GODS AND MONSTERS ↝ P. LAHOTE

[2]

"Except for me." Alicia said cheerily. "I'll be sure to show you around when school starts. It's a small place, you'll get used to it quickly."

"And I'm graduating from Forks at the end of this year." Bella said. "It's a shame you couldn't have taken over the mantle of being the new girl while I was still there."

"So what brings you to Forks?" Jared asked.

"My father's writing a new book." Lark explained. "He thought a new change of scenery might be nice, and he's from a place so full of legends and stories anyways, so my parents thought bringing us back to his hometown would be good for us. But my brother's still back in Boston. He attends Bentley University where he's studying business."

"Food's ready!" a woman called from over by the fire, where piles of hamburgers and hot dogs covered a large picnic table, quickly taking the attention away from the conversation and over to the mountains of food.

Lark stood up off the bench with the others, crossing to the table while Paul and Jared took off racing to see who could get to the food first. With a sigh, Embry ran after them, yelling for them not to eat all of it and to share some with the others.

Alicia sighed, trying to conceal a laugh as she shook her head back and forth. "I'd say they aren't always like this, but I'd be lying."

"How much do they eat?" Lark asked in astonishment. "There's enough to feed a village here."

"Which, thankfully, is how many people we have here." Leo said, gesturing to the crowd around them as they reached the picnic table. "Thanks, Mom." she said to the woman who had called everyone to eat, placing two hot dogs on her plate and reaching for one of the bags of potato chips.

"Welcome to your new home, Lark." Leo's mom said to the young girl. "I'm Sue Clearwater. Your father was always a good friend to my husband, Harry. If you ever need anything while you're here, you're more than welcome to come to us."

"Thank you," Lark said. "it's so great to meet you. Salem never had a super close-knit community like this, it's nice."

"Salem like Witch Trials, Salem?" Leo asked, raising an eyebrow.

Lark nodded. "That's the one."

"That's so cool!" Alicia exclaimed. "What's it like?"

"Well, the Witch Trials have made it a very popular tourist destination, especially around Halloween time." Lark explained, and noticed that Embry, Jared and Paul had rejoined the conversation as the three girls walked back to the benches they had been sitting at previously. Lark's eyes widened as Paul sat down next to her and she noticed his plate holding four hamburgers, whereas her plate only held one. "Holy shit, where do you put it all?"

Paul laughed with a shrug. "Guess I'm just always hungry."

"Right. Anyways," she said, moving back onto the topic of her hometown. "We didn't live far from the Salem Witch Museum, and my mom worked there, so my brother and I used to spend quite a bit of time there growing up."

"So you know all about the Witch Trials, then." Leo summed up.

Lark nodded. "I did quite a few projects on it back in middle school."

"Such a strange piece of history." Paul laughed off. "A group of bratty teenage girls just going around and accusing women of being witches? And people actually believed them to the point that they started hanging these women until finally they had the common sense that witches didn't actually exist?"

Lark shrugged. "That depends on whether or not you believe the old legends about the witches that used to roam the world." she countered.

"Guess I'm not a person who reads much into these things." he said. "I mean, they are just stories after all."