The Dark Side of the Moon

Chapter 27: Florence

-Florence’s P.O.V-

Science class dragged by annoyingly slowly, leaving me to my thoughts while the teacher scribbled away on the board in her unreadable scrawl. Joullian sat in the seat next to me, his arm resting on the desk inches away from mine. My fingers still tingled from when we had held hands on the way to class. His hand had felt warm and reassuring, and he sent me a flirty smile presently, oblivious to my whirling emotions. I tried to smile back, but I just ended up turning away to hide my grimace.

My life was a mess. Ever since that stupid night when I had run away from home, things had taken a turn for the worse. It had been the first time I’d been admitted to hospital for something more than a sprain, the first time that I’d ever seen a wolf around these parts. Then there was that incident at school with the boy I had beaten up, and the strange burning cramps that hadn’t appeared since. And now, I’d been kidnapped twice in one day and chased down by my own personal stalker, who now seemed to have motives to kill me apparently.

My mind flashed back to yesterday in the warehouse, when I had been with my second pair of kidnappers. The experience seemed surreal now, as if it had all been a dream and I was just remembering a fragment of a fictional occurrence. I remembered the odd man who’d worn a business suit, and told me all about Kyle Donnovan.

“Men like him are bad news,” he had said. “You have to stay away from them. We don’t know how or why, but he wants to harm you young girl. Those men that kidnapped you today are linked with him, and it’s in your best interest to move houses, countries even. It would be for your best interest, as well as your family. He’s a dangerous man, young girl, remember that.”

His words inflicted shivers over my spine. Why on earth would someone want to kill me? Surely he was being a little overdramatic? Maybe they just got the wrong girl... yeah, that would be it. They probably mixed me up with some rich little prissy girl who they were meant to kidnap and ransom off later.

The whole thing was very weird. After the business man had talked to me, he gave me another smile and handed me a card. It had a phone number on it and he had told me to “call him if anything like that happened ever again”. The men drove me back to my neighbourhood safely and I was home at around two in the morning. I slipped into the house without a sound, but I had never spoken a word of the whole night to any of my brothers. For all they knew, I didn’t feel like spending the night at Annie’s house and so I walked home.

I pulled my attention back to the present, and the bell signalled the end of period not seconds later. I stood up and gathered my books, Joullian shadowing me the whole time. Once we were trudging back across the oval to the main building, he planted his hand upon my shoulder. I couldn’t help but let frightened thoughts seep their way in, the last time someone had done that, it had been a kidnapper, murderer even.

“Hey Florence, we’ve known each other a while, right?” Joullian asked, rubbing his neck and looking at the floor as we walked. He was lucky that he didn’t bump into anyone, looking down like that.

“Less than a month Joullian, you were a transfer, remember?” I deadpanned, not understanding what he was getting at.

“Yeah I guess so. I just wanted to ask you, umm if you would like to go out to the movies sometime with me?” he trailed off at the end, blatantly avoiding my gaze now.

“Are you asking me on a date?” I asked, a small bubble of excitement growing within me. I’d never been on a date before, as dorky as that sounded. I just wasn’t really into that as much; I hung around too many boys at home.

“Yes I am. So what do you say?” he looked me in the eyes now, his hopeful gaze making my heart flutter. He was so cute, his boyish face glancing over at me, resembling a puppy dog pretty well. I nearly melted inside.

What did I say? I was such a mess right now and I didn’t even know if it was okay, with my parents being away and all. They were usually very protective, what if they hated me for going out with a boy without permission? But then again, they weren’t there to find out were they? Did I even like Joullian that way, or was it just platonic feelings that I felt for him?

“Sure,” I took a leap of faith and grinned at Joullian. He laughed nervously and slung an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into him. It was worth a try, this date thing. After all, what could go wrong?

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get to Media,” Joullian nodded towards a hallway leading off to the left. “I’ll catch up with you at lunch, okay?”

“Yeah that’s alright,” I mumbled, suddenly embarrassed. He had just asked me out, would he kiss me now? Or would he just walk away as if nothing special had happened? I was so new to all this, I didn’t know where to even start.

“I’ll look forward to it,” he breathed in my ear, squeezing my shoulders affectionately and then jogging off down the hall. His sandy blonde hair flipped this way and that, and I found myself standing still, admiring the way his muscles moved when he ran.

“Someone looks totally star struck!” I heard a jealous voice mutter behind me. I turned around to see Annie sulking and glaring at me. “Too busy with a boy to even show up at my place last night?”

“No Annie! I am so sorry that I couldn’t make it! I tried to text you but I lost my phone... It was a bit of a family emergency...” I trailed off and Annie’s expression changed completely. I felt bad for lying to her, but she didn’t need to know about my wild adventures. It wasn’t really the right thing to bring up in conversation anyway...

“I am so sorry I bothered you! You don’t have to talk about it honey, let’s think of something else. I saw the way you were looking at that boy, girl. Do you two have something going on because I totally missed it!” the old enthusiastic Annie was back, guiding me down to the next class we had together as if everything was alright.

“Well he did ask me on a date...”

“No way! You lucky thing, he’s the hottest guy here! If only he fancied me too...” Annie veered completely off track and I giggled. There was nothing like a case of your best friend to distract you from crazy kidnappers and a creepy stalker.

“You wish,” I played along, and we both strutted into English.

As we sat down, I had the strange thought of seeing a counsellor to talk about all the weird things that had been happening to me. If my parents were home, there would be no problem because I would have told my mum all about it. We were usually quite close, but seeing as they were travelling, our contact was limited.

It was an option though, and having a counsellor was free because the school provided one for us, a ‘shrink’ as the other kids liked to call it. But then again, they would probably just pretend to believe me and suggest that I see the police about these ‘kidnappings’.

I shook my head. What was I talking about? I’d never be able to tell anyone about this, let alone a counsellor. There was only one other person that I knew that had an inkling of what was going on, but never in a thousand years was I going to see that creep. As the business man had said, Kyle Donnovan was a bad person to hang around with, he was dangerous. But my gut feeling had me thinking that he may have been lying...

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Another chapter in the same day for you guys because I thought you might need a little bit more of the main plot :) I promise really soon it's going to get a whole lot better and more interesting, just stick with it okay? A few more chapters that's all and then it gets amazing. Hopefully.... 

Vote, comment, and especially if you like it then let me know so that I can write more chapters like it!

-Moozelle