Embracing The Shadows (Shadow Series #5)

11 - Nightmares

The classroom was silent, aside from all of the students scribbling on their notebooks with the pencils and pens they held in their hands. Mr. Parker sat in the front of the class behind his desk, flicking through a newspaper while eating his lunch. I bent my neck from left to right, letting off a small sigh of relief when I heard a cracking noise. Isaac yawned behind me.

"-- she actually faked her own death."

My eyes quickly lifted at the hushed whisper coming from the desk on my left. The hold I had on my pen tightened until my knuckles turned white. I held my breath, carefully listening to the two girls in the desks beside me whispered to each other, like I wasn't even there.

"Why would she even do that?" Kate, a fellow junior, whispered back to Danielle. She carefully glanced at me from the corner of her eye.

Danielle shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. "Rumor has it that her sister's death was too much for her. She just cracked from all the pressure."

"Didn't her Aunt die not too long ago, too?"

"Yeah, she was psychotic," Danielle answered her friend. Her eyes intently landed on me, nearly burning holes into my skull.

I purposely kept my face marginally hidden behind my hair, willing myself not to look in their direction. I moved my hand back to be blocked by my curtain of hair to keep the two of them to see how badly my hand was shaking from their words. Frankly, what they were saying about me didn't bother me at all, but with all of the rough nights of sleep I've been having from nightmares of Allison, their words triggered all the pain of her death I felt.

"Honestly, that whole family is insane. Remember when her grandfather was the principal here? He was intense," Danielle continued to talk to her friend, not caring in the slightest that I sat beside her. "I'm not surprised Clara fell into the crazy footsteps of her family. I heard her dad left because he couldn't stand being around her anymore and blamed Clara for Allison's death."

My nails dug into the palm of my hand, barely hanging onto the pen between my fingers. A warm hand spread across my back, Isaac's attempt to calm me down before I exploded on the two juniors. Tears blurred my vision as I bit down on my bottom lip, not wanting to show weakness to anyone in the room.

"Allison was a sweet girl, but I'm sure she would have fallen off the deep end, like her Aunt and Clara, if she had been alive any longer--"

Aggressively, I shoved myself up from my desk and whirled around to face the two girls, fists clenched down by my sides. "That's enough!" I screamed at Danielle and Kate.

Isaac reacted quickly to my rash actions, jumping up to stand beside me and throwing an arm up to keep me from attacking them. They flinched in their desks, startled by my behavior.

"You can talk about me all you want, but you can leave my sister's name out of your mouths!" I jabbed my finger in the air at the two of them, furiously. My chest rapidly raised up and down, making it harder for me to catch my breath.

"Miss Argent!" Mr. Parker threw his newspaper down on his desk as he stood up.

Isaac snaked his arms around my waist when I suddenly charged at their desks, wanting nothing more than to punch the amused smirk off of Danielle's face. Kate looked rather frightened by my explosion, while her friend simply had her eyebrows raised. Mr. Parker rushed around his desk to approach the situation until the rest of the class formed a tight-knit circle around us.

"You don't know a damn thing about my family!" I yelled.

"Clara, stop!" Isaac tugged me backwards away from them.