Title: Dirty Little Secret
Chapter: 13
Summary: Caroline Forbes is a lot of things. Neurotic, controlling and insecure being top of the list, but one thing she is not is stupid. So she knows that something is seriously up with childhood friend (and occasional enemy) Tyler Lockwood. She's determine to figure out why all the sudden he's acting as if he's seen a ghost and why he looks at her all the time with a heat she doesn't understand. As she digs deeper, she finds out about a whole new world she didn't know existed and- despite her lack of knowledge- how she's part of it. AU.
Author's Note: Thank you everyone for your nice reviews; they make me smile (: So Thursday's episode… OMFG :D Amazing!
Friday
If Caroline had learned one thing about Mystic Falls after living there for seventeen years, it was that when a tragedy struck, it moved on. The evidence was taken away, the streets were cleaned, and everything went back to normal. Mr. Tanner's body was no longer in the parking lot, coated in his own blood. The only evidence of his demise was the blood stain on the concrete and the yellow tape, blocking students from entering the parking lot. Caroline was the first to admit that he wasn't the best teacher, and from what she had heard from Matt and Tyler and others, he wasn't a great football coach either. He wasn't a man who would really be missed, but didn't he deserve more than to be swept underneath the rug? Caroline would think it was because of his poor character that he was so easily forgotten, if not for the same treatment with the animal attack victims a few months ago.
Mystic Falls was a safe, friendly little town. They couldn't have bodies all over the place, now could they?
"It's better for things to go back to normal, Caroline. Someone lost their life, and it's a tragedy, but life goes on." Liz's words rang in Caroline's head from this morning, when she voiced her opinion to her mom. "If we mourned the lives lost in this town for the rest of our lives, it would be a miserable one. You're still young, so you can't understand. But you will. One day you will."
Caroline tried to put that conversation in the back of her head -it felt like a bad omen- but when she passed the parking lot with the blood stain and yellow tape, a baseball size lump formed in her throat and tears burned her eyes. She hurried past, wiping her eyes and telling herself to calm down. She'd been emotional all morning, and she'd put it off on PMS if she didn't know that wasn't it. All her emotions felt heightened and she felt overwhelmed, and she didn't understand why.
She felt like she was being crushed by a flood of emotions that weren't hers.
Not long after she walked into her first block, it began raining. It wasn't the rain that bothered her -it wasn't all that uncommon for rain in October- but the way it was raining: Hard, fast and unforgiving, like the drops were hell bent on washing away everything they touched. Did it always rain like that? Was she just noticing?
Or was it just raining and she was just looking too hard into things?
As she was staring out the window, pretending not to listen to her Algebra teacher going on about what a loss the school was suffering, and how much their beloved history teacher would be missed, someone poked her in the arm.
She jumped and swirled around, ready to jump down whoever had dare interrupt her brooding. She came face to face with a frightened looking freshman with braces and pretty green eyes.
Caroline raised an eyebrow.
The freshman -Alex, her name was?- held out a folded note.
"Here," the girl whispered.
"Thanks," she whispered, hoping to make up for her previous bitchiness and took the note. She snuck a quick glance at her teacher to make sure her wasn't looking, before unfolding it.
Care, it read. I'm really sorry about telling Tyler to stay away from you and being such a dick lately. I was going to tell you all of this in person, but you've been ditching me so I had to revert to writing you a note like we're in middle school. I'll be at your locker after class. Meet me there so we can talk? -Matt.
Caroline turned back around. "Where did you get this?" she whispered.
"Matt told me to give it to you," she said. "He said it was important."
Caroline frowned, nodded and turned back around and reread the note over a few times. It sounded so… unlike Matt. He wasn't the romantic type, or even the sharing type. He just didn't do things like this. What was with the change of heart? Did he miss her and feel bad about what he did, or was something else going on?
For some reason she couldn't fathom, she felt like it was the latter. She didn't want to talk to him. She didn't want him to tell her he was sorry and he was wrong and he would make it up to her. She was so tired of hearing excuses and apologetics. She was so, so tired. She wanted him to just…. She didn't know what she wanted, but for the first time, she was beginning to think it wasn't him.
Despite her conflicting thoughts about her relationship a hour earlier, she still met with Matt at her locker. Maybe if she saw his pretty blue eyes and boyish face she would stop thinking about ending things. Maybe she would see why she loved him so much. Maybe she would stop feeling like something was crushing her.
He was leaning against her locker with a worried expression. Did he think she wasn't going to show? When he saw her, his pretty blue eyes lit up, but they didn't mask the dark circles and obvious exhaustion. Had he slept as poorly as she had?
"Hey," he said.
"Hey," she said.
He cleared is throat and looked down at his feet -his normal, awkward self. For some reason, it made her mad. He was the one who had done something wrong. Didn't he have the decency to at least look at her when he apologized?
