, he could not help his heart skip a beat. Quickly, he managed to put his pen away and look like he was reading his journal rather than writing it. She and him spoke for a while and it was nice to finally meet somebody new; someone interesting because he knew everybody in this school. Their personalities were all the same. But not Avril’s. She was different to everybody else. He could not quite explain it. He was always interested in what she had to say because she was a mystery and it was rather thrilling to see how she reacted to things because she was not the typical Saint Rurik’s student.

Tyler was a good friend of Tikaye Rani’s but she had been getting on his nerves lately. She had told him how he should date Avril, but she did not know that Tyler was too shy about letting Avril in because he feared rejection. Every time she would mention it, he would roll his eyes and tune out. It was not something he had not considered before but it was simply unimaginable. He had to stop writing because it was time to go to his next class.

He had crossed out a lot of things regarding me, I noticed. I didn’t want to say anything though because, well, commentary was really not necessary. I knew when to add commentary and now was not the time. He was laughing at something I’d written and I kind of wanted to peer over his shoulder and see what he was reading so that I could think of something witty to say as an excuse for writing it. Say, if I said something about Barbie dolls, I would say, ‘I remember those days when I used to rip Chelsea’s... I mean, uh, Barbie’s head off.’ I don’t know what I would say had it been anything else and so, I soon thought that nothing would be the best words to say at this present time. We had been reading each other’s journals for two hours now, so we had completely missed breakfast. That was probably where Tikaye had disappeared to earlier. I closed Chase’s journal because there was nothing left to read and I needed Tikaye to fill me in on the happenings of the present time rather than the past. I looked around and she had finished wallpapering and had the new lighting and everything sorted out. She is such a ninja!

"So, what were the haps at breakfast today?" Her face darkened. Not a good sign,

"Well, Ash and Jake got in a fight. Jake walked all alone there to the breakfast table. Charlie wasn’t there and then Ash said something to Jake, ‘She’s always going to see you as her brother; you may as well quit while your ahead.’ Jake got real pissed off and said, ‘she thinks you’re an a*****e but she’s too kind to say anything.’ and then Ash yelled and said, ‘do you wanna say that to my face?’ then they started beating each other up and I just had to butt in. ‘GUYS! CUT IT OUT!’ and Charlie came out.’ I had missed an entire fight and Charlie was probably in hysterics. The day I skip breakfast!