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Stefan pulled up in front of Elena’s house and stopped. Her front door flew open, and Aunt Judith and Robert rushed out onto the lawn. No doubt they’d heard about the fire.
Before she opened the car door to reassure them, Elena turned to Stefan and laid her hand over his.
“I know what we have to do now. We can fix everything,” she told him, feeling strong and sure. “Tomorrow, we’re going to look for Damon.”
Dear Diary,
I woke up this morning and I wished I were dead.
Not really, I suppose. If I meant it, I would just let things take their course. Grab at the chance of a brief happiness with Stefan, knowing that it will lead to so much suffering, to the destruction of all three of us.
But Damon was so full of anger. The way he looked at me when he found me in Stefan’s arms—he never looked at me that way before, even when things between us were at their worst. Like he hated me.
Elena glanced at the clock. She needed to leave for school soon. Downstairs, she could hear the familiar clatter of Aunt Judith making breakfast. It felt so much like the morning when Damon had driven her to school, when it had seemed like everything was falling into place. She began to write again.
I refuse to believe that I’ve ruined everything.
If I can just show Damon how much Stefan still loves him, how much they need each other, maybe things will turn out okay after all. I have to believe that. I can’t give up on us, not yet.
“One day off,” Bonnie fumed, flicking her red curls over her shoulder as the two girls crossed the parking lot together. “We go through a completely traumatizing event, and they can’t give us even one day off.”
“It’s amazing how quickly they pulled all this together, though,” Elena commented. In daylight, she could see that the school hadn’t entirely burned down.
One side of the building, where the office and most of the classrooms were, was charred and half-collapsed. Elena couldn’t suppress a shudder as she looked at the bell tower. The staircase she had climbed to find Stefan must be entirely gone. But the other side, where the auditorium and cafeteria were, looked mostly solid even though stained a dirty gray by the smoke. The heavy smell of ash hung over everything.
Behind the school now stood a row of temporary white trailers to be used as classrooms for the rest of the year, until the school could be rebuilt. All around the trailers, students gathered in groups, leaning eagerly toward each other to gossip. Harried administrators were trying to shepherd everyone into the right trailers. Everything seemed to be in only slightly controlled chaos.
“See you later,” Bonnie called as she veered off into chemistry, and Elena found the trailer where her trig class was. Meredith was already there, her homework laid out neatly in front of her.
As Elena settled into the desk beside her, Meredith looked up with a worried frown. “Have you heard the gossip?” she asked. “Everyone’s saying that Stefan started the fire.”
Elena remembered with a twinge of dismay the low, excited, I’ve-got-a-secret tone to the whispers before class.
They’d been here before. It might start at the high school, but the rumors would spread all over town. Adults would get upset. Stefan would be shunned.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said sharply.
Meredith bit her lip. “There’s no real evidence. Everyone used to think the way he keeps to himself was romantic, but now they’re saying it’s creepy. He disappeared from the dance right before the fire started.”
“So did we,” Elena objected.
“We were all together.” Meredith dipped her head, shuffling the papers around on her desk. “I don’t want to believe it, but it is strange how Stefan disappeared. When Matt told the fire fighters that Stefan wasn’t there, they started searching for him to make sure he wasn’t in the building. You said you didn’t see him when you looked either.”
Elena winced. It had seemed simpler when she got home just to call Bonnie and Meredith and tell them she had given up and decided to leave. Now it was too late to pretend to have run into Stefan.
“They found him back at his boardinghouse. When the police questioned him he was covered in smoke and ash.” Meredith raised her head, her gray eyes troubled. “I’m not saying Stefan did anything. And I promise not to tell anyone that Damon was there, either. But maybe you should stay away from both of them, Elena.”
“Anybody could have set that fire!” Elena said, her voice a little too loud. The teacher looked up from her desk inquiringly, and Elena lowered her voice. “It was probably somebody sneaking a cigarette.”
Meredith’s forehead creased in concern. “Elena, you don’t even know Stefan. You’ve been avoiding him since he started school. And then, suddenly, you’ve kissed him—once—and now you won’t hear anything against him? I thought you were with Damon.”
“I am, but—” Elena began.
“Okay, time to stop the chatter and review your homework assignments,” Ms. Halpern said, stepping up to the front of the room. With one more worried glance, Meredith turned away from Elena to face the teacher.
Elena chewed on her lip. This was worse than the first time she had been here. Then, everyone had started suspecting Stefan of being responsible for Mr. Tanner’s murder after Halloween. The gossip had spread until, despite the lack of any real evidence, everyone was convinced Stefan was the killer. Aunt Judith had banned Elena from seeing Stefan, and some of the adults in town—Tyler’s dad, especially—had been ready to form a lynch mob and attack him.
Now, because of Elena, all the suspicion and hatred for Stefan was starting earlier. And, that time, at least Meredith and Bonnie had been on her side. They hadn’t had any more proof of Stefan’s innocence then than they did now, but they had believed Elena when she swore he was innocent. They’d believed her because they knew she knew Stefan.
