Deadly to Love (3 page)

My force momentarily shocked him and he stumbled back slightly, hurt spreading across his face.

“What the hell Rea?” he questioned as anger began masking the hurt he had shown.

“We are not together anymore. You don’t just get to randomly start making out with me whenever you feel like it Ian.” My voice was getting louder as I spoke.

“You kissed me back Rea, I know you still have feelings for me.” He started to walk back towards me, his expression cautious, like a hunter who was trying not to spook its prey. I hated to admit it but he was right; I had kissed him back and for a split second it felt like nothing had changed and even though I had these feelings still, I knew I would only get my heart broken again if I let him back in.

“I’ll get over you Ian, hopefully as quickly as you got over me. This ends now OK, you don’t talk to me, I don’t want to see you and you definitely have no right to touch me anymore! Just leave me alone OK?” Before he could reply I rushed out of the room, only vaguely noticing Alesha who was stood resting against the wall nearest the door.

Hurrying towards the cafeteria I tried to hold back the angry tears that were threatening to fall. I didn’t want to give people more topics to gossip about. As I walked into the big white room that was filled with rows of wooden tables, Chloe flew instantly to my side and was not long followed by the others, who were bombarding me with questions.

“Guys give her a break OK?” Chloe said, turning on the three girls behind her before looking back to me, “you want to go somewhere quieter Rea?” she asked, noticing I was about to lose it. Nodding I let Chloe lead me away, the others picking up our lunches and following behind.

We headed for the textile department, knowing that Sue, the teacher, wouldn’t mind us being in there as Chloe was one of her best students. As we sat down around one of the large, fabric covered tables we waited for the teachers to leave, Chloe explaining we just needed somewhere quiet as I wasn’t feeling too well, before we started talking.

“Rea what happened?” Mel asked.

I sniffled my reply. “Well I was on my way from geography to lunch when Ian dragged me into one of the Spanish classrooms, telling me I needed to let him explain.” Four faces stared at me, all of their mouths were wide open and speechless, which was an unusual occurrence. “Anyway when I told him we were over, and tried to leave, he pushed me against the wall and started kissing me,” I said, leaving out the part about his hands wandering up my shirt. “I pushed him away and when I told him he had no right to do that anymore he started going on about how I still have feelings for him because I kissed him back and all that.” I buried my head in my hands, trying unsuccessfully to hide my tears.

“Rea he’s a jackass, just forget him OK, he’s not worth it,” Chloe said while rubbing a hand up and down my back in comfort.

“He’s right though Chlo, I did kiss him back, and I couldn’t help but only be aware of him when we were so close. It was like nothing had happened.” I sighed.

“That’s normal Serena, you just need time to adjust, it will get better if you stay away from him,” Lindsay said from across the table.

“Yeah, Linds is right. I know everyone is being a real pain in the ass right now but you’re just going to have to ignore it Rea, show him you don’t need him and don’t care what anyone says. Do the same with Alesha too,” Becka chipped in.

I was thankful to have them as my friends, but Bec mentioning Alesha made me groan. “Ugh I have photography with her next...”

My friends looked at me sympathetically.

“It’s only an hour Rea, and you’ve never talked to her before, I’m sure you can last that long. We can all go out and get a smoothie after, seeing as it’s so warm today if you want as well,” Chloe offered and I gladly accepted, slightly happier I didn’t have to go home to face my parents so soon.

Lunch ended faster than I wished and before I knew it I was headed toward photography with Chloe giving me her idea of a pep talk as we walked.

“Just ignore her, think about the money we’ll spend on clothes and food after college OK? We’ll buy you a new outfit to make him jealous.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, which I’m sure was her goal to begin with.

As I walked into photography with a smile on my face, I blanked Alesha like Chloe had said and found that the hour went by surprisingly quickly. I spent most of my time in the back, experimenting with inks and photos so I didn’t see much of anyone during the lesson anyway.

After college Chloe dragged me shopping, fulfilling her promise but Lindsay, Mel and Becka all had stuff to do so made their excuses and left.

The sun was scorching as we walked down the street to our favourite smoothie bar and Chloe made sure that the conversation topic stayed away from anything that could be remotely related to Ian. We both ordered our favourites and took them out into the park as I had managed to convince Chloe that I had no money to spend on a new set of clothes. My mum would have thrown a fit if I had brought home another new outfit that was destined to sit in my wardrobe, unused like a lot of items found there.

As we sat there talking I focused more of my attention on what was going on around me rather than listening to what Chloe was saying. There were a few couples holding hands, dog walkers and little children who had broken up from school for summer already. While I watched the carefree kids, Chloe’s words vaguely registered in my mind.

“All I’m saying is she shouldn’t have ditched everyone for him. She hasn’t...um earth to Serena?”

I looked up guiltily. “Sorry, was just thinking. What were you saying?”

She let out an exaggerated sigh in mock annoyance but she was probably pleased about being able to talk some more.

“I was saying how wrong it is of Nat to continually ditch her friends for this guy off some social networking game; I mean she hasn’t even met the guy.”

“I don’t understand,” I said looking confused.

“Nat, you know, Natasha Thomas? Well she downloaded one of those social networking games onto her phone and no one has seen her since, it’s like she dropped off the face of the planet. She apparently met this guy on one of them because no guys here would date her. Anyway that’s all I know so that’s all anyone knows.” I laughed at that comment. It was true though, if Chloe didn’t know it then the likelihood of anyone else knowing was slim to none.

An idea suddenly came into my head as I thought about what Chloe was telling me. I stood abruptly, making the excuse that I had forgotten that my mum wanted me to do something. I added that if I hadn’t got it done by the time she was home from work, I would end up grounded with no social life in future.

Then I rushed home as fast as I could, my mind already thinking up ideas about what I could do on those games. I knew I was fed up of wallowing in self pity and a random guy to take my mind off Ian seemed like the perfect solution to me. Especially as all the people at my college were either laughing or gossiping about me.

Running up to my room, I took the stairs two steps at a time, before I entered my room and grabbed my iPod off the side table. Collapsing on my bed I let my heart rate slow and my breathing level out as I unlocked the screen, smiling at my background:
Things to do today: Get up, Survive, Go back to sleep.
” That pretty much summed up my life in that moment, I was just trying to get through each day.

After scrolling through a list of different games for twenty minutes I found five that I liked the look of. They were all made by the same people but had different themes: Ninja, Vampire, Fashion, DJ and Mafia. The fashion and vampire themed games were for me but I figured the others would be the ones that most guys would be attracted to.

After installing games I learned that the main objective of it was to build up an empire or skill level by completing missions or attacking other players who had a smaller friend group (or allies). Being a newbie though at level one with no friends, I didn’t want to start attacking others.

Finishing the tutorial on the vampire game it finally asked me to enter a username to which I would go under. I was unsure as to why I thought of the name Darcie, it just happened to be what I typed in. As I was about to press enter I had a second thought and added a little pink heart after my name just to make it obvious that I was in fact a girl.

With my all my profiles set up under the fake name of
Darcie<3
, I began completing missions and building up my resources, hoping some people would start talking to me as I climbed the levels. Fortuitously I soon ran out of battery and was forced to stop which was okay with me as I was already getting bored; besides the odd person attacking me I had received no messages so far. After checking each game on the last drop of power I put my iPod on charge and decided to go out and work on my photography project seeing as the sun was still blazing high in the sky. Besides, after a claustrophobic day I needed some fresh air.

I was studying natural forms in photography so headed towards the outskirts of the Andaco Forest. I had changed my flip flops in favour of my worn and battered looking trainers, and as I reached the tree line of the start of the forest I was thankful I had. The ground was still wet and slightly boggy from the previous day’s downpour as the canopy of thick pine trees allowed very little light through.

Walking deeper into the trees I noticed the city getting smaller and obscured with heat haze, until the treeline swallowed it completely from view. But I didn’t mind as I had been into the forest hundreds of times, since I was little. I knew my way around and had never seen anything besides deer.

Carrying my Canon DSLR camera in front of me I kept my eyes focused on finding some good shots to add to my college portfolio. I came across one patch where the sun had managed to escape through the dense tree tops and shone down in beams, highlighting the water drops that were hanging off the ends of some curled up fern leaves. Setting my camera to the right exposure and shutter speed, I knelt on the nearly dry, pine needle covered floor and took a few shots. Moving on I took some pictures of the rare wild purple flowers, shaped like a butterfly’s wings, that can only be found in this part of Mavera. I noticed that the deep rich purple contrasted with the greens and browns brilliantly as I quickly flicked through my image reel.

Happy with the amount of photos I had collected I started to head back out of the forest, still flicking through my shots. As well as close ups I had taken a few landscapes and as I was almost at the edge of the forest I noticed something in one of the photographs that made me stop.

In the left hand corner was a figure that looked mostly human, but was blurred as if they were moving on the spot.

A cold shudder shot through me.

Looking over my shoulder I became slightly panicked and felt as if someone was following me.

My eyes flicked and searched the shadows. Even though there was no sign that anything had ever been behind me, the forest looked different now - dark and threatening.

Instinctively I broke away and ran, still clutching the camera that was displaying the freaky image. Surrounded by trees I didn’t stop until I was free of the forest and back in the open light and sight of my house.

Throwing open my door, I slumped against the inside of it, regaining my breath from the short sprint. Once I had recovered I looked down at the photo once more, just to make that I hadn’t been seeing things. The old saying “the camera never lies,” came into my mind and for the first time I wished it not to be true. Sure enough though as I looked down at the screen, the figure was still there and this time I noticed a red and orange glow around where its feet should have been. The image almost looked like the person was on fire but I thought I would have surely noticed if there had been a burning man in front of me.

Slightly unnerved by the image, I laid the camera on my desk, breaking the compulsion the image had over me, and returned to lie on my bed. Absent-mindedly, I picked up my iPod, glad to have a distraction and when I opened the screen I found I had twenty-four new notifications off the various games I had previously downloaded. Most of them were people attacking me, and winning I might add, but a few were of comments left by people on my profile on the Mafia and vampire themed ones.

On the vampire game four people had left me their code and one had left me a message saying
“hi sexy ;)”
I almost burst out laughing at the guys comment, wondering how many people he had sent that to but at the end of the day I didn’t really care; I came on these stupid games to flirt with guys so that was what I intended to do and sent
Mike405
an unusually flirty message back.

However because I couldn’t tell if
Mike405
was still online, and due to the fact that the message was sent over an hour ago, I switched onto the Mafia game to check out the messages I had received there. Once again I had a few people asking me to add them but the message that caught my eye was from a guy named Kai. All he said was,
“what’s your code?”
and it was sent over two hours ago.

I don’t know what felt different about this guy’s message but it did.

I sent my reply back, adding a little heart emotion after my code and waited for a response.

None came though so I moved back to the other games to start adding people, hoping it would spark off a conversation. Before I went to bed that night I had been talking to a different guy on each game but it bugged me that I still had not had a reply from Kai.
Maybe he had only wanted my code.

I was awoken the next morning by the shrill of my mother’s voice.

“Serena you’re going to be late!” she shouted from the bottom of the stairs. I was in no mood to face another day like yesterday though so instead of listening to her I rolled over to face my window, pulling my duvet up over my head while groaning.

“Serena come on!” The sound of footsteps drawing nearer my room and the growing volume of her voice signalled that she was planning to drag me out of bed herself, something she had done on many occasions.