Don't Let Them Win

Journal of Secrets

"Ugh, someone forgot to take the trash out." Jane kicks the foot of my desk and her friends laugh. She bends down so she can whisper in my ear. "I shall take you out for them." She giggles and skips to her desk. Her friends walk by me, one of them flicking my ear and the other punching me hard in the arm. Our teacher walks in right as it happens but he doesn't say anything, just walks to the front of the room and starts to write on the chalkboard. I look down at my desk and see words written on the top in permanent marker.
"YOU'RE A LOSER JUST DIE." Is what it says, in all capital letters and a bold font. I glare down at the words wondering exactly what I did to deserve this. I reach inside my desk for my art journal and pull it out. I flip through the first few pages and find a partially blank page. I start to draw the plumage then I move on to the wings of the bird. My pencil gracefully glides across the paper, creating a heron. I pull out my colored pencils and lightly shade the feathers a pastel blue.
Before I realize it is time, the bell rings and I hear footsteps approaching me. "Hey, freak, what you drawing?" I slam my journal closed but not before Jane's friend- Harley rips it from my grip. "What the heck is this garbage?" She asks, laughing as she flips through the pages of my artwork.
"Please give it back." I plead, trying to take it from her. She slaps my hands away and continues to the back of the journal. Her face changes as she gets to the back of the journal and stops on a page. My heart drops to my stomach and my heart beats loud in my head.
"What the hell..." She flips to the next page, gazing at it intently. "You're such a creep..." I snatch it from her and run out of the classroom. I go to the girls' bathroom and then immediately realize my mistake. The door to the bathroom creaks open and I put my feet up on the seat in my locked stall. "I know you're in here. There's no use trying to hide." She comes closer to my stall and I can tell she brought back up. "Just give me the journal and you won't have to get hurt."
No-one else is in any of the other stalls and they knock on mine. "Hello- is anybody home?" Jane calls then a moment later she chuckles, "Oh wait, I almost forgot, you aren't anyone." She taps her foot impatiently, waiting for me to respond. When I don't she hits the stall door with the side of her fist. "Open up or we're coming in." I don't move. "We will burn your writing notebook." She adds and I open up the stall door.
They drag me out and I hold the notebook close to my chest tightly. Harley pulls out a small knife and hovers it near my left hand's index finger. She waits for a few moments before putting it against my skin. I struggle to get away but Jane and Pearl hold me down. "Give me the notebook." She hisses, putting pressure on the knife. Jane tries to pry the journal out of my hands but I hold on tight. Warm blood trickles down my hand and onto my journal. I pull my hands away by instinct and Harley grabs the journal away from me. Jane kicks me in the side of the head and I lay there in shock on the cold tile floor as Harley and Pearl exit the bathroom.
Jane just hovers over me impatiently, her arms crossed over her chest. She kneels down next to me as soon as her friends leave. "You are so weird. How could they even except you into this school?" She tilts her head at me. "Oh right, it's a public school." She grabs a nail file out of her purse and grabs my right arm, pulling down my sleeve. She stares at it transfixed on the little gold chains making 'x's all the way down my forearm. Her lips form a curse and she backs away from me, walking backwards to the bathroom exit. She watches me while she opens the door and until it shuts.
I just lay on the cold tile, feeling almost dead. My head starts to hurt after a while and I get up and walk out of the bathroom and out of the school. I walk to the bus stop and wait in the pouring rain for the bus to arrive. When it does the bus driver glowers at me and mutters something almost intelligible. Something along the lines of "Ugh, her again."
I sit down in the far back, closing my eyes. The only other person on the bus is across from me. I can feel their stare on my back and I open my eyes, turning away from the window. A boy who looks my age. He has dark blue eyes and neon green hair, his skin is tan. He has what looks like a gang tattoo above his left eyebrow and several piercings on his other.
"Y-you're Angels, right?" He just blinks at me and stares blankly for a moment before nodding slightly.Then he takes another moment to think.
"Depends on who's asking."
"J-just m-me." I stutter, kicking myself for not being braver. Angles tilts his head at me and gives me a weird look.
"I'm not going to hurt you. I just need to talk to you, Eshreal." I feel flustered and I am only able to think one thing: he knows my name. I just close my eyes for a second, breathing in the musty air of the bus. He sets a hand on my shoulder and my eyes snap open. My breath stops coming out and he bores his blue eyes into my silver ones. His voice goes down to a whisper and he puts his lips right next to my ear. "I know your secret, Eshreal." For the second time this hour my heart drops to my stomach and I feel like throwing up.
"I will only talk to you if you get my art journal back from Harley." He looks confused for a split second. "Harley Stone." He barely bats an eye before agreeing to the exchange. He unzips his backpack and hands me my journal. I suck in a breath. "H-how did you do that?"
