Ivy's Second Shadow

CHAPTER 1: SOMEONE

"Okay, come out from wherever you are hiding!" I screamed. It was midnight, the perfect time for unruly burglars, robbers, bandits and criminals to let themselves out and to unveil their malice and malevolent glances. The night sky offered not even the slightest ray of light to show what was around me. The moon was not there and the stars seemed to have turned sullen. There were only a few flickering streetlights popping up with light and then abruptly switching off. I looked around rigorously because I knew that someone was watching me. 

I could feel someone's eyes following me like I was a character in a blood-thirsty horror film and the audience's eyes were glued to me watching every step I took and every little mumble I would make. The pitch-black sky, the desolate street, the flickering street-lights blinking all along the boulevard and the feeling of someone's eyes watching me felt like being stuck somewhere like in a nightmarish dream.

But the sad part was that this was not a dream.

My feet felt cramped in a pang of pain as I was scuttling my way home relentlessly feeling so petrified because I could feel someone watching me. Somebody was there scrutinizing me. My breath felt like slowing down into an icy exhale as my eyes jolted in a convulsion. I was almost convulsed and this "someone" was asphyxiating me by staring at me because I didn't like getting this unwanted attention. It felt like my life was being watched like a television show without my permission. I looked around and saw no one but a huge billboard advertising a fresh new perfume with a fine-looking man possessing celestial sky-blue eyes and a perfect jawline staring right at me holding a perfume bottle in the advertisement. 

My eyes were so allured by the man holding the perfume bottle in the advertisement that I had forgotten about that "someone" around me. "Stupid me!" I thought to myself for getting dragged away by the perfume man. But then I recollected myself as I looked all around observing everything, imbibing every weird thing that I could see. There was a chophouse nearby which was closed and a few skyscrapers in a distance not much far away from me. 

My eyes squinted looking in every possible direction calculating every single detail I could see in the panorama. I twirled around rotating myself to get a quick glimpse of the whole area. Nothing but air, maggots and dust fluttering around like butterflies and that "someone" was definitely there. I had been feeling that "someone" was watching me since days. 

I told my family about it and they reduced this situation to a joke telling me that I was just hallucinating and it was common for teenagers to feel this way, whatever that meant. I don't understand that why don't adults ever take us teenagers, seriously? They have this stereotypical thought which has been instilled in every adult's mind which I'm going to enlist below:

1. Teenagers will interminably exaggerate every detail in surplus and every emotion that they feel.

2. Teenagers will always wound up and weave every small incident into a K-drama.

3. Teenagers would say anything due to their capricious "mood swings".

"Ivy (that's my name), nobody's following you," my parents told me. 

And well, my older brother Harry told me that I was a lunatic for imagining somebody following me and told me to snap out of my dreamworld. I didn't really prefer opening up to my family but when a stalker is behind you, you have to tell them, right? But my family didn't even listen or care at all. Anyways, all they ever did was just consider everything I say as a reason to snicker at. They just think that I was an insane typical teenager. But what reason have I given them to not trust me or at least pay heed to what I say? I get perfect scores at school and I do my chores, what else? Anyways, I do not want to keep fuming at my family.