Bloodlust

chapter four

 

-4-

 

At six a.m. I still haven’t been able to sleep. I can’t believe last night happened. It was too much.

  I get ready for school and head out of the house, avoiding my dad who’s passed out on the couch and snoring loudly. He’s going to be hung-over and late for work, and then he’s going to figure out how to blame it on my mom or me. The morning air is chilly, finally showing signs of fall. The leaves are starting to turn and the skies are slightly overcast every morning. I love and hate the overcast skies; they make it so the morning isn’t too bright, but they also make it look like it’s going to rain, so when it doesn’t I get pissed off; if it looks like rain, it should rain. I can’t control the weather though.

I get to school and the first few classes pass in a daze. I don’t get the best grades but I’m not failing, so I can kind of fly under the radar. Occasionally, I get a detention for defending myself when jocks decide they’re going to beat me up, or when I cuss in front of a teacher. Scarlet, Drew, Christopher, Alex and I, like to call ourselves the misfits. None of us have too much but we have enough in common to be friends with each other. Drew and Christopher are a good example; Christopher is the most fashion forward person I know. He never wears anything that doesn’t flatter him while Drew wears thrift store sweaters and things that shouldn’t look good, but they somehow work out for him. I’m the punk kid who wears all black, occasionally wears eyeliner and listens to punk music. Alex is the only one in the group that we would consider normal, but he’s more grown up than any of us; he hung out with the jocks for a while. Alex joined our group after ditching the jocks, saying that high school drama was stupid and the social hierarchy was so tedious that “real friends” didn’t seem to exist. 

Scarlet is decent but she gets caught in with the popular crowd a lot. She used to hang out with us all the time and she didn’t care about guys or gossip; we would all have fun, smart conversation. Now, there are two Scarlets, the Scarlet that existed before people noticed she was pretty and when she hung out with us because we were the only people she could hang out with, and then there’s the Scarlet now. The new Scarlet focuses less on school and more on gossip and guys. I miss the old Scarlet because she was easier to be around.

I changed too, when my dad started hitting me, my music, clothing, and everything about me got darker. I started dying my hair black and I cut it into fringe. I realized how dark the world could be and I’m angry that I have to live in the middle of it. I did nothing to deserve this, so I rebel against it all.

Alex comes up to me at my locker right before lunch. “Did you hear what happened at the park last night?” he asks me. The mention of the park immediately piques my interest.

“No,” I say as I grab my books, “What happened?”

“Some guy was killed. His neck was snapped.”

“At least it was a quick death,” I say distractedly. The park seems like it could be dangerous, but it’s weird for a murder to happen there.

“The weird thing is he was missing a ton of blood, but he had no wounds. They say he couldn’t have done any of it himself.” Shit, I was at the park last night. It could have been me.

“Damn,” I say quietly as I grab my lunch and close my locker.

“I know, and you know what the scary thing is?” Alex asks as we start walking towards the cafeteria.

“What?” I ask him as we go through the doors.

“They couldn’t find any evidence, no hair, no fingerprints, anything.”