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Ariel wasn't a loser. She's precious and I want to kick my own ass for ever daring to speak to her in such a way. If my Uncle had been in the vicinity and seen what had gone down and heard the way I'd spoken to her he would have kicked my ass right there in the hallway and I would have laid down like a bitch and let him beat my ass because it would have been much deserved.
I digress...
As for Ariel's looks...
Well, let’s just say I think she's beautiful and leave it at that. I would feel like a pervert if I waxed poetic about how hot I found her on a school paper.
But she is, hot that is.
And her voice, damn. She has a quiet voice that's sweet, she's always so soft spoken. It's very feminine and something that I find incredibly attractive. It's refreshing because I don't think she knows how attractive even her voice is. I'm not used to that in a female. The one's I've known before always knew just how attractive they were and wielded their beauty like a powerful weapon to gain whatever their black hearts had desired.
Ariel doesn't seem to have a vindictive bone in her body.
She's also been my neighbor since the beginning of the summer, and I am hating myself and my decision to stay gone for the entire summer on a last all boys camping trip because it's time I've missed out on getting to know her. If I'd have spent the summer getting to know her then I wouldn't have been such a dick to her yesterday in the hallway. Which was my problem to begin with. Yesterday, while watching her, I felt something unpleasant slither through me because there was something unpleasant about watching her. She wasn't right. She wasn't shy, but she came off as timid and acted as if she thought the entire world should find her invisible. Which was ridiculous to me because beautiful girls were never invisible and especially not in high school. She should have hit the hot girl radar in even douche bags eyes and then been hit on left and right. Instead, everyone seemed to hate her right away.
It wasn't normal and I didn't get it. What's worse is, she acts like she expected it to some extent.
Since no one besides myself is going to read this I'm just going to put it out there and write it down for myself to read my own words back.
I think it has something to do with her being like me and the rest of my family. I think her magic gives off some sort of repellent to normal, average folks and, if that's the case, she needs me, needs the rest of us, more now than I had realized. And, because of that thought, I hate myself just a little bit.
She'd clearly made no friends during the summer while we were gone and yesterday had made it obvious she wouldn't be making any friends now that school had started.
If I hadn't insisted she'd be fine without us for the summer and we'd stuck around then she would have had friends on her first day, she wouldn't have spent the entire summer alone with no one but her mother and Marcus to rely on. I had been still too hurt by another female of her kind to even consider that this one might be different. And, in all honesty, I could only admit these things because I knew no one else would ever read them. I messed things up so badly with her from the start that I have no idea even where to begin again with her and that thought terrifies me.
She, Ariel Kimber, terrifies me and she doesn't even know it. She has the power to destroy my family and that's something I've gone through once before and have no desire to go through again. That's the only reason I'd insisted on going camping for the summer instead of staying home and getting to know the new witch next door who we'd all dreamed about becoming such a big part of our family. Because she alone held the power to destroy what was really most precious to me, my family.
And she scared the absolute shit out of me.
Proceed with caution, that would be my new life motto because I wasn't about to let my family be sucked under by another female who had the potential to destroy us.
I never received a grade for it and neither had Ariel for hers because I hadn't given Mr. Franklin the chance to even read them before swiping them from his desk. He hadn't needed to read mine and I hadn't wanted anyone else to read the things she'd written about me on hers. We'd both been given F's but I figured that was okay because he was a dick and probably would have failed Ariel anyways because he seemed to hate her from the moment she walked into his classroom, which was something I did not understand in the slightest.
As far as I was concerned, Mr. Franklin could suck it, he meant next to nothing to me. We weren't going to school anymore so neither of us ever had to think of the toad of a man ever again.
And, as far as Ariel was concerned, she never had to know I had the papers.
Chapter Three
Typical Council behavior
The Motel loomed up ahead of me, dark and dreary. I couldn’t imagine anyone but a psychopath wanting to stay here in this creepy place. I wasn't surprised in the least that the Council chose this place to stay in, and not simply because it was creepy as all get out. It was isolated in the extreme and I knew that was probably the driving factor behind them moving in. The Council liked its privacy from the normal, everyday average human beings and what better place to find that than here in a serial killer’s wannabe hang out.
Typical Council behavior.
They were hiding more than just themselves, and I knew it. They were always hiding something and seemed to be never capable of simply being open and honest. They also sneered at the weakest among us and adored the cruelest. My grandfather, my Uncle Quint's father, had been testament to that. They’d loved him and he’d been one of the biggest motherfuckers to ever walk the planet.
I wondered how long they planned on staying here and hoped like hell they lost interest in our coven and Ariel sooner rather than later because I didn't want to deal with the threat of them lurking around every corner.
I parked my Audi on the side of the dirt road a slight ways back from the Motel and got out. I didn't want them all to know I was here because I was certain if something bad went down then Adrian would immediately be on the phone with Uncle Quint, telling him how naughty I was and that he needed to put a tighter leash on me. The whole entirety of those pricks worked like that, thinking the only one's of us whoreallymattered were the leaders and the rest of us were simply sheep to be commanded at their every whim.
I wasn't a sheep and I wasn't about to be lead around by the leash Annabell wanted to snap back around my neck when I wasn't paying close enough attention to her. That bitch was not getting her claws back into me. Not now, not ever. And she sure as hell wasn't going to drag my family back through the mud while I sat back on my ass and watched and did nothing. This was my mess that had started with her and I was going to be the one to clean it up.
I was so sick and tired of everything for me always coming back to Annabell and the way she'd hurt me. It had even made it hard for me to trust Ariel in the beginning or treat her as well as I should have. I still felt immense guilt over the way I had behaved towards her on the first day of school even though it had been months ago. If I hadn't allowed Annabell to hurt me before, and to still fucking control my life even though she was no longer a part of it, then I wouldn't have treated Ariel the way that I had. I needed to finally face what she'd done to me and move past it once and for all so that I could live my life outside of the shadow she'd cast on it when she'd royally fucked not only myself but two of my brothers over.
I didn't want to feel like she still had a hold on me anymore. And, it's not even like it was her who really had a hold on me, because it wasn't. It was what she'd done to me and how it had happened at a time when I was so incredibly vulnerable due to the death of my parents and how she'd tried to tear apart the only thing I had left that was good in my life anymore, that's what still had a hold on me. I couldn't get past my own stupidity over having allowed a snake to infest my family. I had always been arrogant enough to think I was smart and she'd proven me wrong in every way and made me feel like I wasn't worth a damn at all and that I wasn't capable of taking care of my family.
I absolutely loathed everything about Annabell.
