Ditching Greek | editing

41| The Lake

Before he drove me to my apartment, Clyde had bought our plane tickets over the phone with the airline. We'd be leaving Portland International Airport at eleven tonight, landing in Canada in two hours or less. I was left to decide what to bring to the trip to Vancouver. If it wasn't for the fact that Clyde was standing outside my door, reminding me the amount of time we had left, I would've stood there in front of the closet for hours on end.

"You've got a passport, right?" Clyde inquired.

I smiled. "It's a little too late to ask that question, don't you think? You already bought the tickets." I went back to folding my clothes into my bag, adding, "And before you freak out, yes, I do have a passport. I took a flight last Christmas."

"I'm guessing that was to see Brandon." I simply nodded. He already knew who I was visiting; I didn't need to say it out loud. I returned to my packing, stuffing an extra pair of shoes. "Nabella," he laughed. "We're going for a weekend. Not a month. Unless you think we're gonna be dancing all weekend, I don't see why you'd bring all those shoes."

I stepped back from my suitcase. "I know we're only going for a weekend, but each shoe has a reason. Each shoe goes for different things. What if one of your cousins decides to go to a party? Or have lunch at someplace fancy? I need to make sure that I've the proper shoes to match."

He wore an amused look on his face. "Okay, first of all the two female cousins in my family - Lynn and Lydia - are more into conjuring up curses for fun than going to parties."

I flinched at his words. "Curses? Like one of those Egyptian curses you always hear in stories?"

"Yup. Hidden tombs with curses written in aerographics all over it." He sighed. "Lynn is a real nice girl so it's surprising that she likes using the curses more than her older sister."

I abruptly stopped folding. "Interesting. I always wondered if those curses on tombs were real."

"It all depends on who wrote the curse. If some human wrote it with no real power, then the curse is pretty useless and it's only there to scare certain people away. Kind of like how a scarecrow gets bird away from crop, but in reality it's not a living being that can honestly do much harm. It's just there. The ones foolish enough to believe it can bring them harm will flee before seeing it's all a lie."

I shook my head and returned to folding. "Why do your cousins like that stuff, anyway? It sounds so sadistic."

"They don't do anything deadly, so don't freak out or anything," he said, resting his hands behind his head. "Most of their curses are temporary and wear off before you even know it. Also, you won't have anything bad happen to you as long as you don't walk into their room without them in it or don't try to steal their stuff."

I exhaled, worried that his family's house would be full of booby traps and it would be a game to get through the place. I decided then and there that I'd do my best to stay on the good side of those two girls. The last thing I wanted was to get twisted into one of their curses.

...

Just like I had expected, we landed in Canada in about a little over two hours. There was a slight delay with getting our luggage, so we had to wait a while to finally receive them and get on our way. Clyde had informed his aunt and uncle briefly at the airport that we were on our way, and another time during the drive to the airport. He didn't tell me how they reacted to the news so I was one hundred percent unaware of how they'd react to us going there. There still was a lot about Clyde and his family that I didn't know, and I wanted to change that as soon as possible. We got into one of the first cabs outside the airport exit and put our bags inside, and then piled into the back seats. Not wasting much after we buckled in, I faced Clyde.