Beauty and A Beast (ON HOLD)

Chapter 4

The body belonged to a girl named Clarissa Fuller. She was my age. Her body was found in the last aisle of the library and, according to the coroner report, she died from animal attack. But I knew differently. I tried explaining to the police, when they asked for my statement, that there was a man here who had blood all round his lips but Sheriff Forbes just said that it had been a stressful day what with a new school so my mind was probably playing tricks on me.

When I tried explaining it to Alaric, he said that I was imagining things, that my mind was trying to cover up the horrible images of the body. Elena and the others said the same thing as well and just thanked God that I wasn't in the library when the animal was in there. But, there were so many things that didn't add up.

For starters, how on earth does an animal, in particular an animal that can do that sort of damage to a human being, get into a secure building, get past all of the doors and into the library?

Secondly, the way that the police and Alaric and everyone on the scene were acting so weird. They would talk quietly amongst themselves but then the moment they turned round and saw me looking, they looked away and pretended not to be talking at all.

Lastly, I know that the man did it. His hands were covered in blood, he had blood all around his mouth and the way he spoke to me. He said that he wouldn't kill me, implying that he was thinking about it. But, that wasn't the strangest thing he said. 'Little girls should know that we can smell them from a mile away...'

The next day, the school held a memorial service for Clarissa. We all gathered in the gym whilst the head and teachers offered words of kindness but, looking round the gym, I saw that no one was really in floods of tears but I didn't know whether that was because she didn't have many friends or whether this happened a lot so that everyone was used to it.

I looked to my side and saw that Elena and Bonnie were whispering to each other and I couldn't help but catch the word 'vampire'. But, how ridiculous would that be; a vampire living in Mystic Falls killed a girl from school. Things like that just didn't happen.

Once the assembly was over, everyone went back to their everyday lives, like a teenage girl had not just been mauled to death in the library. Later that day, I went to work, like the day before, got back, watched TV with Jeremy and went to bed.

During the rest of the week, Clarissa's death had been completely forgotten. Instead, it was replaced with thoughts and preparation for the homecoming dance that weekend. Not being American, I had no idea how popular the dance was so when Caroline asked for my opinion on colours for some of the decorations, I simply replied 'don't know' and she flipped. She said that 'even though you're not going, you could at least care for everyone else sake's.' Elena just told me that she was panicking and to just ignore her so that's exactly what I did.

The next day, the house was in chaos. Elena, Bonnie and Caroline were running around trying to get make up and everything ready so that once they had finished preparing the gym, they could quickly get home and get ready. Jeremy stayed in his room, telling me that once they were gone, we could go downstairs, watch films and order pizza. However, that was not to be. I got a call from my boss at the grill who said that because it was going to be a slow night, what with homecoming and all, and losing many of their employees due to the dance, I had to work that night. So, at 5pm, two hours before the start of the dance, I went to work.

The grill had never been so busy but, then again, it was a Saturday and everyone had probably come due to there being hardly any teenagers who were either getting ready for the dance or just relaxing at the grill before they got ready, but that was only a handful of guys. Thankfully.

I busied myself, clearing tables, as I was meant to start my bar duty once Matt had gone to get ready for the dance. But, despite everything that was going, I couldn't get my mind off of Clarissa's death and the man who did it. The way he was trying to make me forget what had happened was super weird...