She crossed her arms over her chest. "So, you wanted to talk to me?"
He rubbed the back of his head and looked at her. His eyes were begging her to just forgive him, to allow him not to go into some grand speech, declaring his love for her. She hoped her eyes said no.
"Yeah," he said. "Look, Caroline, I've been a jerk lately. I know that and I'm sorry. But I don't want to lose you because I was jealous. I want to resolve all this. I want to put it in the past to we can move forward."
And what about what I want? She thought. What did she want? Did she want to talk to him and resolve this? Did she want to move forward, leaving this all in the past, and focus on the future. Their future? Together? She didn't know. She wanted something -she just didn't know what.
"Care?" he asked, eyes hopeful.
Closure, she thought. She wanted closure.
"I want to talk," she said. "I want to put this in the past."
"Good," he said, looking relieved. "How about we meet at the Grill around five thirty? After school, everyone in the team has to go to some meeting about what's gonna happen for the rest of the season, but after that?"
She nodded. "I'll see you then."
Bonnie wasn't at lunch. According to Elena, she hadn't come to school. They both suspected it had something to do with yesterday, which still had them both terrified.
"I didn't sleep at all last night," Elena said. She looked like it too. There were dark circles underneath her eyes and she was pale. "I just couldn't stop thinking about what happened yesterday."
"Me either," Caroline said weakly.
"I just hope she's okay. I've tried calling her and texting her, but her phone goes straight to voicemail. I even called her Grams, but she said that Bonnie wasn't feeling well enough to talk."
Caroline shuddered. "Of course she doesn't feel well. She was thrown against a cabinet by something neither of us could see."
Elena swallowed visibly. "What do you think is going on, Care?" she whispered. "I mean, honestly?"
"I wish I knew," she responded. "I have no idea. But whatever it is… it's out of our league."
The rest of the day passed in a blur. Classes, kind words about someone everyone secretly hated, notes, click of pens and the sound of rain smacking the windows. It hadn't stopped raining all day.
By the time Caroline walked into her last person history class, she felt drained physically and emotionally, scared and worried. What was going on with Bonnie? What was going on with Tyler? What was going on with her? Who would be there new history teacher? Who killed their old one?
So many questions, not one damn answer.
Well, she did get one, but it was the one she cared about least.
A man in his early thirties with golden brown hair and gray eyes was standing at the front of the room, looking awkward and uncomfortable, like he didn't know what he was doing. He was cute, she thought. In that boyish, awkward kind of way.
When everyone was seated, he cleared is throat. "Hello, everyone," he said. "My name is Alaric Saltzman and I'll be your new history teacher."
Alaric Saltzman, she thought. German, maybe? It sounded like a name straight out of a book.
He continued to tell his life story: always wanted to be a teacher, married young, wife died in a car accident, moved to Virginia to start over, hope he could measure up to their deceased teacher, blah blah blah. She stopped listening half way through.
After another hour, she was drumming her pencil on her desk, counting down the seconds to the bell. Ten… nine… eight…
"I like to end every class with a quote," Mr. Saltzman. "In hopes of someone actually pondering something meaningful instead of pondering what to write as their next Facebook update."
She raised an eyebrow.
"'The guilty is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.'" The bell rang. As everyone began gathering their things and leaving the classroom, she was frozen. Frozen in place, those words echoing in her mind, over and over. Coincidence, she told herself as she began gathering her own things. Coincidence. Nothing more. Nothing more than a coincidence.
She didn't want togo home, she didn't want to go to Bonnie's or Elena's, she didn't want to go to the Grill. She didn't know where she wanted to go. So she drove aimlessly around town, pretending she knew where she was going. She passed streets and shops, people looking in the windows with their children tugging on their hands, asking to be bought something. She turned corners, stopping so people could pass. She drove and drove and drove, until finally, she realized where she was headed.
The Lockwood mansion. It was just coming into view.
What the hell?
Shaking her head, she told herself it was because Tyler had been in the back of her mind all day. There was just something about that boy that kept her attention. His mood swings, his dark eyes, his secrets… he fascinated her and scared her, and gave her a rush like no one else seemed to be able to. And now that she was thinking about him in all parts of her mind, she couldn't seem to stop thinking about him. She wanted to talk to him-to understand why he was acting so weird lately- so instead of turning around, she parked on the side of the street and decided to walk to the door.
Just as she was about to round the trees that would put the mansion into view, she heard voices. She quickly took a step back behind a large trunk and waited for the voices again. A few seconds later, she heard Tyler. She couldn't make out what he was saying, but she peaked around the trunk anyway. He and Mason were standing by the car, talking in low voices.
She took a step forward in hopes of hearing better. A twig snapped underneath her foot and she cursed quietly. Mason's head snapped in her direction, but Tyler seemed oblivious as he continued to talk. She ducked behind the tree. Had he seen her?
