Hey bugg-a-boos! Here's the next chapter.
And please go to my Wattpad account: chokingcrayons and read my story starlight, I know I sound like a true attention whore, but really it could use the attention since it's the book I want to publish before New Year's.
Please and thank you, dolls!
P.S: in the last chapter I put November, whoops it's really December. Sorrys.
December 19th 2013
No One's Pov
She didn't know day it was, or where she was, only that she was out. Her bruises and sprains to still ached, but her stomach no longer howled in misery and her body didn't weep in agony. That, had to progress.
Despite the lack of reality on the date and time, Maria knew enough to know that it had been three years. Three years since that sick bastard captured her, and said all the spiteful things he would do once he got his grubby hands on her baby.
Her baby—oh her baby. She would be sixteen now, probably going from place to exciting place, learning how to explore and invent and live. In the back of her head would remain the thought that her mother had just left.
But there was more to that, so much more.
Those eight years before her kidnap, full of doing his evil errands all the time and driving herself mad.
And the smoothness of the abduction—so quick and careful, ducking easily under the public's eye.
She hated him, but his cleverness and suave, even with a subject so evil and sadistic, was admittedly admirable.
The door creaked. Maria hated herself for flinching when it closed, even with the gentlest force, but she couldn't help it—reacting to slight things was grinded into her instincts now. All because of him.
She hugged her knees to her bony chest as colorful rubber boots fall into her sights. It was that girl again, one of them. She was the one who asked for her trust. The one Maria gave it to.
"Hello," she said politely, all innocent and harmless. As she should be, Maria supposed, after all she was possibly one of the good guys.
All Maria could manage in response was a tiny nod of her head in return. She thought that this girl once gave her name, but Maria's head was so plagued with other thoughts—mostly of the negative region—that it hardly seemed appropriate from her to remember.
"Statistics show that a person can only go a week and a handful of days without eating before their bodies give out on them," the girl said, sitting across from her cross-legged. The untouched sandwich bigger than her hand sat on the tray in between them. "Less than that without water or drink."
Maria looked at the tray of food, conflicted. She didn't care how it would, only that it would fuel her somehow. But she couldn't; how did she know they didn't do something to it? Like James had threatened to all the times he allowed fuel to enter her system?
The girl, catching her jittery attention caught on the tray, sighed and took one of the grapes that were surrounding the sandwich and popped it in her mouth so Maria could see.
"See? Not poisoned or messed with in any way," the girl said after swallowing and taking a gulp from the cup of water that accompanied the tray.
Maria, with great reluctance, took a grape and slowly put it in her mouth, chewing slowly.
It tasted bittersweet and crunched when her teeth broke the skin. It tasted like a grape. No funny aftertaste she was left to question before feeling dizzy, no instant feeling that she was going to collapse, just the taste of a grape.
She ate another. And another, until the ring of grapes began to diminish.
The girl smiled and got up, leaving Maria to eat and regain her energy.
Christine's Pov
I had no idea what to think about all this hell with my mother. Did Bradley even know about the clone? Surely he knew about the whole "being held captive and tortured by an idiotic lunatic" ordeal, but did he know the one going around and doing all his nasty bidding was really a clone of our mother?
From the way dad was refraining from bringing this up around him, and the subtle hints Rem's been giving me to keep quiet, I thought not.
I kind of wish to be his shoes right now, honestly. At this point, a shot of oblivious sounded like exactly what I needed. But then, I thought about how he was being kept from all this, too, and at some point he would be swamped with all this, except all at once when I got it by puzzle pieces.
So maybe we both weren't that lucky, when giving some thought to it.
Currently I sat with Bree at the dinner table, homework spread out before us along with our textbooks and other mass of studying supplies. We were currently swamped with a book report and a History essay our witch of a teacher wanted in three days, barely done with half of the first page.
Damn. I used to think sixth grade was hard work.
I couldn't focus, and usually English was one of my stronger suits. I didn't see why people complained about book reports so much. You're basically having a conversation with a piece of paper about the book. I knew from past assignments that teachers appreciated spunk and signs of your own personality in them, which shone through in normal conversations anyway.
But my heart wasn't in it. I could focus on the tragedy of Macbeth when I had my own real life tragedy to worry about.
On top of all my family madness, Hunter decided to drop a call on me late one night, me waking up to find it in my voicemail after reading a rather blunt text from him telling me to check my missed calls sometime.
The beginning hadn't been much, except to tell me that his arm had finally healed and there was hardly bruise around his eye anymore. I kept forgetting if he knew about the whole Spike/Chase ordeal, so I never did give him a good excuse as to why my boyfriend tried to mold him into the wall.
Then, when I could sense he was about to quit rambling and just hang up, he blurted out about that stupid kiss he practically forced me in to. Well, forced wasn't a good word, but my conscious hadn't exactly been willing.
He said that he had thought about while he was in the hospital. That he had thought about when we together three years ago. He said that he liked the kiss. Then he hung up.
Now, I sat, staring blankly at my History textbook while my eyes glazed over a paragraph on the medical action taken on the soldiers involved in World Wars I and II. My uncapped highlight tapped against my notebook in a random rhyme.
"Bree," I started, cutting off her mumbling as she furiously wrote through her notes and highlighted all the vocab words we needed to know like I was supposed to, "if I were to tell you something—potentially scarring, as well—would you kill me?"
I felt her look at me, but I kept my eyes on my textbook, the words now swimming together in a jumble of alphabet soup.
"Fine," she sighed. "I'll bite. What do you have to tell me?"
"I…kissed Hunter."
She blinked, my eyes finally coming up to meet hers.
"Duh, um…"
"And it was like two months ago!" I blurted out, eyes going wide as Bree raised her eyebrows.
