Secret Secrets

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

I was clutching a crinkled paper bag full of food-my lunch. My lips were smooth with sticky Lip Smackers coating them. My tongue ran over my bulky braces, which I had only had for two days at that point.

Slowly, I made my way over to an open table and sat down. As I took out my peanut butter sandwhich, happy children around me talked to their friends and shared their pudding cups. I had no friends. I had no one to share my lunch with. Sighing, I took a bite out of my bread.

Not five minutes later, a small voice filled my ears. "Is someone sitting here?"I looked up. A cute girl with lovely flowing hair and a cool rubber band bracelet stood behind the chair next to me, holding a light blue lunch tray. I shook my head no and she sat down. "I'm Eliza." She told me. I just nodded, I didn't know what to say. "What's your name?" She pushed.

"Venice." I answered quietly.

"That's such a pretty name!" Eliza exclaimed. "I've always wanted to visit Venice, Italy!"

I smiled. I was having a real conversation with someone. "It's my mom's favorite city."

"Have you ever been there?" She asked.

"I wish." I said. "I don't even have a passport."

"Me neither." Eliza said sadly. "Moving here was the first time I'd ever been anywhere."

"Where are you from?" I asked, opening a zip lock bag of chips.

"I'm from Vermont." Eliza told me. "A little town called Switzdale."

"I've never been to Vermont, is it nice?"

Eliza shrugged and nodded at the same time. "Usually. I haven't seen much of this town yet, though. How is it here?"

"It's really nice here." I said.

"Good." Eliza said, pushing her pasta around on her tray. "I need a nice place."

My eyes jutted open, and my body was covered in sweat. My chest flew up and down at an alarming speed, I couldn't control my breath. I felt cool hands on shoulders, and I could hear someone talking to me but I couldn't make out what they were saying. Then I felt the burning on my throat, it was too much to bear. "My neck!" I cried through gasps of air. "My neck is on fire!"

"Venice..." Someone said. They said something else, too but I couldn't hear it. My hands flew to the source of the pain, but all I felt was a cloth bandage. Once I took my hands away, I slowly calmed down. The thumping in my chest became less noticeable and my breathing stopped being so choppy.

"What's wrong with me?" I asked quietly.

Dax's face appeared before me. He must have been the one talking before. He spoke to me again in a calm voice. "Della bit you, Venice. She attacked you last night." Suddenly, the events of the previous night flooded my brain. Gabriel and Della fighting, my throwing the shoe, Della backing me up into a corner and biting me. Shouldn't I be dead? Or a vampire? "Gabriel pulled her off you before she could do any real damage." Dax explained.

"Where is she?" I asked.

"We don't know." Dax said simply. "She broke through your dorm window and escaped. She could be anywhere by now."

I looked around. "Where's Gabriel?"

"In class." Dax said. "It's 12:30 in the afternoon."

"Then what are you doing here? You're a teacher."

"It's my lunch break," Dax explained. "I came to check on you." My eyes began to adjust to the room around me. It was a familiar room. It was my dorm. I was covered in blankets on my bed and Della's side of the room was chillingly silent and un-touched. The window, which she had apparently broken through to escape, had already been replaced by new glass.

The room was still and I felt exposed. "So you're leaving?"

Dax nodded. "But classes will be over soon, Maxwell and Gabriel will come visit you."

"Please don't leave me alone." My hand flew up to his arm and I clung to it with all my strength.

Dax looked me over. He really wanted to stay, I could tell. "I'm sorry, Venice. I have a class at one." He pried my hand off his arm and stood up to go. Before he left, he bent down and gently kissed my forehead-which was covered in sweat. "Just take a nap." He suggested. "They'll be here before you know it."

After Dax left, the last thing on my mind was sleeping. I didn't want to be thrown into a dream I couldn't control, or worse, a memory like the one I had just experienced. It was a happy time at one time, but now it just made me sad. I ripped the covers off of my warm body and stumbled out of my bed, walking over to the window.

The campus view I saw was empty except for some stray squirrels and dead leaves falling from tall trees. It was almost October and the weather was getting colder by the minute. Not wanting to look outside any longer, I walked over to the part of the room that scared me the most-Della's side.

She had left pretty much everything, so she had to be nearby. But it's almost as if she'd wanted me to go through her stuff-it was so tempting. I walked over to her desk, which was still a mess, and began to clear away the random math papers and literature assignments to see if I could find something interesting.

A small wooden box hidden under a history textbook caught my eye. Once I got a better look at it, it seemed pretty hard to miss. So how had I missed it last time I had rummaged through Della's stuff? I reached over and grabbed the small box, which looked pretty old. It was hard to get open, too. The hinges were rusted and kept sticking. But once I got it to budge, I saw that there was nothing in it. This puzzled me. Why had Della kept an empty old box? But as I pushed the top up further, I noticed a cursive engraving on the inside.

And that's when I saw it.

Engraved in the beautiful cursive, a flawless design, was a single name-Maxwell Glunge.