Pretty Misfortunes (Cruel Boys of Raven Oak Prep #2)

~Chapter XXI~

~Madelyn~

A humming tune, so light and angelic, brought me from the darkness of my sleep and into the past of what I always believed to be countless dreams, but now I recognized them for what they truly were. They were memories. Pieces of time I thought to have forgotten. But the sick truth behind my blackouts was becoming more and more harder to face.

Nana Josephine was there. Her spirit lingering beside me and a red haired boy whose eyes were as brightly olive as mother's and a face as sharp as a man who I didn't know.

In this dream I knew he was my brother. My protector from all things that go bump in the night and the dangers of other people who whispered behind our backs about what strange children we are simply because we communicated with things they couldn't see.

"Are we weird?" I had asked the young boy sitting across from me, his features similar in ways to my own and mother's, but more masculine in places that I couldn't seem to compare to Morris.

He was my father. But he hardly stays at home too long to notice me or his son, Beau. My other brother and white knight in shinning armor.

The boy raised a red brow. "Who the fuck said that?"

We looked close to nine or ten years old. My brother with the same shade of hair color as me was taller and more slinkier than me, whereas I was short and stubby. Mom told me I was growing into a beautiful young woman and soon there would be places on my body that other boys would start to notice. She even mentioned Hannibal was already taking notice.

I had blushed at what she said. I always believed Hannibal thought of me like a little sister, even as my feelings towards him were nothing of the sort.

"The kids at school. Sometimes I even hear our neighbors whispering about us when we go out."

"Don't pay attention to that shit, Little Rose. Those people don't know what the fuck they are talking about because they think they are better than us."

"Ambrose says it's strange that the other kids don't talk to ghosts like we do."

The boy flipped casually through the pages of a Manga. On the cover was a white haired boy sporting a red eyeball and eye patch on the other, grinning like a demon at the audience. The name of the book, I located on the front, was written in Japanese. My brother had a whole collection just like it that Mom got him for his birthday and would always have in his hand wherever we went.

This one, however, was his favorite.

"Ambrose needs to shut his filthy mouth. He doesn't understand how special we are." He raised his gaze from his book to look at me. "That just means he is jealous."

"You shouldn't say things like that, Aydin. Hannibal will get mad if he hears you."

Aydin laughed. "I'm not sacred of your little boyfriend and his cousin."

I blushed. "Hannibal is not my boyfriend."

He rolled his eyes, playfully. "Give it time, Little Rose. I've noticed the way he looks at you."

I cowered into my own book I was reading. Edgar Allan Poe. His poems were my absolute favorite and something Mom, or Charlie, always read to me before I went to bed. "You're wrong."

He grabbed the top of my book and lowered it to see my red cheeks. "And you're being naïve."

"What does that mean?"

The door to our room swung open and Morris walked in. He was dressed as I always remembered him to look like. The Sheriff of Covington's badge at his breast and on his uniform with a walkie talkie bringing static noise into the comfortable atmosphere. Behind him a tiny boy the same age as me and Aydin- a head of dark hair and blue eyes- tagged along with a set of headphones and his Gameboy in hand.