Nightfall

Chapter 3

"We have to do something."

"Like what?" Bonnie asked. "What's little Thea's mind got inside that wants to come out and play?"

Thea frowned up at the ceiling of her bedroom while her hand slipped holding the phone. "Okay," she drew out. "That was officially the weirdest statement of the century."

"Thanks," Bonnie chuckled.

"Anyway, I've got an idea."

Bonnie immediately interrupted. "Alert the media!" she gasped.

"Shut up! I'm serious. There's going to be a bonfire at the beach tonight and a lot of people are going to be there. You in?"

Bonnie sounded hesitant over the line. She didn't want to get in trouble but then she didn't want to blow off her best friend before she left for a foreign world. Bonnie sighed. "Sure. Why not?"

Thea smiled, excited. She was already ready and didn't want to wait for Bonnie at all so she said, "Pick you up in 5."

Bonnie's forehead wrinkled. "But you're ten minutes out."

"I'll make due. Just be ready."

Thea hung up the phone, grabbed her car keys, and headed out the door in record time, only stopping to check her reflection in the mirror in the hallway. As Thea rounded the corner after the stairs, her father appeared through the back door from finishing the steak on the barbecue.

"Where you going?" he asked, looking over my outfit. I had on a see-through top with my swim suit under and shorts that Thea's mother would've had a heart attack if she was there.

Thea pushed down any urge to roll her eyes at her father and said as casually as she could, "To take a swim with Bonnie down at the beach."

He raised an eyebrow, suspicious. "Umm hmm. Where are you really going, Thea?"

"I just said to the beach with Bonnie. You know she's in that stupid marathon thing. She wants me to help her train."

Thea's father sighed. "Fine. But you have to ask your mother."

Thea couldn't help it. Under her breath she mumbled, "Why. She's probably off screwing another guy anyway."

He father's head snapped up so quick that it looked painful. "Room," he growled, low in his throat. "Now."

Now Thea did roll her eyes and mentally cursed herself. "Come on dad. It's just for an hour."

"I don't give a rats ass if it's only for an hour. You're not going and that's final."

"But dad-"

"I don't want to hear it Thea! Leave!"

Pissed off, Thea stormed up back to her room with her hand digging into her keys to her car. She slammed the door at the top and made her way to her window. There was no way she was going to let her dad - of all people - control what she did and didn't do. He just wasn't on her list of respected people anymore, along with her mother.

Thea jammed her key in the slit underneath her window and loosened it. There was no other way to do it since it always got stuck whenever she closed it. She easily slid through the opening and balanced herself out on the roof. She checked to make sure that Zues hadn't noticed and then scaled her way down then side of the house using the water pipe as a life line. She jumped the last few feet and raced to her car. Her dad would definitely find out she was gone after he heard her car, but, honestly, she really didn't care. Telling Ash off had awakened something inside of Thea that she had little control over.

But she didn't mind. Not at all.

Because she was finally free in a way that she had never experienced before. She had started to speak up when others didn't. And she told her opinion to anyone that got in her way. To her, she believed that she had opened her eyes and finally seen the world for what it really was.

~~~

She had no idea how wrong she was.