It was late at night, it felt kind of weird now that Anna had her own room since I was beginning to grow accustomed to having her in my bed. I was weird that I wanted to sleep with…okay I probably shouldn't think of it like that. I decided to see how she was adjusting to everything. The room was a guest room. It didn't have any personal flair to it. I wondered if I could tell Jenna that I was okay with her in my room because it would allow space for guests. I walked over to her room so we could talk. I wasn't even sure if she would still be awake. I noticed that the door was open and went inside to find that she was still awake. I felt better knowing that I hadn't woken her.
"So how are you holding up?" I asked her, looking around. She also didn't seem to have any of her own stuff. It seemed like all she had was clothes. Maybe we could put up some posters or something.
"I didn't need my own room." She pointed out. I was kind of glad because that meant that I could get her to come back to my room. "In fact, I don't think that I like it. I feel more comfortable sleeping in your bed because it lets me know that I'm not alone."
"Are you afraid of being alone?" I questioned. I would have thought that she would be used to it as a vampire.
"Well I'm less likely to have nightmares when someone else in the bed." She explained. I was pretty sure that I knew what she was having nightmares about. "I know I'm supposed to be this big badass, but I still feel more comfortable."
"Then tell Jenna that because I don't have a problem sharing my room." I instructed. It seemed like we both wanted the same thing, which made it a lot easier to accomplish. We probably would have to wait until the morning though. We both walked back to my room. "So what should we do about Katherine?"
"I still think that we should kill her." Anna replied before she got into my bed. That seemed to be the obvious solution, but we weren't sure how to do it. I got beside her, and we both were soon asleep. We were technically cuddling. I was glad that neither Stefan nor Elena could see it.
In the morning, at school, I was in my cheerleading uniform while Bonnie helped me set up the carnival that we were having. I wasn't sure what the money was going to even, but because Caroline was in the hospital, I was the temporary head cheerleader. I didn't know why the job fell to me since I was literally the newest girl on the squad, and I had been a girl the shortest of any of them as well. (And not just because I was the youngest either.)
"Katherine looked so much like Elena. It was freaky." Bonnie told me.
"Well, the two of them are related." I pointed out. I actually didn't know if they were related, but it made sense in my mind.
"No, they could have been identical twins. How do we know that Katherine isn't out there still pretending to be her?" The witch asked. Hopefully, she wasn't because then people would think that she was skipping school. How old was Katherine anyway? She didn't look too mature to be 17 like Stefan did.
"We don't, but if we worried about everything, we're going to wind up institutionalized." I explained. I had more important things to do than worry about Katherine. "I just want this to be perfect because Caroline will kill me if it's any less."
At that point, Anna walked over in a cheerleading uniform of her own and a scowl. It seemed like she liked wearing the cheerleading uniform about as much as I did at first. I actually didn't mind it as much as I did before. I was doing something positive with my temporary leadership position.
"That looks good on you." I told her. She did look quite sexy in it, but I didn't want to objectify her because it reminded me that people were simultaneously objectifying me, and I did not like that.
"I still can't believe that you convinced me to do this." She responded.
"Part of high school is extracurriculars." I stated. Not to mention, cheering would probably be more fun with a friend. "You can blame Bonnie for quitting."
"You know this is harder than it looks." Bonnie commented. She seemed like she didn't want to acknowledge the blame. "How does Caroline do all of this?"
"She's not human." I joked as I looked over to Anna. "Can you help me lift this?"
She could probably lift it by herself, but it would be more believable if we did it together.
I later went inside to find Stefan. I found him talking to Elena. I was pretty sure that they hadn't done a lot of that since the fall when I thought they might date. It seemed like Elena's personality shifted permanently when she started dating Vicki.
"Hey, Elena, how's the…?" I started. She cut me off before I could finish the question.
"The goldfish toss is going to be epic." She deadpanned before she walked away.
"Is she okay?" I asked my boyfriend.
"She's dealing with the whole Katherine thing." He pointed out. She also might have been upset about Anna being in our house. "Finding out that you have a vampire double can't exactly be easy."
"Well do you think we can get through the night where the only vampires that we see are the ones that go to school here?" I questioned.
"Did you just say that vampires go here?" Tina asked as she walked by. I was glad that she hadn't caught the rest of that. She was also wearing her uniform.
"I was talking about the Goth kids that like to avoid the light." I improvised. That sounded very stupid. "You know like vampires."
