Captivated (An Affliction Novel) (2 page)

“Hey you! What’s going on?” I asked, wondering why he called me so early.

“You know I’m picking you up right?” he asked.

“Oh!” I totally forgot. Now I had negative five minutes to get ready. And counting! “Ummm…yeah, of course,” I lied. Markus was punctual and would come early just to rush me if he knew I’d forgotten. “See you in a bit!” I assured him. He hung up without saying another word. I hated it when he did that.

After my shower, I got dressed then cracked the door open to let the steam out so I could see myself in the mirror.

“Mindy?” Markus poked his head in
moments later. His brown skin had gotten darker over the summer break. He spent way too much of his time going to the beach and trying to drag me there with him. The one time he was able to, I never stepped foot in the water. “You’re barely on your makeup?!” I could clearly see the annoyance on his face. He narrowed his eyes at me. They were brown and already small enough as it was. He also scrunched his slightly big, but attractive nose.

Markus took a whiff of the air. “What’s that smell?”

“I haven’t put perfume on. Maybe it’s my shampoo. It’s coconut.” I smiled.

“Yuck.”

“That makes sense coming from someone that can’t stay away from the beach!” I snapped back.

Markus laughed at the irony. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and nodded his head. “You have two minutes.”

“I’m so sorry!” I finished up and jumped off the sink. Running into my walk-in closet, I hurriedly changed my top and put on my flip flops.

“Thirty seconds!” Markus yelled from the first floor.

I immediately grabbed my backpack and practically flew down the stairs. I absolutely had no time to eat, so, regrettably, I grabbed a pop tart packet from the pantry and glanced longingly at the ham and eggs my mom had on the stove. My mouth watered as I ran past the pan and the warm smell trailed to my nose.

“Love you, mom!” I called out before bursting through the front door.

Over the summer, Markus’ dad had bought him a used car. The sucky part was that his dad believed that buying a beat up car for Markus would make him into a man. I didn’t see how that had anything to do with it and neither did Markus. He tried to convince his dad to get him a nicer car, but his dad wouldn’t budge. Another reason he gave Markus was that if he didn’t have a nice car as a teen, then neither would Markus. At least he wasn’t as bad as the grandpa. That old man defined perfectly what we knew as ‘the grouchy old man.’ He never remembered Markus’ name, so he was known simply as ‘boy’ at his house.

And there it was. My first glimpse
of his new/old car. It was something I had never seen before. Must have been from another country. The small two-door car resembled a shoe. An old beat up grey shoe that someone abandoned. I smiled at Markus to show him my approval, but he just rolled his eyes at me and exhaled while looking at the car. He must have seen the laughter behind my smile.

As Markus opened his car door for me, it creaked. It literally creaked. “Hey! It knows your name!” I laughed
, then imitated the car. “M-a-rkuuuus.”

Markus nodded his head and looked at his phone again, his patience was
wearing thin, but he still couldn’t hide the small chuckle he made at my joke. Practically shoving me in the car seat, I stopped to think he probably would have picked me up off my bathroom sink and thrown me in the car in an instant if he could. Lucky for me, he was too nice to do that.

“How do you like my new hair-do?” he asked while putting the car in reverse.

“Huh?” I hadn’t even noticed. I took my face out of my hand mirror and looked at his hair. He buzzed it all off. It was a big change from the usual spikes and I kind of liked it. “Cool! I’ll have to get used to it though.” I said politely and smiled at him.

“Yeah, I know. I actually didn’t mean to do it like this.” He scrunched his eyebrows up and rubbed what was left of his hair.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Heh, I was actually trying to fade my own hair and I forgot to change the setting on the razor,” he said half out loud.

“Ha!” I laughed out. I couldn’t help it. “How did you manage that?” I tried keeping the laughter out of my voice.

“I don’t know. It was my first time and I started with the top of my head and buzzed clean through it. After that there was no way of fixing it,” he said and laughed along with me, though not as hard as I was laughing. “So, are you going to school like that?” he asked.

