Popularity Rules

Chapter XVII

Hola, guys! Here's the chapter I promised from sooo long ago. It's shorter but I had to finish something, eh?

HUGE thanks to Tamedkiss for making the new cover on the side there. I like it. What do you guys think? Check out her profile and her stories. she is amazing at what she does, seriously .

P.S. The guy on the cover does not necessarily point to what Jason looks like, but hey that guy's pretty cute. Besides, I'm not sure how I feel about how he looks in regards to being Jason. He looks pretty pretentious and I'm sure I want to hit him in the face but he is cute so whatever right? And don't judge a book by it's cover -wink -wink

Chapter XVII

 

       Unlike Chantal, Avery seemed annoyed that she had to help me do chores. I pretended I didn’t notice, she wasn’t going to let me do this all alone. I turned the tap off and turned to see how she was doing. She had both her hands atop the broom and was staring out of space, completely blanked. I clapped loudly and she jumped so severely the broom fell from her hands.

       I chortled at her disgruntled expression; a reaction out of Avery was a very good thing. I began wiping the table and turned hallway toward her. “I have a feeling the rest of the story isn’t really good, huh?”

      “It’s my life, not a story,” Avery muttered after taking a seat at the table. I sat directly in front of her, she sighed and took my hand that had been bruised from my irrational moment of hitting my van a week before. “This is babyish compared to what we got,” she commented, moving her hand over the now scarred area.

       “What do you mean?”

      She continued to stroke my hand. “After that he decided to up the ante and wreck havoc around the town, my parents often had to collect me from the holding cell, as expected they took what was going on as a passing phase so I didn’t get in trouble. But defacing public property was frowned upon by everyone, we almost got charged at one point. And as you know money talks and bullcrap walks –”

       “Wait your parents paid them off?”

     “No dummy,” Avery muttered, as she gave me an incredulous look. “Elijah’s did, every time we did something a bit ‘too’ wrong they’d step in and solve the problem. I felt like a terrorist, pulling pranks that were no longer funny and scaring people so much they cringed when they saw us. My sister had left a few months before all clean-cut, no illegal substance anywhere.

     “I just don’t understand how she even became an addict; Reena was the perfect one who everyone envied. My parents were encouraged to send me here to live with her because of course she was the perfect daughter. As much as I tried to hide it from Elijah, he found out somehow. He was furious; he wanted to harm my parents, which I immediately shot down.

     “Then he figured out the perfect way to show that we weren’t going to be that easily separated. He conjured some elaborate plan to ensure that no one could stop him; to show that they couldn’t control me, he was the only one to do that.”

       Her grip on the table got tighter and I knew we were at the climax of the story. I was almost afraid t o hear what happened next.

     “It was silly actually and very risky but Elijah enjoyed the thrill of it all, it interested him. He knew I probably would’ve tried to stop him if I knew about his plan. He didn’t tell me about it until the day of and by that point the plan was in motion. He decided to set the library ablaze, one of the town’s most prized possessions.