Humanity 4 "The Rivalry"

Chapter 22

DAMON'S POV

I walk down the stairs into my living room where I can hear loud music. When I come around the corner, I see Stefan sitting on the couch with some bourbon while a girl dances around the room...Lexi. Must be temporarily back from the dead like Ric and Jeremy.

"Damon! Help me celebrate my seventeenth high school graduation." Stefan says from the couch as I walk over and turn the music down. "Hey, you remember my friend, Lexi, of course?" Stefan asks harshly.

"Lexi, back from the dead. Goody." I smirk.

She rushes over to me and pins me to the wall, grabbing my throat. "What's up, buzzkill?" She asks with a smile.

"Stefan, you're just gonna sit there and let her enact her ghostly revenge?" I ask, coughing.

"You reap what you sow, buddy." Stefan smirks.

"Let's be very clear. Whatever time I have left here, I sure as hell don't plan on wasting it on you. You got me?" Lexi asks me and I nod.

"Yeah. Got it." I groan as she releases me. "So if you and Ric and little Gilbert are all flesh like and real seeming, that means something went horribly wrong when Bonnie tried to put that veil up. And here you two are, having dance party USA." I say.

"You're right." Stefan nods. "How selfish of me to be indulging in these precious moments with my formerly dead best friend. I should be sacrificing my own happiness for the good of others, right? I should be upstairs grooming my hero-hair."

"Are you drunk?" I ask him with a frown.

"I don't know, mom, am I?" He teases and Lexi laughs.

I walk over and snatch the bourbon bottle from his hand and he rolls his eyes. "Well, I guess that's one way to celebrate our supernatural apocalypse." I say, taking a swig. "Now, care to hazard any guesses on what the hell went wrong?"

CAROLINE'S POV

"I hit kind of a snag." Bonnie tells me over the phone as I man the yearbook table in the hallway at school.

"A snag? A snag is a bad yearbook picture. You hit a tsunami. Where are you?" I ask, beginning to panic.

"I'm trying to fix it, but I'm running into some trouble. I need to wait until the full moon tonight to have enough power to put the veil back up." She explains.

"Are you telling me that we might graduate right smack in the middle of a ghost-filled expression triangle?" I ask quietly.

"Maybe we should just cancel." Bonnie says softly and I frown.

"No, we are not going to cancel. Graduation is the most important event of our lives, the last ceremony of our youth. It is our rite of freaking passage. Hell will freeze over before I let anyone cancel graduation." I argue passionately.

"Can you not make jokes about hell freezing over? We're not that far from that already." She says sadly and I take a deep breath.

"Just promise me that today is a friend day." I plead gently.

"Okay, I promise." She sighs. "I love you."

"I love you too." I say with a smile before hanging up and getting back to work.

ASHLEY'S POV

I take a bite into my sandwich as Elena and I sit across from Ric and Jeremy in the middle of the cemetery.

"Oh, my god." Ric moans in pleasure, his mouth full of food.

"No grease on the other side?" I ask and they both nod eagerly.