Chapter Two
Jordana hadn’t said more than ten words to her parents throughout dinner and although she knew that they’d caught on to the whole ignoring them plan, they didn’t seem to mind. In fact, Jordana was annoyed to notice that her parents seemed to like the silent her.
Not ready to give up on her guilt-trip yet, Jordana decided to switch up tactics. If they’re cool with me not talking to them, I wonder how they’ll feel about me talking non-stop, she wondered as she followed her parents into the living room.
Jordana watched as her dad plopped down onto the couch, turned on the TV and flipped the channels until he found a football game. He settled back into the cushions of the couch and took long sip of his drink.
That’s right, Dad, it’s game time, Jordana thought as she jumped onto the seat next to him, causing him to spill his drink slightly in the process.
“Whatcha watching?” she asked loudly.
“Browns vs. the Steelers,” her dad answered, as he wiped at the dots of coke that had appeared quickly on his shirt.
“Who are we rooting for?” she asked almost immediately.
“The Steelers.”
Jordana glanced at the TV and watched as the crowd went crazy.
“What just happened?” she asked, turning back to her dad.
“They sacked the quarterback,” her dad answered, his eyes never leaving the screen.
“What does it mean? Sack a quarterback?” she asked.
The Judge sighed loudly and shifted in his seat. Jordana stifled a smile. She actually knew what a quarterback sack was—she’d been around Billy enough to pick up on all the crazy football lingo—but her dad didn’t know that.
“It’s when a member of the opposing team tackles the quarterback before he can throw the ball,” her father said slowly, his annoyance obvious to all of them.
Jordana crinkled up her nose as if she were confused and then turned back to her dad. “Well, why do they call it a sack then? I mean, none of the teams wear sacks. Why don’t they just call it a quarterback smack down, ‘cause that’s sort of what it looks like to me? Or do they call it that because they dropped him like a sack of potatoes?”
As the game broke for commercials like Pepsi, Hungry-Man dinners and Viagra, Jordana’s dad turned to her and began rubbing at his eyes.
“Don’t you have something else to do tonight, Jordana?” he asked her hopefully. Then he added, “I mean, it’s great that you want to hang around your mom and me, but I thought you didn’t even like football.”
This was mostly true. She usually had no desire to watch football—unless Billy was on the field. And even then, she never really paid attention to the game.
“Well, I did have plans, but you said I couldn’t go to the movies with my friends,” Jordana reminded him matter-of-factly.
“Jordana, I’m not having this conversation with you again,” her dad said sternly. “You could have made other plans tonight if you’d wanted to.”
“But all my friends are at the movies!” she exclaimed. “There’s no one else to hang out with. And I’m bored.”
“Well, you’re more than welcome to watch the game with your father and me,” Jordana’s mom chimed in happily.
Jordana remained quietly in her seat for a good thirty seconds before starting to sing softly. “I’m so bored, boredy, bored, bored. No one’s more bored than me-eee. I’m so bored, boredy, bored, bored. So bored I can barely bre-eeeathe.”
Jordana had been picking at her nails as she sang the tune under her breath, and now looked up to see her dad staring at her, his ears red with frustration.
“What?” she asked him, innocently, before going back to picking at her nails.
“On second thought, why don’t you go up to your room and watch a movie or something, Jordana,” her mom said, glancing nervously between her daughter and her husband.
“Fine,” Jordana said, mopingly. She got up and dragged her feet across the floor and toward the stairs, while singing, “I’m so bored, boredy, bored, borrred….”
As she shut her bedroom door behind her, she cracked a smile. She knew she hadn’t done enough damage to make her dad change his mind about the rated R movie thing, but it’d been kind of fun messing around with him.
Jordana somersaulted onto her bed and then lay there as still as she could, staring at the ceiling. In the third grade when everyone in her school was placing glow-in-the-dark stars and universes on their ceilings or hanging up posters of whoever the hottie of the moment was above their beds, Jordana thought it would be cool to put up mirrors.
