A raven's secret

Grave secrets

After dinner I rushed upstairs to my room to inspect the photo. I grabbed my camera off the desk and pulled up the photo of the raven. Zooming in, I saw the scratch Vallerie had mentioned.

Mortifer. It was him. Vallerie joked about him flying around town and spying on people, but now that theorie didn't seem so far off.

The door of my bedroom flew open.

"Do you mind knocking?" I snapped at Scott.

"Yeah, whatever. So, who's the pretty girl who you've got as a friend now?" Scott made himself at home by sitting on my bed.

"Her name is Vallerie, something you already know since you talked to her at school." I sat down on my desk chair and spun around to face him.

"But she's your friend. Tell me what she's like. Is she into band guys?" he asked hopefully.

"She's a great friend and I don't know if she's into band guys." I looked at Scott with threaths in my eyes. "If you hurt her I'll make sure to cut your guitar's strings in the middle of the night while you are still sleeping."

"Ok, wow, I'm just asking questions here." Scott lifted both his hands in surrender. "If she's a great friend to you, I'm guessing she didn't mention the..." Scott indicated at my face.

"No, she didn't, which was really nice." I got up and started pushing Scott in the direction of the door. "Feel free to ask any other questions you have personally." I shut the door in a protesting Scott's face.

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Up untill Thusday things weren't too unbearable.

Scott was a pain, as always, and something was definitely brewing between him and Vallerie. He made frequent trips to our lunch table, and he and Vallerie would talk, completely forgetting my existence.

Mom's new job was going great. The owner of the art gallery wanted Mom to paint a special piece for a event the gallery was having in two weeks.

Dad's new job didn't involve too many dangerous cases, which made Mom a bit more at ease. The worst thing he had to do this week was get an angry dog off the streets to insure it didn't bite anyone, and was chased down the street in the process. Lucky for the rest of my family, one of the other cops got the whole episode on camera and sent it to my Mom. Dad was mad beyond belief when he heard the familiar audio playing from her phone.

School, on the other hand. was the bane of my existence. Brandon Cole became the reason I hated school. My face was the centre of all his jokes, and everyday he'd come up to me with some new joke he'd cooked up the previous night. I hated my face, and I hated myself for caring about what everyone said about it.

Brandon was the typical jock. Brown hair cropped short with eyes to match. Whenever I saw him he was busy examining his muscles or commenting on how much of his afternoon he spent at the gym.

Vallerie clued me in on Brandon. He was captain of the football team, and he loved to brag that his dad was the best doctor in Rose Hill, and many of the surrounding towns as well. I expected him to date a cheerleader, but to my surprise he was dating this shy girl who was in my math class. She was extremely smart, and at first I thought he only dated her to pass his classes. That was untill I saw them together. He was always with her, and she sometimes sat at his table too. He was very different towards her than he was to anyone else. I could see in the way he smiled at her that he actually liked her.

When the final bell rang Thursday afternoon, Vallerie dragged me back to the Candy Store. "I need to get someme chocolate bars for my mother," she explained as we enterd the store. I walked a bit behind her, and kept my eyes peeled for any sign of Mortifer.