“What? Is my make-up messed up?!” I flipped my mirror open again and examined my face. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I found nothing wrong.

“You want me to give you a buzz too?” Markus asked with hidden laughter.

“My hair!” I squealed. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten to do it. We were already pulling into the school parking lot, so I dug through my backpack and pulled out whatever I could find. I found a hair tie and a few bobby pins. Hopefully, the tiny hair tie could handle my horse hair. My hair was super thick and almost reached my waist, but I had to try something. I combed my fingers through it and put it up into a pony tail. I couldn’t believe that was happening, today of all days! My first day as a senior in high school and I didn’t even do my hair. I turned to Markus in hopes that by some miracle I looked decent.

“You look fine, Red.” He looked at the worry in my eyes. “It’ll be okay. I don’t
know why you’re so worked up. It’s just school.” he pointed out.

Markus was right. It was just another day of school. I just didn’t want anyone calling me Raggedy Anne like they did in elementary. It was horrible, I walked to school that day and it rained on me. When I stepped inside class, my hair was so frizzy it looked like someone
had rubbed a balloon all over it.

We got out of the car and walked towards the school building. I spotted a long red hair on Markus’ black shirt
, so I snuck in behind him and carefully pinched the hair off his back. That happened more often than I liked to admit.

We came to a halt before the school entrance and gazed up at the towering building. It was like the double doors dared us to enter. We both turned an eye to each other and nodded our heads,
an agreement that we were in it together. We shoved the doors open and stepped into the beginning of yet another year of struggle.

“What number is your locker?” Markus asked. He pulled a
folded paper out of his pocket and opened it up.

“I think it’s. Wait…hold on.” I said. My number and combination was paper-clipped to my schedule so I pulled it out of my backpack. “Six. Six. Six.” I softly said. Markus stopped and looked at me with a puzzled face. He looked back down at his paper and then over to the lockers.

“We’ll take mine…” he continued on, “…I don’t want no voodoo locker.” And we headed in the direction of his locker.

Markus was superstitious to the core. He believed in: not crossing the path of a black cat, keeping mirrors in one piece, and the rest of that mumbo jumbo. It was hard to keep up with all of the superstition in the world. Next, he was going to tell me that vampires and werewolves actually existed. Yeah right!

“Ok.” I agreed. “Hey, have you heard from Tanya?” I asked. Tanya was the missing link to our trio. I loved how she was so brave and spontaneous, especially when it came to the way she would always experiment with her hair and style.

“Yeah, I talked to her this morning. She should be on her way.”
Markus said.

We arrived at his locker and he tried opening the combinatio
n lock with the numbers on his paper. “Do you remember if I’m supposed to spin it all the way around after the first number or backwards to the next?”

“Great, now I forgot,” I admitted. While he tried to master the lock, I looked around to see if I recognized anyone. There were a lot of new faces, as usual. And all of the students rushing
around made the hallway look much smaller.

“There! I opened it.” Markus turned, smiling at me. Then he stepped out of the way so I could put my things in it.

“I don’t have anything to put in there.” I said.

“Neither do I.” Markus shrugged his shoulders and slammed the locker shut. “I’ll text the combo to Tanya.” He
then pulled out his large cell phone. It looked like a miniature laptop in the palm of his hand.

The bell rang.

That first bell always made me nervous. I was totally used to that whole first day of school experience, so why did it always make me so nervous? I pulled my schedule out of my backpack and looked for the first class. Markus didn’t need to pull his out. He was always organized and prepared for everything. He already had his classes mapped out in his head.

All of the students began to pour into the hallways, filling the empty walking spaces.

“You ready?” Markus asked as he grabbed the schedule from my hands and looked it over. “We have second and sixth period together.” He continued, “I think you have first period with Tanya.”