So now, Jordana lay on her back and stared up at her reflection in the mirror above her, trying to imagine that she was staring at another girl. The girl looking back at her was about 5’5” and had long, slender legs, which were covered up at the moment with a pair of drawstring workout pants. Moving up her body, Jordana noticed her muscular arms—a product of yoga and kickboxing classes—and a chest that flattened slightly as she laid down, but filled out a b-cup as soon as she stood up.
She looked lastly at her face. The girl in the mirror had striking, dark features, including semi-thick eyebrows, chocolate brown eyes and a head of long, straight, dark hair. Jordana lifted her hair out from underneath her, so that it fanned all around her head like a funny crown.
After a few more minutes of studying her reflection, Jordana breathed in deeply and swung herself up into a sitting position and looked over at her bedside clock.
8:00pm.
She knew her friends would be meeting up any minute now, for the 8:15 showing of Blood, Guts and Fears. Jordana was surprised to find that she felt more bummed out about missing the outing with her friends than she’d thought she’d be.
Cool it, girl! Did you honestly think you were going to confess your undying love for Billy at a horror film? In front of all your friends? Yeah right, she thought to herself.
Shaking her head as if to clear her mind, Jordana moved toward her bedroom window. Pulling up the latch on the lock, she pushed open the frames and breathed in the nighttime air. It wasn’t pitch black out just yet, but she noticed that the sun had already set and the pink skies in the distance were quickly turning a dark blue.
She looked back toward her bedroom door and then climbed quietly out her window and onto her roof. She settled herself against the house, right next to the open windows, so that the light from her room shown outside, but she remained in the shadows.
This was Jordana’s favorite place to go when she needed to think or quiet her mind. She loved the smell of the air outside, having realized over the years that each season had its own distinct scent. Right now it was the beginning of fall and the air smelled fragrant and crisp.
She leaned her head backward, so that she could look up at the sky. She picked out the first few stars that had started to surface up above and made wishes on them all—each time wishing for the same thing.
When she’d finished, Jordana turned her attention back to the houses around her. She could see the street from her place on the roof and saw that only a few houses had their lights on. Even her next-door neighbors’ house was pitch black and silent.
“Geez, I really am the only one who’s home on a Friday night,” Jordana muttered to herself, closing her eyes and letting her head fall back against the side of the house.
After a moment, she opened her eyes with a start. She wasn’t sure if it had been a noise, or maybe a light, but something had startled her. As her eyes darted around her house, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
Still, Jordana held her breath as she peered out through the darkness.
And then she saw it. A flickering of a light in the window of the house across from her. At first she thought maybe it was light from a candle, but the beam of light was moving too steadily for it to be a flame. Jordana quickly realized that the light was coming from a flashlight.
The light was zipping around the room quickly, sliding from corner to corner, but then the room suddenly went dark again.
“Yeah. Like that’s not suspicious,” Jordana said, barely above a whisper.
Now, even with the light off, Jordana could clearly see that someone was moving around the room, tiptoeing from one side to another.
Jordana kept her eyes locked on the window as she reached back into her bedroom window. She felt around on her desk until her hands closed tightly around what she’d been looking for.
Still squinting through the darkness, she clicked her camera’s flash on quietly, and slowly brought the lens up to her eye. Just as the figure was moving once again across the room, Jordana pushed her now shaking finger down on the button of the digital camera.
Jordana took a sharp intake of breath as the flash went off and she momentarily saw the figure standing in the window, staring straight at her.
The person was obviously a guy, she could tell this easily by the way he was built. And he had on a dark ski mask that covered his whole face except for his eyes. But the thing that had made her gasp was what he was wearing.
Jordana immediately recognized the face of the roaring tiger, which had always been her school’s mascot, alongside her school’s initials on the gray tee. Which meant, that chances were she knew the guy behind the mask—and that he knew her, too.
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Note from the author:
If you like Fate Reloaded, be sure to fan me, and then support your fellow Wattpadder by buying my other book, Life's a Witch, in paperback, or for the Kindle or Nook. Just go to amazon.com and search Life's a Witch...you could help make me the next New York Times Best Seller!
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:)
Britt