Slayer

Chapter 5

A girl with enormous hair and an extreme overbite looks up at me, surprised. "Brooke!" She says, and I shiver. Her voice is like nails on a chalkboard; high-pitched, whiney, and annoying as hell.

I grin insincerely. "Hey..."

She looks hurt. "Beck. I sat next to you in History. You were kinda busy talking to Tyler, though." She almost says this dreamily. Ugh. What girl doesn't have a crush on that freak?

"Yeah..." I grimace, poking at my lunch.

"Ooh!" A chubby girl sitting next to Beck says. She reaches for my food hungrily.

I pull it away. Does this idiot know eating this food could kill her? It's filled with things that could knock her out just by breathing in it's scent. If she ate the whole sandwich, I'd be arrested for murder.

She makes a face. "God. I just was gonna take your yogurt cup. No need to get all freaky."

"I'm hungry," I say awkwardly, taking a bite of my sandwich.

Beck smoothes her hair with a greasy hand. Disgusting. "Here, Shell, take this." She pushes the chubby girl a bag of potato chips, which she devours quickly

The bell rings. Thank God. I stand quickly and shove my remaining food into my lunchbox. "Bye." I'm not even pretending to be friendly anymore.

"Well, bye too, grumpy-puss," Beck says, standing. "How about you sit somewhere else tomorrow?"

"Whatever." Do they really think I'd want to sit by them again?

I rush out of the cafeteria and to my next class. Just don't make me see them again...

I sit down at a desk near the middle. Not in the front, not in the back. I don't stick out. I blend in.

Expect for the fact there's a screaming girl beside me.

"Oh, mah gosh, it's you again. Didn't I tell you not to sit next to me?" Beck says, screaming into my ear. "Did you not get enough of me at lunch?"

Ugh. Great. I get to spend the rest of the 45-minute class with Ms. Greasy-Hair.

Once the class starts, she doesn't even stop talking, but she stops ranting and just starts blabbering to me as if I were her best friend. My guess is that she doesn't have many people to confide in, so she relies solely on strangers to confess her life secrets to.

Yeah. They train us for practically anything, including psychology.

"..And he's just so dreamy, it's like when he looks at me I'm the only girl who exists. Except, it feels like something is in the way, as if there's someone else..."

"...Yesterday's test results were not as satisfying as I'd hoped," the teacher said, as Beck dragged on.

"It's like, we're meant to be, but there's some mental block between me and him, like I'm destined for him but he's destined for someone else..."

"Most of you got lower than a C-..."

"...And I just love him so much..."

"..If you'd just work a little harder-"

"...And he doesn't love me back..."

"Shut up!" I hiss to Beck, a little louder than I ought've.

She looks at me, as well as half the class. "Sorry," I mutter to my staring classmates. They give death glares, then look back to the teacher.

"See what happens when you make a scene?" Beck says smugly, smacking her lips. Oh, if only she were my target...

The teacher started walking around the classroom, passing out scored tests. I hear groans coming from people who have already received theirs. He slapped the paper on my desk.

"I'm disappointed, Ms. Evans," the teacher says. "I thought you would be a better student than this."

He leaves and goes to give Beck her test. I pick up the paper and look at the score; F. 

Great. My second day of school, and I already failed a test. This persona was supposed to be smart. I knew the answers to these (it's a necessary part of our training) but I was distracted by Tyler.

He had chosen me. It's almost like he knew I was out to get him...

But, he couldn't know that. There was no way he could. He was a relatively young vampire; he's too naive to know that the Slayers even exist yet, let alone that they're out to get him.

On second thought, why are we out for him? He looks inexperienced and sloppy; why would they spend so much time training me to kill him if he's too stupid to do any actual harm?

Maybe there was more to him than I thought. After all, he could pick out a Slayer out of hundreds of people, and he shouldn't even know that there is such thing as a Slayer.

I wonder who turned him into a vampire. Vampires aren't born, (coughTwilightcough) they're made. He must've been bitten by someone important. But, why? A vampire of high status wouldn't go around Turning nobodies.

What was so special about Tyler? He was your stereotypical teen fiction/romance vampire; greasy hair, stupid 'bad-boy' attitude, hitting on anything with breasts. Yet, he always chose one girl...

In some stories, that would be flattering. He chose me, of all the puny mortals he could've chosen to 'love'.

But not this one. This is not a love story. It won't have a happy ending, not if he insists on choosing me. I run a hand through my hair, dyed blonde for this persona. This is not good. I won't 'get the guy', he won't fall in love and we won't live happily ever after. If Tyler bites me, it won't just be between me and him.

There's something special about him. If he bites me, not only would I lose my job, everything I've dedicated my whole life to. It won't just hurt me.

It could hurt everyone.

Beck starts chirping about her test scores, but I don't listen. Instead, I wonder what 'Mom' gave me in that package.

And I wonder if it's about time I should open it.