"Hey, Stefan, did you know vampires actually exist?" Tina questioned. It was too bad she didn't know the irony of that. Of course, I didn't think Anna was a vampire either. "My grandpa told me about them. He works for the historical society."
"I don't think that I can buy into that." Stefan responded. I had to refrain from laughing as Tina walked to class. "Are we doing anything about that?"
"She's harmless." I explained. At least I was pretty sure that she was harmless. "She doesn't have any actual proof and if she finds out, we can convince her not to tell, hopefully without compulsion. We need to make plans for what we do at the carnival."
"Well how about a kiss at the top of the Ferris wheel?" He asked.
"That sounds like a good thing, as long as it doesn't get stuck at the top." I replied. "I'm a little afraid of heights. Even if you were with me, I still wouldn't want to be up there. There is one thing that I'm wondering though. Why aren't you wearing your jersey? You're still on the team, aren't you?"
"I can wear it tonight if you want." He offered. I actually wasn't sure if he was still on the team because they didn't play any games.
"I was probably going to wear regular clothes tonight." I explained. "So do you know that I managed to convince Anna to join the squad?"
"I'm still not sure if I can trust her." He declared. Well I was not going to stop being friends with her. I was a little concerned that he knew about my attraction to her.
That night I had changed into a black long-sleeved tee and pink miniskirt with white knee socks because it was kind of cold. I really did want to make Caroline proud. I couldn't help but wonder when she was getting out because she was fully-healed after all. Maybe the doctors were suspicious of her sudden recovery or something.
After thirty minutes, we began to run into some problems. It was a little bit stressful.
"We're out of Bart and Homer dolls and we need more Team Jacob tees and the speaker has gone out in the karaoke room." Bonnie told me. So, everything was falling apart.
"Do you think that we made the games too easy?" I questioned. What would we do if we completely ran out of prizes? "I mean at real fairs, you're not supposed to be able to win every time."
"Well it's better for people's confidence if they do win." Bonnie explained. I supposed that was true, but it still seemed too easy. "Mary, despite all of that, this is a huge success. Caroline would definitely be proud."
"Are you sure, because she has really high standards?" I questioned before I noticed one of the carnival workers. He might be able to help us fix the speaker. "Hey, it's Carter, right?"
"Yes." The shaved-headed guy replied. "What can I do for your, Sweetie?"
"Do you know anything about how to fix karaoke speakers?" I asked with a blush. I did not like being called Sweetie and I didn't even know if I could tell him not since I was not his boss either.
"Why don't you show me where the problem is?" Carter suggested. He was looking at Bonnie.
"Yeah, Bonnie, show him the problem." I instructed teasingly. He was too old for her probably, but she did deserve a chance at happiness. It would also make me feel less uncomfortable. At that moment, Anna came over to me dressed in her more usual attire. She looked happier to be wearing it.
"So I have to admit that this is a great carnival that you put together." She explained. She was snacking on something. I still didn't know how vampires were able to eat, but it was probably not a good idea to question it.
"I'm glad that you think so." I declared with a smile. "Do you know where Stefan is?"
"No, but I can help you look for him if you want?" She offered as we began to search for him. We ended up by the arm-wrestling table where Tyler was.
It was then that I realized that there was something on my mind. There was something that still didn't make any sense that I really wanted to know the answer to it. I wasn't entirely sure how to get that answer and I wasn't sure if I would even like the answer that I got. Why had the Gilbert device affected non-vampires? I thought Emily had made it to exclusively hurt vampires. It also raised a lot of questions that I probably didn't have a good opportunity to explore tonight. I supposed that there was one thing that I could do. Maybe Anna knew something and I could ask her about it. It was worth a shot.
"So do you have any reason why Tyler and his father were affected by the Gilbert device?" I asked.
"I have a theory, but I'm going to wait until I have more evidence to present it." She explained. Before I could ask her to elaborate, I noticed a text from Damon telling me to meet him in Ric's classroom immediately. It was in all caps, so I could tell it was urgent. Knowing Damon it could have been something that wasn't urgent but we wouldn't know until we got there.
When we got there, we found that he and Stefan were there. The other thing was Ric was not there.
"What's the emergency?" I asked. I figured that since Stefan was there, it probably was a real emergency.
"Katherine turned Caroline into a vampire." Stefan explained.
You had to be kidding me? How did Katherine even find out that Caroline had vampire blood in her system? Granted, she could have used her own blood, but if she was going to do that, she could have turned someone else instead.
