Secret Diaries (Heartlake Cliche #1)

Chapter Two

      “Yeah, you shouldn’t have,” Matt replied. “It was my favorite alarm clock.”

      Rachelle looked at her brother with disbelief. “Honestly, Matt.”

      “What? It is my favorite,” he said looking at her like she was dumb.

      At that moment, their mother, Vivian, arrived and found Matt’s room in a mess. “Whatever it is, I expect this room clean tomorrow,” she said, looking at her son.

      “It was Rachelle’s fault, mom,” Matt said defensively.

      His mother shot one of her eyebrows up then turned towards Rachelle. “Yours, too. And both of you should go to sleep. You have school tomorrow.”

      “My classes don’t start ‘til nine,” Matt said.

      “It doesn’t matter. And watch your grades. I love that you’re in Kinston but I’ll murder you if you lose that scholarship,” Vivian replied with only a hint of irritation then turned her back to go to the master’s bedroom. Her black hair, green eyes and tall figure oftentimes made her seem unapproachable but her kind smile always countered people’s first impression of her. She worked as Human Resources Manager at Châteaud'Isabelle, Heartlake’s most prestigious five-star hotel located at the country’s Leisure district. Her husband worked overseas but their situation never made Vivian want to hire a household help. She believed that her children, being twenty and eighteen respectively, were old enough to help her with the house chores.

      “Hmph. How lucky. Must be great to be out in university. Whyever did St. James prescribe a seven o’clock homeroom class for high school?” Rachelle grumbled while on her way out of her brother’s room.

      “Hey, Rach,” Matt said stopping her sister in her tracks. “I really don’t have your diary. If anything, you must have left it in your locker. Or maybe, you dropped it while you were out with Nick this afternoon.”

      She sighed. “I have my name and address in it. I hope if someone picked it up, he or she would be kind enough to return it.” And, I wish that person wouldn’t read any further than the name and address.

      He turned to face his bookshelves. “You just have to pray that that someone isn’t a person who sees you as an enemy. You know, an ex-boyfriend’s current girlfriend, a second-tier model who won’t get the spotlight as long as you’re there,” Matt shrugged. “Or maybe an ex-boyfriend. Now that would be a good way for revenge. Spilling your secrets. Ha!” he finished while rearranging his things.

      “Whatever. Besides, I was never cruel to any of my exes. If anything, I remained friends with most of them,” Rachelle said with confidence.

      “I guess.” Matt went on to fix his room and Rachelle decided to leave before her brother realized that she was the one who should be tidying the mess she created.

      When she reached her room, she tried to check her things again while putting everything back to their proper places just in case she just missed her journal. Unfortunately, it was still nowhere to be found. She just hoped that someone would give it back to her tomorrow. Or maybe even Tuesday.

       She’d started using a journal when she won one in a raffle at a local bookstore. She wasn’t much of a writer so what she did was use it as a calendar for her plans, and scribbled notes and thoughts once in a while. Sometimes, she’d ended up writing an entire page, but most of the time, a sentence was all she ever wrote. She would never call them diaries because she believed that diaries were supposed to be detailed accounts, more than a few sentences per entry.