"Okay, I won't kill you," Bree finally said after a few torturous minutes of heavy silence. "But I can't guarantee your safety against Spike."
"How do you know it won't be Chase?"
She snorted, looking back at her notes. "Because of the words kiss and Hunter in the same sentence. Need I say more?"
I blew at my bangs, them floating back in to my vision as I twisted and looked up the stairs. Chase hadn't been far behind us on our way home from school, going straight up to his room to modify some stuff.
The loud, obnoxious explosions and gun shots from Leo and Adam's video games filled my ears as I stood up, capping my highlighter and saving the page I was on in my notes and textbook.
"Wish me luck," I muttered as I started up the stairs.
Bree may have said something, but my nerves were too overwhelming for me to hear it.
No One's Pov
Christine nervously stood in front of Chase's bedroom door, wringing her hands—a nervous habit she adapted over the past few months, along with taking her lip and gnawing on it between her teeth.
Oh, damn, telling him she made out with Hunter shouldn't be as confessed to having sex with him, Christine thought to herself in frustration.
Deciding to use her twenty seconds of insane courage for the day, Christine took in a deep breath and stormed into his room.
Chase looked up. Christine instantly took in relief at seeing that he was in fact wearing a shirt unlike their last awkward encounter in his bedroom. He was sitting at his desk, bent over a crummy Mission Creek textbook much like the ones she and Bree had been using downstairs.
Christine felt her nerve beginning to slip away from and decided it was now or never.
"Uhm, Chase, I have something to tell you."
He perked up, looking at her curiously as she kicked the door closed with her foot, walking more into the room.
"What is it, Chris?"
Christine gingerly perched herself on the edge of his bed. Taking in another deep, much needed breath of air, she started.
Chase stayed silent and listened the entire time, looking at her with an unreadable expression from start to finish.
Even without Christine's fast babble, her claim was rather short.
"It only lasted, like, three seconds, and I swear to god, Chase, it didn't mean anything! He basically came on to me in that weird dude-way boys have of doing that is always seen as a huge turn-on, but is really just uber-creepy," Christine sped to a finish, looking at Chase with pleading eyes.
"Well?" she prompted desperately after a couple beats of tensed silence. "Say something!"
Chase looked up, eyes flashing fast enough to make Christine squint; did his eyes just change? Or was the slicing afternoon light coming in from his window just playing tricks on her along with her huge imagination.
Then, he was up and reaching over, taking her wrists in his hands before she could blink again and exhale.
This wasn't Chase.
Spike was back.
And from how his grey eyes were as light as steel and burning fiercely into her brown irises as, once again, he slammed her into the wall.
Christine gulped loudly as she nervously met his eyes.
"Spike…" she whimpered, fidgeting.
He growled lowly in her face, his warm breath puffing out against her lips and cheeks, making her face flush brightly as she squirmed underneath them, their bodies pressed tightly together.
"So, you think you can go around and make out with other guys behind my back?" Spike barked.
Christine shook her head as much as she could with her limited space. "No, that's not what happened—!"
"Don't lie to me!" Spike interjected roughly, his grip of iron hardening around her wrists. "Chase may be able to let you get away with a thing like this, but I'm here now."
Christine opened her mouth to feebly protest against him, when his rough hands swiftly grabbed ahold of her hips, his soft, smooth lips crashing into hers as he held her roughly to the wall.
She could feel herself melting, hands reaching up to tangle in his hair as her knees began to buckle.
Spike's teeth started to bite the skin on her biting lip, Christine's mouth opening in a gasp. His tongue slyly snuck in, beginning to roam every crevice of her open mouth.
Hunter had nothing on him—Chase or Spike.
Bree watched Christine go up the stairs and disappear down the hall to her brother's room. No more than five minutes later did she hear the slam of a body meeting the wall, no doubt the work of Spike and his unruly testosterone levels.
Sighing, she pushed herself away from the table, casually taking in her surroundings.
Leo and Adam were perched on the edge of the couch, hands moving madly over their controllers as they screamed loudly over each other as to compete with the loud ringing of their video game.
Tasha was in the kitchen, standing over a recipe book Grandma Dooley had dropped off just days before. From what she had told Bree about it, it was stocked full of African American dishes, a culture Grandma Dooley thought needed to be represented to her grandkids—blood and step—, and Bree couldn't agree more.
Bree pulled out her phone, watching as the Grants home phone number rolled across her screen when she visited her call log.
Rem had called her, telling her Allan's decision to pass on. Why Rem decided that Bree was the one she should tell, she'd possibly never know. But maybe, and this was just a hunch after all, Bree just seemed to be the one that could approach Maria in a calmer manner than anyone else.
Then again, Bree didn't know why Rem did all the things she did, really. And maybe Rem liked it that way.
Quietly, Bree tiptoed to the elevator, and pressed the middle blank button, the one that led to Davenport's floor of what she liked to call, blank rooms.
It only took twice for Bree to remember the route to Maria's blank room. It was the second to last door on the right side, the only door to have dim lighting escape from beneath the door.
"Good news," Bree chirped with a polite smile, leaning against the door frame when she opened the door. Her smile grew slightly when seeing that Maria had a tray and a half gone, five glasses of water empty and piling up.
"Today's your last day. Someone's coming to get you soon."
I know, lame-ass chapter. But on the bright side, it gives you a small looksies into Maria's head and shows you that she's not completely crazy.
And James is still a bastard—some things never change, even when the plot thickens.
The next chapter will open with a Maria scene like this one, taking place no much after the ending of this one.
This was going to be longer, but what we wanted to add in this chapter seemed better fit to be written in Chase's POV, so I saved it for the next chapter.
I start school in a week. Someone shoot me and send me to the writing gods. I'm not looking forward to teachers, homework, or PE. (Insert visual shudder here.)