"I saw them come out of the bathroom and figured they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing. I guess I was right." I hold the journal close to my chest and breathe out a sigh of relief. It's safe. I think to myself, smiling on the inside. "You also might want something on that." He points to my torn finger and until that point I had forgotten about the pain. I wince and agree. "Here," He says as the bus stops, "I'll take you to my shop, there's a first aid kit in the back."
I don't understand why he's being so nice to me. If he knows my secret shouldn't he just view me as a freak like everyone else? I'm overthinking this, like always. He allows me to exit the bus first- like a gentleman. I almost laugh at the thought of it and remind myself he's in a gang. Angles leads me to a small warehouse about three blocks away from the bus station and a shiver runs down my spine. First of all because there is a cross that is stained into the wooden door and it is made of blood. Second of all there was stakes soaked in fresh blood that surrounded the entrance. Third of all because I am afraid that we are too far away from other people and if Angles was trying to kill me they wouldn't hear me scream.
As if reading my mind Angles looks over at me and rolls his eyes. "I am not going to hurt you and I am not going to kill you. I already told you that so stop looking like you saw a ghost." I feel as if he slapped me but I don't say anything in response. He pulls out a chain with five keys on it. He takes out one that has what looks like a small skull imprinted on it. He inserts it in the lock and twists it to the left, unlocking the door and pushing it open. A small blonde girl with curly hair sits on a sofa to the right of the room and is licking what appears to be a grape popsicle.
She doesn't seem to notice me and instead just runs past me and gives Angles a one-armed hug. He gives her a lopsided smile and returns the hug. When she releases him he ruffles her hair and she grins. "You're back already and you brought me a friend." She gives me a once-over and I feel really uncomfortable. He shakes his head at her.
"Actually this is the Eshreal I was talking about yesterday." Her little mouth forms an 'o'. "Eshreal, this is Lizzie. Lizzie, Eshreal." Lizzie suddenly looks shy and she blushes, slinking back to the sofa. She takes a small bite of her popsicle and chews it slowly- thinking. "Don't mind her. She just gets lonely, being pent up here with no friends." I glance over at the small unusual girl sitting on the sofa.
"I thought you wanted to talk- in private." I hiss at him and his eyes narrow at me.
"Hey, Lizzie, do you mind?" He points to a door in the back. She rolls her eyes at us and gets up.
"I never get involved into the cool adult action." She mutters underneath her breath and starts to the door.
"One, we aren't adults and two, you are only twelve." She glowers at him and slams the door as she goes into the room in the back.
"Anyways," Angles starts, inviting me to the sofa. I go and sit down next to him. He folds his hands in his lap. "Please excuse Lizzie's manners, she never had parents who were good to her." He rubs his temples and I suddenly feel guilty for judging them. I want to comfort him but I don't know what I can do. "Well," He fiddles with his fingers, "I was wondering who else knows your secret other than you and I." I shake my head, nobody else does. He nods solemnly. "So, let's keep it that way. Nobody should find out and never know or they might be somebody after you that you wouldn't know about." His words quicken pace and so does my heartbeat. "There is this very dangerous group of people that come after people like you and I. They got my brother and they know about me. They are different though. They don't care who they kill as long as they get what they want and in this case they want you. They think people like us have the secret to eternal life. They want that and they will try to torture it out of you.
"They do experiments and some of them go wrong. The test subjects sometimes escape and are very dangerous. They kill off the test subjects that fail and they do it in the most painful ways." His voice drops a notch. "Lizzie was one of the test subjects that escaped. The only one I think to survive escaping. She was a normal little girl when she went in. They kidnapped her away from her family and we haven't found out yet who they are. Anyways, well, when Lizzie came out she was different. Not exactly bad different but dangerous. She has fifty lives, Eshreal. Fifty. She cannot die from age either. She is basically immortal and if they get their hands on her- it's over. They would turn her into a killing machine." His eyes turn glossy, "I can't let them have her. It's not fair for her; she deserves a good normal life and people who will treat her like she's not just a weapon for them to use." He lets out a sigh. "If they find me, promise you will run." My eyes open wide in shock and his voice gets louder, not quite angry but urgent. "Promise! You have to bring Lizzie with you too."
"I p-promise." My voice is shaky, all the new information hits me like a boulder. I get up from the sofa and look Angles right in the eyes. "Take me home." He only nods and we walk out of the warehouse. He walks me all the way home in the pouring rain and I don't look back at him as I let myself into my house. This is crazy, this is ridiculous, this cannot be real. My brain keeps on telling me but something in my heart keeps on nudging me to believing that it is the truth. I decide that I need more proof before I am going to believe anymore of this madness; and that means I am going to have to go out looking for it.