"How did this happen?" I asked in disbelief.
"Well, your girlfriend gave her some blood and Katherine found out about it and killed her." Damon explained. I rolled my eyes when he said Anna was my girlfriend. I also hoped he didn't know what happened. That also didn't explain how she found out.
"She must be so confused about everything. She doesn't know about any of this stuff." I responded.
"Oh, she definitely does." Damon replied. What? "I told her a lot when we were together and now she's remembering all of that stuff."
"She said 'Game on.'. What does that mean?" Stefan asked. So what did you just remember things that you were compelled to forget when you became a vampire?
"It means that Katherine's fighting dirty." Damon answered. There were still a lot of questions as to why she had specifically chosen Caroline to become a vampire.
"We need to do something about this." I stated. "We need to find Caroline and get her away from here."
"And then kill her." Damon added. When he said that, I suddenly wanted to grab some vervain and tie him up so he couldn't do anything. I wondered if there were any of those darts in the desk still. Maybe he was just making a really bad joke.
"No. We're not killing her." I remarked. He needed to know that I didn't find his joke funny if he was joking.
"Need I remind you of a story of a girl named Vicki Donovan?" Damon asked. He was not joking. "Caroline of all people will not make it as a vampire. You know there was a school carnival on the same night. Funny how history repeats itself."
"Caroline and Vicki have completely different personalities and no that was a Halloween Party, not a carnival." I pointed out. "We are under no circumstances going to kill her."
"Yeah, I kind of risked a lot to heal her." Anna added. Damon just walked out of the room and Stefan banged his fist against a wall. Why we were letting him go somewhere without watching him?
"Stefan, please don't tell me that you think he's right." I remarked.
"But he is right." Stefan remarked. No, he was wrong, and it looked like I would have to prove it. Caroline was the strongest person I knew. "A new vampire is very hard to control. Katherine basically signed Caroline's death sentence."
"Stefan, we can help her." I replied. "Caroline is not Vicki. She'll listen to whatever you have to say."
"Plus we can get her a daylight ring." Anna pointed out. "Let's just find her and get her out of here. We'll split up. You two look together and I'll look for her on my own. At most, we are going to break her neck."
Stefan and I walked off and I definitely realized that Anna was pretty much the best friend in the world. I was seriously sure that everyone that hated vampires never got the time to get to know them. Even Damon wasn't that much of a problem once you got to know him. He was still an asshole, but he was okay. I wished that I had been with Anna, but realistically, she was more likely to be able to handle Damon in a fight if it came to that.
At that moment, Ric walked into the room.
"What's going on?" He asked us. Maybe Damon should have filled him in. I did wonder why he was coming into the room. Did he have liquor stored in the room as well?
"Caroline got turned into a vampire." I explained. "We may need one of your vervain darts to subdue her, but we definitely don't need any stakes."
"Okay." He replied as he went into his desk and gave me one. I gave it to Stefan who put it in his coat pocket and then we went outside to look for her. It kind of made me wisht that I had brought a jacket. We then started our search for Caroline.
We found her with Damon…and Carter's dead body. Her face was covered with his blood. Well that was a bit of a problem, but it was something that we could work around. We could work around an accidental murder and we had covered more than that.
"Damon no!" I told him before Stefan tackled him to the ground. "Put the stake down."
"You see what she did?" Damon replied. He was probably the last person to be the judge of that. I was pretty sure that this was around the same spot where he had killed Mr. Tanner. That was probably the only person that Damon had killed that ended up working out for the better. I was also pretty sure that no one really even missed him. I had basically forgotten all about him until this very moment.
"Damon, you're not anyone who can judge for killing." I pointed out. I took a step closer to Caroline. I had to let her know that I wasn't afraid of her and maybe it would help her calm down.
"No, stay back, I don't want to hurt you." Caroline declared as she pushed me away. She pushed me pretty hard. Luckily, Anna caught me before I hit the ground. She was definitely strong, and Anna seemed to have gotten here just in time.
"Caroline, please, I want to help you." I told her as I tried to get close to her once again. Once again, I was not good at comforting people, but Caroline was supposed to be my friend, so I would at least have to try. "I'm sorry for what Katherine did to you."
"Why did Elena do it? Why would she kill me?" Caroline cried. It wasn't surprising that she thought that considering that we had not told her about Katherine because we hadn't told her any of the other stuff.
