The Vampire That Loved Me, Chapter 3

Chapter 3

After being in the car for only five minutes, Emma turned to Isabelle and asked, “So what happened back there?”

Isabelle didn’t like lying to her friends. She wanted to tell Emma, but she felt as if what had happened should remain a secret. So she told Emma that she had gone off into the woods in search of the guy she’d seen and had gotten lost. She wasn’t sure Emma believed her. But she decided to keep it to herself, even though she knew that she’d probably tell Emma sooner or later. After that, they drove home in silence.

Isabelle dropped Emma off at her house, promising her that she’d meet her at her locker tomorrow at school. They were seniors at their school, which meant they got to spend homeroom in the hallways talking to their friends, instead of being stuck in a room doing nothing for a half an hour.

Isabelle drove home as fast as was legal. She didn’t know why, but she had the sudden urge to just be alone in her room. She pulled into the driveway and noticed nobody was home. She shrugged. Her mother was never home. She was always working or spending time with her loser boyfriend.

Isabelle walked to the front door and dug through her purse to find her keys. As she was doing so, she thought she heard rustling near the porch. She looked down at the bushes, but saw nothing. She stuck the key in the lock and walked inside.

Her mother hadn’t left any lights on, so it was as dark inside as it was outside. She searched for the light switch, tripping over her kitten, Bo, in the process. She apologized as her hand hit the switch and illuminated the room. She picked Bo up, giving him a few strokes, and then set him back down.

She walked upstairs and to her room. She jumped onto the bed, burying her face in the pillow. She wasn’t tired, however, and decided to do some homework that she’d neglected to do.

An hour later, she was reading a book for English. It was fall, the leaves were dry, and it was hard not to notice the footsteps outside. Isabelle heard them and slowly closed her book. They sounded very close to the house. She got up from her bed and faced the window, slowly backing up toward the wall farthest from it. It was open, and she didn’t want to take the risk of the person outside hearing her trying to close it. She slumped backward against the wall and sat on the floor.

It was then that she noticed that the footsteps had stopped. She blew out a sigh of relief, thinking that whoever it was had moved on and decided to leave her alone. She started to get back up, but looked up to see someone perched on her windowsill.