The Devil & Me

1. Stories and Secrets

1 Stories and Secrets

Delilah 

Only five more minutes until the last bell would ring and allow me to escape this God-forsaken prison they called school. I wasn’t paying the least bit of attention to what the teacher was saying, because frankly, I’d had a rough day and just wanted to leave. To run. To escape from everything around me.

I guess I was one of those people who couldn’t concentrate on one thing for an extended period of time without having to readjust to get comfortable again, just to realize that even with the change in position it wouldn’t change the fact that the teacher had already lost my attention twenty or thirty minutes into the class. It was now seventy-three minutes in, with only two left. Why did time have to move so slowly whenever you were bored? Must be one of those state-of-mind things where you wanted to be somewhere else, waiting for the time to pass, but instead, it just made you watch every single tick of the second hand on the clock, making you aware of just how slow time really passes.

Whatever.

I guess my thinking about complicated concepts somehow drove the clocks second hand to move those last two rotations, because I was surprised when I heard the bell ring, startling me out of my deep thinking. I lifted my head up a bit, just realizing that school was in fact over for the day.

And today was Friday. The corners of my lips lifted and I grabbed my bag to go to my locker so I could grab my “necessary” school books and jacket. It was still spring after all, and the weather hadn’t warmed up as much as anyone would like. Plus, I walked home since it was such a small, unpopulated town and I figured I may as well get some kind of exercise.

As I left the school and began my journey back home, I thought about what else was significant about this day—my birthday. I was eighteen as of today, and I had no plans to do anything special and I didn’t know if my parents and older brother had anything planned either. Either way, I’m sure it’ll be a surprise.

I walked onto my driveway and looked up at the house I’ve been living in for the past eighteen years and thought—it really hasn’t changed much. And that was how I liked it. It wasn’t a big house, but wasn’t small either. A perfect size for a family of four. Two stories and a basement. Two car garage. Three short steps leading up to the front door. An open space and a closet just as you walk in. We had a cozy, but spacious living room just in front of that, and an equally spacious kitchen next to it, where the kitchen table occupied nearly half the room. A bathroom and a master suite bedroom on the other side of the house which my parents shared. And the main hallway lined with carefully placed photos of the family.

I planned to take the stairs up to my room as soon as I got home and dump my bag, but was stopped.

“Delilah? Could you come into the kitchen please?” That was my mother. I didn’t know what to think of her tone of voice, so just headed down the hall with my shoes jacket and bag still on, and went to the kitchen.

As I rounded the corner, I saw my father come into view, followed by my mother then brother. They were all sitting at the table, all with a similar expression. A grim one.

I did not like the looks of this.

“What’s going on? Is something wrong?” I asked. Clearly they had something to tell me, but were anything but looking forward to it. Couldn’t say that I was anticipating anything good either.

“We have something to tell you sweetie. And we had all agreed to wait until you were old enough to hear this,” my mom spoke again. Okay, really did not like where this was going.