Ditching Greek | editing

23| Believing

"She what?" I shouted, bringing my brows together to form a hard scold. It wasn't Hazel who had told my father about what happened, but that didn't stop from angry spilling out onto every word I said. "She has no right to..." I trailed off and walked past her. Why would Monica go behind my back and talk to my dad about the outrageous things she and the others had tried to pass off as the truth?

"Where is she?" I sneered.

Hazel came up from behind me, still with the house phone stretched in front of her. "She's out with her boyfriend tonight."

"Oh, this is not good. This is not good at all." I blew out a sharp breath and cursed, eying the phone in her hand. "I can't talk to him. Not now."

Hazel smiled weakly. "Talk to him."

"I can't! He probably already thinks you guys are lunatics."

A pained look hit her eyes. "Is that what you think? That we're crazy." There was no inflation with her last statement, it was flat. Cold, like how her face looked now. I had obviously hurt her with what I said.

"Hazel," I stepped forward, but she only moved back. "You couldn't have believed I'd just jump on your bandwagon. All of this is new to me. There's just no, logic, you understand right?"

I was babbling, trying to find a way to justify my actions. A normal sane person wouldn't have gone along with every thing they said. I had lived in a world of reason, logic; there was simply no room for anything else. I stayed up countless nights trying to find logical explanation to why Clyde could move clouds, and how the guy at the bonfire had started a fire. But I had come up with nothing.

"Take the phone." There was still a ring of disappointment in her voice. I reached my arm out to take the phone from her, but her second hand went forward and grabbed my left one, turning the palm downward. The ring around my finger hummed against my skin as she touched the hand it was on. Her eyes glossed over, anger shining behind the disappointment now. "You have the protection ring."

"Yeah," I swallowed, not sure why she had this reaction. "Clyde gave it to me."

"I didn't think you'd wear it." She laughed humorlessly and brushed her thumb over one of the stones. A loud sizzling noise cracked into the air. Hazel stepped back, hissing in pain. I glanced down at the ring. The two stones were bright white, still vibrating as if they were alive. It wasn't hurting me, but it sure as heck hurt my friend. What the hell was that? In all the time I had it, I had never seen it do that.

"Are you okay?" I asked, moving toward Hazel. She stumbled away from me.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she grumbled and handed me the phone. "Take it."

And I did. Taking a beat to collect my thoughts, I sighed then brought the phone to my ear. "Hey, dad."

"Nabela, dear. How are you?" For the first time, my father did something I had long believed he was incapable to do. Be concerned.

"Uh, I'm fine," I say, falling back on the couch. Maybe if I didn't mention what Monica told him, then he might not mention it. "I've been busy."

"Yes, I can only imagined. With finding out about everything, I'm guessing you're doing training right? Also, filling up your night shift hours with patrol time must be making your schedule hectic. When I attended the school, that's what I always had a hard time getting to. And also learning as much as you can about the history of the gods and also understand the politics behind the tension between the Egyptian, Greek, Ro--"

"What?" My back straightened, rising from my resting position. "Dad, you can't honestly tell me you ..."

"Believe it?" He filled the words I was unable to. "Darling, that was my life when I was your age. You--"

I pressed the end button, cutting the call short. The only reason I had even answered this call, instead of ignoring it like all of Clyde's calls, was because I had hope that my father hadn't fall for the lies I had been feed. Oh, how wrong I was. He believed them!

I leaped to my feet and went straight into my room. Flipping on the light, I scanned my eyes over my room for my jacket.

"Well that was a quick call," Hazel said from outside my room. "Wait, where are you going?"

I pushed my arms into the sleeves and darted my gaze around the floor to find my boots. "I'm going out."

"You can't go," her eyes widened. "It's already dark. You know there's a curfew."

"And you think that's going to stop me?" I snorted, strapping on my boots. Hazel stammered for the right words. "You know, whatever reason you've got, I'm not going to listen to it."

Hazel filled up the door way, "I can't let you leave. It's not safe."

I huffed a stiff breath. She just had to be kidding. I eased toward the door, trying to move around her, but she kept blocking my way.

"Stop messing around and get out of my way."

"Nabela, listen to me for a sec, okay? When Monica said you opened a whole lot of ugly to come after you that night after the bonfire, she wasn't lying."

In the middle of her warning for me, I sidestepped around her and finally got into the hallway. Not saying a word to her, I made it to the front door and out the apartment in one piece.

"What's wrong with everyone?" I asked myself as I went down the stairs and into the parking lot. Ever since that night with Clyde at the bonfire, it was like suddenly everyone wanted to freak me out on how crazy they can act. It was like one thing after another, and the insanity never seemed to stop.

I patted my pockets and found my phone in one of them. Fishing it out, I checked my inbox and the missed calls I got. For the most part, ignored my phone these days, seeing that it was the safest way to avoid contact from people I'd rather not talk to. Even after I got my number changed, Clyde found it and started sending me messages, asking about how I was. I wanted to call him up and scream at him over the phone, but didn't have the courage to.

It was only 9:00pm and I had already missed two calls from Brandon and five texts from an unknown number. Most likely Clyde. I blocked his previous number so he must've gotten a hold of a different phone to contact me.

Given the late hour, there wasn't many places I could go off to. And being careless meant that I was only asking to get robbed if I walked to any of the destinations I wanted to go to.

A soft muddling cry echoed out from inside the parking lot near the side of the building once I got to the bottom of my stairs. I pushed my phone back into my pocket and craned my neck at the side of the building for a split second, curious on who it could be.

And suddenly, just as that curiosity came, it quickly fled. And it's place, I wished I hadn't looked after spotting who that sound was coming from.

Because it surely wasn't a human.

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