"It wasn't Elena, it was Katherine." I argued. I wished that I had a way to prove it to her. "Elena would never do that to you."
"You just need to let me kill her." Damon replied. He needed to shut up. "She's going to die anyway."
"Well, it's not going to be tonight." Stefan told him. It was definitely not going to be tonight, and hopefully, it wouldn't be any time in the near future either. I hoped that we wouldn't have to constantly stop Damon from killing her.
"Yes, it is." Damon remarked as he grabbed a stake prepared to attack her. Fortunately, Stefan stuck the dart in him first. That got him to stop as he started to pass out. It might not have been enough to subdue him, but it would at least slow him down.
At that moment, Bonnie came over. She looked over the body and Caroline's face and then grabbed her hand.
"No." Bonnie replied. She was probably sensing that Caroline was a vampire. She looked like it was the worse thing in the world.
"Bonnie?" Caroline asked as the witch began to cry. I figured it was a good idea to grab Caroline's hand as Anna and I took her into the bathroom to get her away from everything and to get her cleaned up. It may have been better for me to not be there, but I didn't want to stick around for whatever Bonnie was going to do. I took a paper towel and began to wet it as Anna stood close to her. Caroline ran her hands under the water while she groaned about being a murderer. I almost expected her to say, 'Out damn spot'. I got closer as I tried to clean her face, but she backed away from me as veins formed under her eyes. "Why does this keep happening to my face?"
"Caroline, it's something that happens to vampires when you're around blood." Anna explained as she showed her the veins under her own eyes. "But you can control it. You can make them go away. Just take a deep breath and try to calm down."
Maybe Anna would be better at helping her since she at least knew what Caroline was going through. I imagined that there had been some point that Anna had had problems with blood. I didn't know how long ago it would have been, but I imagined that it had happened at some point. She couldn't have always had the great control that she had now. I really needed to ask her how old she was.
"Why did Katherine do this to me?" Caroline asked calmly as I ran the paper over her face and wiped the blood off. It looked like Anna's advice had worked.
"I don't know but we're not going to let her get away with it." I assured her. "Anna and I will do whatever we can to help you."
"I don't even know your last name." Caroline told the goth.
"Well I've changed it several times over the years." Anna replied. That really wasn't all that surprising. It made me want to know what her real name was, but I was pretty sure that she would tell me if I asked her. "What I've been going by now is Clarkson."
"You know I was expecting something more Asian." Caroline admitted. That was a little bit racist. "Is that racist?"
"I'm not going to be offended by it." Anna responded. She was probably used to it by now and I was also pretty sure that Caroline wasn't racist. "But my dad actually was white. He was the one that turned us, but I haven't seen him in a long time."
"How long?" I asked curiously. Well, I supposed that I was going to find out right now.
"It's been almost a thousand years." She explained. Okay, I didn't think that she was that old. No wonder she was so good at pretending to be human. Even Stefan was not as good as she was.
"Wow, you look very good for your age." Caroline told her. I saw Anna smile at that. Now we would just have to get her home.
Late that night, I got up to get some water and when I got back to my room, I noticed Stefan was there at my window. Anna was still sleeping. She really was a heavy sleeper. I opened the window to let him in.
"Get dressed. I want to take you somewhere." He replied. I couldn't help but wonder why we had to do it so late at night. I also wondered if he wanted to do something that we hadn't done in a while because we hadn't really had the chance to recently with all of the drama.
I put some clothes on and we went out the window. I had decided to just wear my cheerleading pants since it was still cold, and they were easy to put on. We ended up back at the carnival, which was now empty. I was confused why we were there. I was beginning to think that my idea of what we were going to be doing wasn't going to happen because it was too cold for that.
"Why are we here?" I asked.
"I promised you a kiss on top of the Ferris wheel." He reminded me. I wanted to tell him that he really didn't need to do that, but it looked like we were going to do it anyway. "Now hold on tight."
I grabbed onto him and he jumped, landing us on the top. I didn't have a lot of time to even think about it because as soon as we were up there, kissed me. I also was pretty sure that we weren't supposed to literally kissed on top on the Ferris wheel, as in on top of the car.
"Stefan, can you please do something for me?" I asked as I tried to not look down.
"What?" He asked.
"Can you please take us back down?" I requested as we back to the ground.
So Mary and Anna are back in the same room again. Also Caroline became a vampire but you already knew that would happen. Please don't forget to review.