Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 178117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 891(@200wpm)___ 712(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 178117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 891(@200wpm)___ 712(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
I shriek before realizing it’s Kayla.
“Chill, it’s me,” she says.
“Oh my God,” I say, pressing my palm to my chest to calm down my heart.
“Sorry. My pen spilled all over my goddamn shirt.” She turns on the faucet next to me so she can tuck her shirt under it. “Middle of class, too.” When she looks up at me, she frowns. “Shit, what happened to you?”
“What?” I ask perplexed.
She points at my black lace top. “There’s blood.”
I look down and see the stain.
How did I not notice that in the mirror?
“Oh …”
Kayla glares at me.
“I had a nosebleed,” I lie, and I quickly grab a tissue and shove it up my nostril. “Happens to me sometimes.”
She looks over my shoulder. “Where’s your bag?”
I shrug. “Lost it.”
“What? How? You still had it when you said you needed to go to the toilet.”
Oh, that’s right. I told her and her friends I had to take an emergency toilet break to follow Dylan, but I completely forgot about it.
“Oh, I must’ve put it down somewhere outside while running to the toilet.” I laugh it off because I really have no answer to that.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Why do I get the feeling she’s not telling me everything she knows?
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie.
“Because Crystal told me she saw you run out of the emergency exit,” she adds.
Oh fuck.
I shake it off. “It’s nothing.”
When I attempt to leave, she grabs my arm and says, “Wait. I just … want you to feel comfortable enough to tell me the truth. I want to be a friend.”
I nod, smiling. “Of course.”
She looks me dead in the eyes, her fingers still gripping my arm. “Was it those boys?”
My pupils dilate, and I jerk my arm away.
How does she know?
“I know you’ve been looking at them,” she says. “Are you involved with them? Is that why you transferred here? Because of those guys of the Skull & Serpent Society?”
I pull away and quickly open the bathroom door to get out. “It’s none of your business.”
“Please, Pen,” she says. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to scare you away.”
She follows me all the way outside the building, and I don’t know how to get rid of her without being mean to her face. She’s the first friend I’ve made since I came here, and I don’t want to ruin things. But I can’t tell her everything either. If I did, it would put her in jeopardy.
“They’re after you, aren’t they?”
Her words make me stop in my tracks midway across the campus.
I turn around on the gravel road and look at her. “Thank you for giving me a warm welcome. I really appreciate it. I just … can’t.”
I sigh and shake it off. I’m already involved now. But I won’t let her go down this dangerous hole with me.
Serpents are hiding there, waiting to swallow people whole.
Lying down on my bed, I sift through the pages one by one, gazing at all the things my sister wrote about her peers. About a girl she had a fight with, Sadie, a boy named Peter she despised because he bullied her, Nathan, and some of her other classmates too. Tiny snippets of all the things she did with them, parties, random outings, movies, games, even just studying. She laid it all out in this little diary like a collection of memories. A peek into the world she once belonged to.
A world I’ve now infiltrated.
The page turns, and two familiar faces pop up again.
Dylan and Alistair.
Both take up an entire page in her little diary.
Their names are circled, their devious grins unsettling. Haunting.
A piece of the page has been torn off that has Dylan’s last name on it.
And I know it was there before.
My heart begins to pulsate with fear.
What if Dylan ripped it out?
Fuck!
I slam the book shut for a second, groaning with anger. I should’ve paid more attention when I snatched it back from him, but I was in too much of a hurry to get away after stabbing Felix.
Grumbling, I open the diary again. Even though a part is missing, these pages still hold the secret to my sister’s untimely death, and I can’t turn away from it, even when I’m pissed off a part of it got stolen.
The page next to Dylan and Alistair is what captures me the most. Felix Rivera. His picture stands out among all others, larger than the ones of all her friends. It takes up almost an entire page. And his face is circled, adorned with hearts and skulls and snakes. But the text beneath it is what strikes the most fear into my heart.
Don’t stop.
Don’t look back.
Don’t fall.
Run.
303.
The words and numbers are repeated over and over again like a mantra splurged onto the pages, ink splotches everywhere. A mantra she kept saying to herself. But why?