Chapter One - One Down, A Million to Go
I hate walking home alone. And that's what I do everyday. I never get a ride home, and I'm always the one who takes someone else home. I get out of school at 3:30 PM, my bus comes at 3:45 PM, I get off of my bus at 4:10 PM, I get home by 4:30 PM. And if I'm home late, I get hit. Again and again it happens. My mom doesn't believe me when I say that
I was being generous and took a kid home. I'm only in sixth grade, and I get off of the bus with a third grader and a fourth grader. It annoys me when I have to walk the third grader home. They live twenty minutes from the bus stop in the other direction from my house. The fourth grader isn't too bad because they live next door to me anyway, but I don't like being beat almost every single night.
And most of the time I end up getting beat up by Demetrius and Anthony. I don't even know how those two scrawny kids got buff enough to beat me. When they were in sixth grade, which was last year, they were both shorter and skinnier than I was. Now Demetrius was twice my width and about a foot taller. Anthony had gotten a bit bigger than Demetrius and was almost six foot tall. I was only five foot, and Demetrius must've been six. I believe Anthony was about five-ten. So how did they grow so much?
One day when I was walking home, Demetrius and Anthony tried to beat me up, but I was near the tracks. I saw a train coming, and it was coming fast. I ran across. I was quick enough to just miss the corner of the front, but Demetrius wasn't. His body parts were scattered everywhere. I could hear Anthony crying, and after the train had gone I could see that he was also covered in the red gooey liquid and he was holding his best friend's crushed head. I tried to say that I was sorry and that I didn't mean for that to happen, but he wasn't listening. He threw the skull at me and ran home. I was glad he wasn't going in the direction of my house.
The thing is, I actually felt good that Demetrius was dead. That meant I had one less person to make fun of me.
Demetrius and I used to be friends, then he started trying to touch me inappropriately and I forced him to back off. That's when Anthony and I met, when I punched Demetrius in the face for trying to grope my breasts. Anthony walked up and grabbed me so that Demetrius could beat me. He hadn't seen Demetrius try to touch me, and he didn't believe me when I told him. They instantly became best friends and teamed up against me.
On my walk home, I had taken off my shoes, and thrown them. I had three different pairs of the same shoes, so it didn't really matter. I snuck in through the kitchen door and hurried up to the bathroom to soak in the tub to get the blood off. After I was done in the bath I washed off my clothes and put them out on the roof of my garage which was right under my window. Lucky me. The sun dried them within an hour, but I had been wearing a white shirt and the dirt from the roof had stained the back brown. I hurried to throw on a different shirt and pair of jeans. This time my shirt was black, so hopefully my mom wouldn't notice the difference.
I rushed through my homework and the dishes and told my mom that I was going over to my grandparents' house for the weekend. I packed up a bag with two pairs of pajamas and two outfits with two different papers with the directions on how to do two different hairstyles. I am cursed with the number two.
I called my Grandpa Elliott and he came to pick me up from my house. When I got into his car, I got an uneasy feeling. He didn't say his usual "How are you, sweetpea?" He didn't say anything. I decided to stay silent for the car ride and when we got inside I waited for Grandma Beatrice to say her usual "I missed you so much, love bug! Where've you been?" and run up to hug me. But she didn't do that either. The television wasn't on, the lights were off and there were candles everywhere. When I went to go pour milk into a bowl for Logan, the fattest cat you'd ever see, the refrigerator was empty except for a single can of soda. I knew that the soda was meant for me because my grandparents hated sugar, and they always bought six packs of Pepsi™ and put it in the fridge in the front for me to drink, but today there was only one. And nothing else.
I took the soda and sat down at the kitchen table with Taco sitting next to me. Taco was a dog that had light brown fur on it her ribcage, red fur right before the middle of her back, which was dark brown. She seriously looked like a taco. Taco licked my hand each time I lowered it.
I suddenly got really dizzy right after I finished my soda and threw the can in the trash can, then walked over to the spare bedroom that my mom used to sleep in. It was suddenly very cold. Almost like ice hovering above my skin. Then my head started hurting and I had to grab onto the dresser to hold myself up. I started coughing and I could barely breathe. I tasted something metallic and coughed into my hand. I was coughing up blood. But that wasn't the only blood. I smelled it. It was strong, almost like it was all around me. Almost like I was swimming in a sea of blood. I looked around me, but I couldn't find the source of the stench. I laid down on the bed, deciding that it was just my imagination. I closed my eyes and covered myself up with the thick blanket. I let out a relieved sigh when the smell went away and my body went back to normal.
I started to slowly drift off, but something kept waking me up. Maybe it was just because of what happened with Demetrius. Maybe it was just my imagination, too. I closed my eyes again and covered my head in the blanket, too. And that's when I heard the barking. Taco didn't bark at night. My grandparents had gone to bed long before that, and she knew not to bark while they were asleep. Then there was a yipe, then Logan's helpless meowing and scratching at my grandparents' door. Then there was the cat's scream. Then my grandparents' door opened, and I heard my grandma let out a girlish scream that was abruptly stopped. My grandpa was yelling out curse words and, I hoped it was him, throwing things at whatever was terrorizing them. I refused to uncover my head, it must have been a dream! It had to be a dream! Then my grandpa grunted and I heard footsteps coming down the hall.
My door opened and my blanket was taken off of me with a tug. I didn't open my eyes. My hand was grasped in one much larger and rougher. The fingers holding my hand were long and skinny, and the nails were sharp. I felt the person standing over me and then suddenly I heard circus music playing from the old music box my mom used to let me listen to. Except when I listened to it before, it was playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, not creepy circus music. My eyes shot open, but I still didn't look at it. It hovered right above my left ear and whispered in a raspy voice, "You Cataleya Waters?"