In Plain Sight (A Hunted Rose)

Chapter Fifteen

The next day at school was the usual monotonous routine… at least until lunch.  Apparently, Amanda had finally decided to get her revenge.  I guess that she had been scouring the internet or using some other source that I didn’t know about to find any dirt on me.

I was eating (hesitantly chewing) my lunch when a hand reached around me and slapped a piece of paper down on the table in front of me.  The hand was French manicured, feminine, and fake tanned, so I had to use hardly any brain power to figure out who it belonged to.  I looked up and behind me to see Amanda raising her bleached blonde eyebrows.

“Hi?” I said.

“Care to explain this, Rose?” She asked in her nasally voice, tapping her finger on the paper she had set in front of me.  I looked down, and my breath caught slightly.  On the paper was my picture - an old yearbook one - and right above the picture, in big red letters, it read MISSING.  It gave details of where I was last seen with my friends and a few numbers to call in case anyone saw me.  I sincerely hoped that Amanda hadn’t called any of them, but I wouldn’t put it past her.

“It looks like a missing poster.” I stated the obvious.

“Yeah,” she said in a snide tone.  “It is.  One with your picture and your name on it.  So, my question is: why are you here, in plain sight, when you’re apparently missing back in New York?”

“Look,” I sighed.  “I got emancipated a few months ago.  You know what that means, right?  It means that although I’m not eighteen yet, I’m now a legal adult.  I’m allowed to live on my own and without a guardian.  I moved here because I needed a change.”

“I read the missing person reports!” Amanda screeched.  “It said you were last seen leaving a club, and then, in the street not an hour after you left, there were large amounts of blood!”

“Okay, listen,” I looked Amanda in the eye, ignoring the curious looks from the five guys I was sitting with.  “My friends,” I used quotation marks around the word friends, “convinced me to go to a club with them.  They started drinking and I got uncomfortable.  I left.  I knew it wasn’t a smart move, but there was a small store or something just up the street.  As I was walking, someone jumped me from behind.”  I noticed the slight widening of her eyes, as if she had expected me to say I staged the whole thing. 

“They attacked me.  I was left bleeding in the street.  It was a popular club and a little while later someone found me and took me to a hospital.  When I recovered, I asked my dad if I could get emancipated and go out on my own.  He would never leave New York - his job was too important to him.  A few months later, here I am, living on my own, trying to finish school.”  I concluded my story and sat back in my seat to see her reaction.  My whole existence here now seemed to depend on if she believed my story, or if she was going to keep digging.  If she kept digging, she might discover the truth at some point - that no one from my old life actually knew where I was.

“What about the missing posters?  Why were they put up?”

“I never told my group of friends that I was leaving.  So I held a grudge against them for what happened, sue me.  I guess this is their way of showing they cared - by putting up missing posters all over.  Hopefully soon my dad will tell them that I’m not actually missing.”  I frowned and rubbed my chin, pretending to be thoughtful.  “Although, he might not.  He gets pretty busy at work.”

Amanda, apparently believing my story, walked away with a huff.  Too bad she didn’t take her cloud of obnoxious overpowering perfume with her.  That stuff was toxic, to a human nose or a vampire’s.  

I turned back to face the guys who sat with me and saw their questioning expressions. 

“Okay,” I said.  “Don’t start nagging me and telling me that I need to call them and blah, blah, blah.  You heard that entire thing, so you know what happened and you know my reasons.  Anything you want to say?”