Anger To Love; Theo Raeken [1]

07|Missing

Ava invited Mason over one evening to play video games. It was getting quite late and Ava kept persuading Mason to stay for another game. Ava just doesn't want to be left alone, the Berserkers are still messing with her head.

"When did you get so good?" Mason asked when Ava won another game. "You've been practicing? Or did you just suddenly get superhuman reflexes?"

"Oh, just practice." Ava told him nervously. "Yeah, I've been practicing."

"And I should be studying." Mason said and puts his controller down.

"Where are you going?" Ava asked Mason started standing up.

"Home? I got a history test tomorrow." Mason said.

"Come on. One more game?" Ava asks from where she's still sat on the floor in front of her bed.

"Yeah, you said that like four games ago."

"Well, study here. You can stay over, you know my mum doesn't mind." Ava said when Mason was half way out her bedroom door. "Come on, one more game. Just one."

"You okay?" Mason asks with concern.

"Yeah. You're right. You should go. I should probably study too. See you at school." Ava said avoiding eye contact with her best friend.

As soon as Mason's gone Ava gets into her pyjamas and gets in to bed after checking around her room anxiously. Ava keeps her lamp on for a while but then she reluctantly turns it off and tries to go to sleep. Ava heard the floor boards squeak outside her room and then she thought she heard something growling.

"It's not real." Ava tells herself when she hears the footsteps approaching her bed. "You're not there."

Ava tenses and starts breathing heavily when she saw a Berserker lean close to her face. Ava sits up with a loud gasp and turns her lamp on and looks frantically around her empty room.

Ava started avoiding everyone at school the next day and she couldn't really pay attention in any of her classes.

Ava started running when Scott and Mason called her name at the end of the day. She didn't stop running until she got back to her house.

"Ava, Mason's here." Her mum shouted upstairs later that evening.

Ava sighed when Mason entered her room and he threw something on her bed. She looked down and saw it was a video game.

"I know something's going on." Mason said. "I understand you don't want to talk about it. But, Ava, you're my best friend. And, um... considering the fact that the last good friend I made turned out to be a professional killer, I'm thinking that I don't have too many options for new ones." Mason said as he sat by Ava on her bed. "So, when you're ready to talk, talk. Until then, I know I can kick your ass at at least one of these games."

Ava leaned her head on his shoulder and she smiled. Then she looked at the video games on her bed and picked up the one Mason brought.

"Never played this one." She showed him the game.

Ava spent the rest of the night playing the new game with Mason and beating him each time, but she let him win a couple of rounds.

"I kissed Brett." Ava suddenly announces after they finished one game.

Mason turned to face her with wide eyes and a grin. "When? How was it? He looks like a good kisser."

"I forgot to tell you. It was the other week." Ava tells him.

Mason was thoroughly distracted then and he kept questioning her excitedly.

The next day Ava has a lacrosse match and when she gets to school she doesn't see Scott with Stiles, which she finds strange.