Julia Hoffman

Chapter 22

"And what if I did?" Erica said.

The picture smiled. "If you did, you could be amazing, you could be so powerful. Everyone would know your name, look up to you, instead of you wanting to be like he normal people, the normal people would want to be like you."

Erica laughed. "You think I'm stupid?" She said, and shut the book.

Little did she know Viola had another plan. A good plan. One that didn't need Erica.

~*~

Hunter was waiting nervously by the beach, were he and Maria had planned to meet. Then he saw her, she had long, dark brown hair, almost black, and pale blue eyes, they were so pale they were almost white. She was wearing a long dark blue dress, it was quite low cut, but suited her body perfectly.

"Hey," she said, she had a British accent and sat down next to Hunter. He had set out a blanket on the sand, and had brought strawberries and chocolate. Maria had brought scotch, they weren't of legal age yet, but she said that back when she lived in England, eighteen was the legal age to drink so it was fine.

"Hey," Hunter said back, and kissed her on the cheek. "How are you?"

"Alright, what's in the bag?" Maria said eagerly.

"I got strawberries and chocolate, is that okay?" Hunter said, almost nervously 

"Aww, your so sweet!" Maria said, and kissed Hunter on the lips for the first time. It took Hunter by suprise; he'd never been kissed by a girl like that before. He smiled. He liked Maria. 

~*~

Julia was in the bathroom, washing her hair. She was scrubbing hard, she needed to look perfect. She hadn't had a day like this in almost twenty years, and she wanted to look right for it. She got out of the shower and looked in the mirror. She got her hair dryer and made her her into its usual perfect state, and started on her makeup. Green eyeshadow, soft face, it suited her. It made her look beautiful.

She went into her and Barnabas's bedroom, her wardrobe was a mess, but she had found what she  wanted, a dress, unlike her usual floral print, it was black. Black was slimming, eveyone knew that. She went downstairs to the kitchen, she had never been much of a cook, but had to learn to when the twins were born. She was making roast beef, with little potatoes and brown sauce. She knew Barnabas liked it, she was cooking it for him. She had brought red wine, she didn't drink anymore, the consequences scared her, but Barnabas still enjoyed  it every now and then.

She set it all nicely on the table, the fake silver cutlery neatly arranged. The potatoes were in a little blue pot in the middle of table, and the fish layed neatly by it. Hunter walked into the room, grabbed a little potato, and ate it.

"Hunter! Hands off!" Julia yelled, running in and hitting him with a table cloth. 

"What's all the fancy get up for?" Hunter said, chewing his potato.

"Just.. Me and your father have some important information to discuss." Julia said vaguely.

"I knew you were up to something." Hunter said, taking another potato.

"Hands off!" Julia said. "And I'm not up to anything, just need to discuss things every now and then."

"Mom, I've know you two for eighteen years, and you've never 'discussed' things like this ever," Hunter said.

"You don't know that, you were too small to realise." Julia said.

Hunter rolled his eyes. "The potatoes are good by the way." He said, before leaving the room.

Julia sighed. Then she saw Barnabas come in through the door and smiled.

"What's all of this?" He asked.

Julia smiled again. "There's something we need to talk about."

Barnabas sat down, Julia sat down opposite and served the food. They said grace and then Barnabas spoke. "Julia, this is lovely, but there must be some reason behind this, is there not?"

"Can I not just do this without their being a reason?"

"Julia, we've known each other a long time, don't fool around,"

"Fine." Julia said. Then she smiled. "It's finally happened."

"What has happened?" Barnabas asked.

"What we've been talking about," Julia said, a tear of happiness leaving her eye.