She counted to sixty before peaking again. Mason was no longer looking at her, but instead talking to Tyler, who looked like he was going to throw up. Mason said something and Tyler nodded, then made his way into the house.
Another few seconds passed, with Mason glancing at the door, before he walked around to the other side of the car where a black book bag was rested against the tire. He unzipped it and pulled out a phone and began punching numbers.
Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. Her eyes widened and she reached into her pocket. Sure enough, the caller I.D. said Tyler. He knew she was standing there. There was no question. She raised the phone to her ear and answered with a tentative, "Hello?"
Mason was looking at her as he said, "You wanted to know what was going on. Here's your chance."
Before she could reply, he had placed the phone back into Tyler's bag and zipped it up. He moved to the other side of the car, leaning against it. He was the cover boy for cool, relaxed and with out a care.
She looked down at her screen. She was still connected.
What in the hell just happened? She looked up at Mason. As if he knew she was looking at him, he raised his eyes to meet hers. After a few seconds of locked eyes, he nodded and turned back toward the door. Tyler came into view with a black duffel back around his shoulder.
"All set?" she heard Mason's muffled voice say on her cell. Oh my god, she thought. He did that so she could here what they were talking about.
"Yeah," Tyler said. Muffled or not, she could hear the wrongness of his voice. It was a mixture of fear and nervousness and something else.
"We'll head out to the old Lockwood estate around five so we have plenty of time to set up," Mason said.
Tyler ran a hand over his face and sighed. "How long will it take to… How long after the moon rises?"
Mason shrugged, looking completely calm- the exact opposite of Tyler. "A minute, an hour. It's always different. We have to be prepared regardless."
Tyler nodded, looking down at the ground.
Mason's relaxed, calm exterior gave way to a worried, tense one. He squeezed his nephew's shoulder, shaking it in what Caroline assumed was a guy way of comfort. "It's all going to be okay, Tyler," Mason said. "Go get the rest of the stuff, alright?"
Tyler nodded again and walked back inside the house.
Mason sighed and raked his hands through his hair before turning to her, nodding, and following in pursuit of Tyler.
For at least the tenth time in the last two minutes, Caroline glanced down at her watch. It was five ten. Ten minutes after Mason said they needed to leave to go to the old Lockwood estate for…something. What was that something exactly? She had not the slightest clue, but she did know this: whatever it was, it was the answer to her question of "what was going on with Tyler." Mason made that very, very clear.
Mason. He obviously knew what was up with Tyler. He knew what Tyler was keeping from her. So why would he betray his nephew and let her in on their little secret? None of it made since.
The intent, however, made perfect sense: Mason had given her the place where she could finally learn the truth. It was enough to make her stand up with the intent of driving down to the estate. But once she did, she would change her mind and sit right back down.
She couldn't make up her mind. Did she go, or did she stay? It seemed like the answer would be obvious: of course she should go. She wanted to know the truth. This was her chance. But another part of her knew that whatever she found out tonight could change everything. She didn't know how she knew this, but she did. Could she handle what would happen? Nervousness and fear settled in her stomach.
She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. What was she suppose to do?
Her phone rang then, and she thought for a wild second it was Tyler- or Mason- but her screen read Bonnie.
"Hey, Bonnie I'm so glad you called! I've been-"
"Caroline!" Bonnie said. Her voice was tight and full of panic.
Caroline's stomach clenched. Something was very, very wrong.
"Bonnie, what's going on?"
"Listen to me," she said, stressing each word. "Yesterday, right before I left, I had another vision."
Caroline listened intently, as if Bonnie's words were the difference between life and death. For all she knew, maybe they were. "I'm listening."
"I couldn't figure out what was happening, but I knew someone was hurt," Bonnie said. "I couldn't figure out who it was, but I know now."
There was a pause.
"Caroline, it's Tyler," she said. "Something is seriously wrong with Tyler."
Caroline's whole world titled and her vision blurred. She barely heard what Bonnie was saying.
"He's locked up somewhere," she continued. "In a cell or a basement or something. But I don't know where! We have to find it, or I don't know what will happen!"
Mason's voice echoed in her voice. We'll head out to the old Lockwood estate around five so we have plenty of time to set up. The old Lockwood Estate. He was there.
"I know where he is!" Caroline exclaimed, standing up and grabbing her keys. "I'll find him and get help!"
"But wait, Caroline. He-"
She didn't wait to hear what Bonnie was about to say. She dropped her phone on the couch and ran outside to her car.
A/U: I know I said this chapter was when Tyler shifted, but it's actually going to be the next. Next chapter is going to have some serious Forwood action!
Alright, so I've dropped a hint somewhere in this story that is the answer to a question that I've left hanging since the beginning. The first person to guess it correctly gets an exclusive sneak preview of the next chapter, which picks right up where this left off! (: