Nightfall

Closed Book

I woke up at 6am, stiff and aching, with a pain in my neck. The bat had bloody bitten me. My mom had sent me off to sleep on the damn couch in a damn sleeping bag with a bloody Vampire Bat! Screw her, and screw Julia Kray! She somehow knew this would happen! ‘It’s funny that you should talk about Vampires’. She won’t be laughing when I decorate the cafeteria with her teeth!

Wait, did I just acknowledge that the crazy Witch actually had the power to see the future? That’s crazy! It must just be a coincidence! Nevertheless, I will confront her about this at school today.

I wrapped the stupid winged rodent back up in its towels, and took a shower, then I got dressed for school and spent the next two hours listening to music in my room, before heading out to school half an hour early. My parents hadn’t even woken up yet.

Due to my early start, I actually arrived on time that day. The day itself was better, and worse. Better because I actually knew what to expect now. Worse because I had gotten like four hours sleep, I was tired, and my back was absolutely killing me.

The first class was English. We were examining the themes in Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’. Our teacher was a middle aged Mormon in a red sweater who gushed over Heathcliff like she was wet for him. To me, he just seemed like an abusive, possessive, jealous scruffy asshole. The kind of ‘bad boy’ who no woman should ever try to pursue a healthy relationship with but women like my English teacher wish were real so that they could try to pursue in an unhealthy one. I mean, there’s actually a bit in the book when a woman tried this very act and completely ruins her life! I told Wuthering Heights how it is; a total tragedy where all the men act like pricks and all the women act like stubborn mules and nobody’s happy at the end. I got an F for my essay. Ms. Meyer is a bitch.

After class, I caught up with Laura, Axel and Mary, Tal was skipping school today. That might have been a cool thing for kids to do, but we were 16. We were adults. We knew that not attending school meant more work during free time, and we responsibly decided that attending was the lesser of two evils. I dunno. Maybe she had a good excuse.

The topic of our group conversation turned to Julia Kray. I didn’t want to tell them about the bat, because it would make it seem like I believed Julia had powers. I was still trying to convince myself she didn’t. It turned out she was absent from school today too. That really annoyed me. I contemplated waiting in the cafeteria for her, or looking for her in biology, which was my next class, but I knew she wasn’t coming. I wanted answers, dammit! Suddenly, an idea hit me.

“Hey,” I spoke, “Seeing as how Julia isn’t here, why don’t we take a peek in her locker?”

“I dunno,” Responded Laura, with a sneer. “Maybe there’s a gypsy curse on it.”

“Come on, you pussies,” I started, as I walked to Julia’s locker, “I’m not afraid of no curse!”

Spotting Julia’s locker was easy. It was the only one in the whole School with no stickers on it. I flexed my muscles in preparation, and then broke the flimsy lock with a single punch. The other pupils around us, turned to luck, but some left silently when they realised that Laura, Axel, Mary and the new kid were behind this, and the rest left when they realized that we’d just busted open Julia Kray’s locker, of all lockers.

In it was nothing but a thin, dog eared notebook. On it was written ‘Closed Book. Open it up to read the contents. For Izzy’s eyes only.’ I was freaked out. I dropped the book on the floor, and stared at it, eyes wide open like I’d just discovered a human brain in the locker or something.

“Yo, Izzy,” Axel started, waving her hand in front of my face, “Earth to Izzy!”

I snapped out of my daze, scooped the book up and played it cool with them, but I spent the rest of my day consumed by the writing on that notebook. Now I was convinced that it couldn’t be a coincidence. Julia knew things that were going to happen to me before they did, as evidenced by the Vampire comment, and the very same night having my window broken by a Vampire bat. The ‘closed book’ thing, though, that was something I thought when I was talking to her. Could she read my mind?! I was definitely convinced that this Wiccan freak actually had powers, now. She could actually do magic. There was still part of me that insisted it was bullshit, and that it was all just a coincidence still, but now that part was in a minority.