Nyctophilia

15

"Thank you, for the second time today, for back there." Nyx offered Azriel a small smile, one that he had gotten used to seeing. It was also the one that he was growing fond of.

Not knowing exactly what to do now that they were on stable terms, Azriel only gave a single nod in acknowledgment.

The monster in him wanted to get away from her before it could take the first step towards falling.

Lucky for him, they were standing right where they would have to part ways. With a last glance at each other, the boy and the nyctophile turned around and headed in different directions - Nyx to where the cabins for the girls were, and Azriel to where the tents by the lake had been set up for the boys.

Nyx felt relieved when she walked into the cabin she was sharing with four other girls and saw nobody in it. All she wanted to do was slip into her pajamas and pass out before any of her roommates for the night showed up, not wanting to deal with how pesky and loud they could be.

She searched the cabin for her backpack, not expecting it to be gone from where she had left it two hours ago. The cabin had two rooms and she had already looked in both of them twice, even the pair of bathrooms and the little verandah in the back, but her backpack was nowhere to be seen.

How could it be gone just like that?

She had left it right by the door, it should've been there. Unless, someone had taken it.

An uneasy feeling began tingling up her senses in a bad way. She tried to gulp it down her throat when she left the cabin and took quick steps back to where the main ground and lake were, which was also where she'd seen all her schoolmates hanging out only minutes back.

When Nyx got to the lake she saw her peers lazing around on the boats and rafts, some seated cozily on the logs that were set in a circle. They were having fun together, laughing and talking with zest like they always were.

The brunette's eyes, after examining the herd, began skimming the lake.

The feeling of uncertainty only grew when she noticed a blob swimming in the water.

Her suspicion turned into a deafening frequency, ringing in her ears and growing louder with every step she took closer to the dock.

Unlike every single day when her classmates didn't think of her as someone who deserved even a second of their glance, they had all taken a sudden and almost scary interest in the girl. They watched with hushed murmurs and muffled giggles as she got nearer to the scene they had created not long before her arrival.

The very moment she stood at the edge of the dock, Nyx recognized the floating blob to be just what she was looking for - her backpack.

She dropped down to her knees immediately and stretched her arm out to catch hold of her possession before it could slip away any further. Ironically, it wasn't the iciness of the water piercing at her skin, but the presence of her peers standing a few feet from her that made her nerves crawl.

After a couple of heartbeats of flailing her arm around to reach her backpack, an irritated cry of increasing frustration breaking past her lips, Nyx's finger finally latched around the grab handle of her backpack. She used it to hurriedly pull it towards her before getting it out of the water.

It was no surprise or doubt that everything inside it, whatever clothes she had packed, was all soaked. She held it in her trembling hands, biting down on her lip so painfully that she tasted blood on it for the second time today.

"We were just playing an innocent and completely harmless game of Truth-or-Dare," a voice spoke from the grinning, laughing crowd.

It was Evan Lanchester, one of the many assholes at Auradon High who was blinded by the belief that everything he did was too funny to not be amused by.