“I hope she comes in today. I haven’t seen her.” Worried, I glanced around to see if I could spot her. Markus and I split up and I headed to my first class. Fortunately, Tanya was waiting right outside the room. She sure looked different than the last time I saw her
, she had a short punk haircut that went up high in the back and long in the front. It looked like she was going for a Goth look that time because all her nails and clothes were in different shades of black.

“Mindy!” Tanya screamed. She ran up to me and hugged me hard. I hugged her back equally
as powerful. “Do you like it?” she asked with excitement.

“It sure is different…” I said. I was used to seeing her in her variety of purple skirts
and layered brown hair, but that was going to take some getting used to. I hoped she didn’t notice
my
last minute hair-do. “…I like it though.” I assured her.

“Wow.” Tanya’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened. Following her gaze, I saw that it was Dean walking past us. He practically towered over all of the other students walking around him. And the way they distanced themselves, it was as if they were trying to avoid him. His aura seemed…darker. The details of his face were hidden underneath the shadows of his eyes. From what I could see, his face showed zero emotion. His black hair was short everywhere else but on top. It was combed forward and swooped into tiny spikes in the front. Cute. It seemed like he got bigger every year that went by. I knew everyone got bigger, but man, he must have
worked out every day for hours to look like that.

“Warning, the mean look goes with the personality.” I rolled my eyes.

“He sure looks nice to me.” Tanya peeked over the students in front of her to catch another glimpse before Dean walked out of site. “But hey…he could be mean to me anytime he wants.” she winked.

“You perv!” I accused and gave her a light push.

“Come on, Mindy. Why do you hate him?” Tanya asked.

“Cause he’s an A-hole,” I said. Dean wasn’t the same as he used to be. Years ago, before his parents died, he was kind and gentle. He always smiled, and it was the kind of smile that could bring anyone out of their lousy mood. It always worked for me and he knew that. Now, he acted like I never existed, like I was a nobody.

Then, I felt someone wrap their arms around my waist and swung me around.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” exclaimed a familiar, husky voice. He squeezed tighter.

“Ayden? Is that you?” I asked while he set me back down. I spun around to face him. “Wow, look at you!” I cried out. I hadn’t seen him all summer. He called me almost every day, but I never got the chance to hang out with him. His dirty blond hair almost matched his tanned skin perfectly. And the bronze on his face made his sapphire eyes more noticeable.

“Hi, babe. Is this your first hour?” There was excitement in his voice. Ayden put his arm around my shoulder and roughly pulled me against him.

“Yeah. You going to grab a seat next to me so you can copy my answers again?” I asked as I elbowed him.

“Now, babe,” he leaned his face into mine, “you know it’s not your papers I’ve been looking at.” he said loudly, not caring who heard.

“Charming.” I sarcastically added. He pulled me along with him as we stepped into class.

I sat
between Ayden and Tanya. Ayden started tickling the back of my neck with his pencil but I was too focused on my roaring stomach to care about the sensation on my neck. The pop-tart I inhaled earlier wasn’t enough and I didn’t even finish it. All the buzzing in the room seemed to irritate Mr. Shapiro as he sat back in his chair, staring at the class with his fingers massaging his temples. It was already five minutes after the second bell but I guessed he was still waiting for a couple of students. I was so glad to have him for a teacher again. I got along with him last year and he was actually okay, except for when he was irritated. Like right now.

“Welcome back, everyone.” Mr. Shapiro announced. The class went silent. He nodded in approval. “For those of you who don’t know me…” He turned around, picked up the chalk, and started spelling his name on the board.

The door swung open. In walked the palest person I’d ever seen in my life. He must have been albino. The guy wore a long sleeved button up shirt with the sleeves pushed up, exposing his pale, lean arms. He had a few beaded bracelets on his left wrist that were in no way feminine. His hair was silver and the silky straight locks reached down to his cheek bones. But I could still see part of his face through it. His lips looked soft and his chalky skin seemed almost fragile. The blue eyes painted on his face glowed against his skin. He was beautiful, like a walking glamour shot.