Chapter 6:

Alexander's Point of View:

That night, when I found that I could not slumber, I started thinking about today, when I first laid eyes on the mysterious girl - Miss Lara Knighton - and when I first spoke to her.

A ghost of a smile curled the edge of my mouth as I recalled the day I had.

I had arrived to the school before the girl, despite the fact that she had a ten minute head start… but I will admit, I was hardly following the speed limit. By the time I had compelled the secretaries into thinking I had all the documents needed to enroll, it was well into the third hour. Since there was little for me to do but wait for the next hour, I persuaded the elderly receptionist to give me the file of the girl that lived at 1253 Alpine Drive Beaufort, North Carolina.

The girl's name, it turned out, was Lara Jade Knighton, not Amelie Henriette Dupre. Also, according to her records, this girl was born on the 5th of January to a Mr. Jack and Mrs. Elizabeth Knighton. I scanned the rest of the file rather quickly, having found out the information I needed. This girl who wore the face of Amelie was a look-a-like, not Amelie herself. Amelie could forge documents as well as any other of our kind, but she would never play human to this extent. At this point, I could have made the secretary forget my very presence and go home. That is what I should have done… but I did not.

Instead, I left for my fourth hour, Calculus, one of the three classes I shared with the girl. I kept telling myself it was because I wanted to see if this girl was Amelie's true doppelganger, but some aggravating voice in the back of my mind told me otherwise.

As I entered the classroom, all those heartbeats pounded in my ears like a thousand drums, each following their own rhythm.

She arrived not seconds before the bell rang and sat in front, not even taking notice of me - quite a shock really, considering most other girls in this class were already imagining being infatuated with me. Because of her position, I could not get a good look at anything but her backside and fountain of golden tresses.

Lara Knighton was very much human, my ears confirmed - so it was the noisy, rusted automobile that stole her beating heart from my ears.

But the rest of her secrets I could not gather from her mind.

When I tried reading her mind like I could any human, I hit a mental wall. Never before have I heard of something like this. Humans were prey to vampires because we were ultimately stronger and the weak always feeds the strong. We have several gifts that makes vampires stronger, one of them being the ability to read and manipulate the thoughts of our prey. But this girl's mental shield was impenetrable! How, I could not be certain. Far as I knew, only vampires could block another vampires mental intrusion.

What little information I did manage to get came from the mind's of the student body around her. She was rather introverted, not in any after school activities or clubs, and hardly speaks to her peers other than her best friend, Katherine Wells. She was daughter of the town's priest, involved in her father's church and the choir. She lost her mother to leukemia just a couple of weeks ago.

As the day carried on, the mysteries revolving around her seemed to multiply rather than diminish.

When her eyes fell on me the first time in class, it felt like a wrecking ball of past emotions slammed into my gut. My eyes told my that this Lara Jade was Amelie's carbon copy, but my brain kept telling me that that was impossible. So I scoped her out at lunch, and watched her through the thoughts of others, which was difficult considering everyone around her ignored her. My best viewpoint- other than my own- was Lara's only friend, Katherine, or Katie as she preferred.

Lara didn't speak but once, but Katie would occasionally glance sympathetically at her friend and from there I could read Lara's body posture.

The first thing I noticed - Katie as well- was that she was fairly uncomfortable sitting there amongst her peers. She sat in a defensive pose: shoulders hunched slightly forward, eyes cast downward, her lips curving in a small frown. It was probably unintentional, but the posture simply screamed, "I'm invisible. Leave me be."

As the half-hour break carried on, Lara did not engage in the rumors floating around the table, but instead played with the food on her tray, not eating a bite. The silence I was receiving from her was maddening. By the time the bell rang, I had ultimately decided to talk to her.

And as if things couldn't get any weirder, when I gathered up the courage to touch her, all my vampiric cravings -the thirst I have been so edgy about - vanished! Not even the slightest craving for her blood or any around me. Only 280 years of duplicity and deceitfulness kept the utter shock from showing on my face. To cover the slight frown that might have appeared on my face, I raised her hand to my lips and quickly kissed it.

I didn't see her for the rest of the day… at least not in person. I kept an eye on her through the eyes of her peers but had received no more useful information on her that day.

So now, bored and restless, I found myself jumping out of my bedroom window and into her backyard. It hardly mattered due to the fact behind my visit to Beaufort, but I wanted to find out more about this girl.

The house next to mine was diminutive in comparison, so it was not difficult to find her room. Despite the fact that her window was unlocked, I'd gotten about as far as I could without an invitation blinds were down but I could hear the girl's heart beat, slow since she was at rest, and each breath she took. Her mind was still inaccessible to me, which was the most irritating. From her father, who was on the other side of the house, I could read clearly. His dreams involved walking without really going anywhere and stargazing a beach somewhere. But nothing from Lara Jade Knighton. It made me curious as to what she was dreaming about, whether her dreams were lucid or as puzzling as her father's, whether her room was clean or cluttered, what she slept in…

At the last thought, I became aware of my actions. I was stalking this girl next door with no intention of feeding on her. I was simply engrossed by her, and not her blood. Which was disturbing and yet at the same time amazing. After my awakening, I could not recall a time when I wasn't the least bit tempted by my thirst… It was this control my thirst had over me that I was in Beaufort in the first place. This was where I was born, this was the place I first fell in love, this was the place I breathed my last… so naturally this was the place where I must rest eternally.

The night carried on and with it my thoughts about everything that had happened and everything that was going to happen. But before I committed the one final act that would end me, I would figure out the puzzle of this girl who slept so soundly now. One could say I was procrastinating, putting off the inevitable, and it was true. This girl would not matter to me after I was gone, but perhaps being near her and solving her mysteries could help me say goodbye to someone I could not before. Someone who died 280 years ago. Someone that looked an awful lot like Miss Lara Jade Knighton.