Devil's Creation

Chapter 14

When the final bell rang, I carefully put my sketch of Axel away along with all my different pencils. I then got up and made my way to my locker, Axel following not too far behind me.

"So, do you need a ride home?" He asks, from where he leaned against the locker beside mine.

"I can walk." I replied. I unlock my locker to grab my books and binders out of it.

"I know you can walk. You're literally walking right now."

I rolled my eyes and closed the door. "You know what I mean."

He let out a small chuckle which cut off when a girl walked up to Axel. She was very pretty, with her brown hair cut short and her caramel colored skin. She wore a light blue crop top with semi high waisted leggings.

She completely ignored my presence and batted her eyelashes at Axel. "There's a party happening tonight and I was wondering if you wanted to go with me."

Axel looked at her with an almost amused expression, but there was also a flash of anger in his eyes. "I'm good. I was also talking with someone, so please leave and don't bother me again." He said sternly, the small smile turning into a frown.

The girl then, for the first time, acknowledged me. "You can't possibly mean her." She looked at me with disgust that was clearly visible. "Someone like you really shouldn't talk to anybody like her. It's not a good look."

The more she had gone on, the angrier Axel became. He was now having a hard time controlling it. His hands were clenched into two tight fists. I wasn't quite sure if I should be flattered or scared about what was going to happen, but I didn't want Axel getting into any trouble because of me. So I quickly grabbed onto his wrist and stepped in front of him.

"C'mon. I'll take that ride now." I yanked his hand lightly.

He gave one last nasty look over my shoulder at the girl before taking my hand and walking with me towards the back parking lot. When we got to his car, I let go of his hand and started walking away from him.

"Where are you going?" He asked. His anger receded slightly. Only slightly.

"I only said what I said because I needed to get you out of there before you got in trouble."

He sighed heavily and opened the passenger side door of his car. "Please just get in, Raven."

I scowled at him as I got in. I probably shouldn't have, because you know, stranger danger, but anyways. I'm not the smartest person, as you can probably tell.

I buckled myself in as he got into the driver's side.

"Are they always like that?" Axel asked, reversing out of the parking spot.

"Hm?"

"The girls."

"You should know by now that most of the girl's in the school want you."

He laughed slightly. "That's not what I meant." His smile from the laugh morphed into anger. "I'm talking about what she said about you. Do they always act like that?"

"Um no. Not always." I looked away from him and down at my hands. "People usually just straight up ignore me."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him tense up a bit. I turned back to him to see him clenching his fists again and grinding his teeth together.

"It's fine though. I like it." I quickly stated. "I don't really like people."

"But people shouldn't bully you like that."

"It's fine. Can we talk about something else?"

He took a few deep breaths to calm himself. "What do you wanna talk about?"

"Literally anything else." Then a thought came to my mind. "Well I have a question if that's okay with you."

"What's the question?"

"On Tuesday, during art class, I saw something on your neck. Is it a tattoo or something?"

"Oh... that." He looked straight ahead as he drove down the road, with that angry expression but mixed into it was a bit of sadness. "It's nothing. Just a bruise."

We sat in silence for the rest of the way to my house. I knew he was lying to me, but I didn't want to push it any further.

Right when we rounded the corner onto my street, the worried feeling that I had been dreading all day returned. Precisely when Axel parked in the empty driveway, I jumped out of the car with my backpack and ran up the steps to unlock the front door. I didn't even bother to close the door behind me. I ran straight to the little book where we kept all our important numbers, and ran my finger down all of them until I found the one for my parents work.

I turned around with my phone up against my ear, to see Axel standing behind me with a blank expression on his face.

My phone rang twice before someone picked up, "Hello?"

"Hi, I'd like to know when William and Diane Russell left work last night. It's Raven."

"Oh Raven." The woman said, slightly shocked. "They left around midnight."

"Um ok, thanks." I hung up the phone before she could say anything else.

"Well?" Axel asked, now standing right in front of me with the same blank expression plastered to his face.

"They should have gotten home early last night." My voice broke on the last word, and the tears that had been building, finally fell.