Whoa! It's been how many months? This was last updated in mid-August. So there's September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May..

And now it's June. Wow! A woman could've gotten pregnant and had her baby by now. Well, here's ch 14. I hope you know I had this written a long time ago. Also, reviews will be greatly appreciated as usual!

The darkness doesn’t seem to lift for a long time. I still feel it linger even as the sunlight spills through my windows. I start to think about—

Hey! That—that woman! Who was she? Man I am slow. Obviously it was Victoria…the one who bit me and I didn’t even get a good look at that guy behind me. Everything was too blurry, I don’t even remember her face. And know what else? This is the second time I’m having this dream. The first time I had it was…it was when…when I was at Kewjo’s. Aah… Which was…when?

Suddenly I sit up straight and a familiar wave of nausea washes over me. Agh…I do not feel good. Oh my god, the nightmare. You have no idea how disconcerting it is to see yourself in a dream, trying to kill some girl, only to end up murdered anyhow. Well…I guess it wouldn’t really be called murdered if I didn’t die. My hand automatically reaches to my neck. But there’s nothing there except for my chain. I guess I’m just remembering everything back then.

Seeing yourself all bloody like that…not a pretty dream. I shudder. But even though I’ve slept for a while…wait. I pick up my watch to examine it more closely. It can tell me which day of the week it is and the date. And apparently, right now it’s two days later, freaking six twenty-eight at night!

Ignoring another strong nauseous feeling as I get up, I open the blinds and look outside. It’s still pretty bright out even though the sun is going to set in an hour, and little kids are playing tag on the street. I see my ‘mom’ outside watering the front lawn. I huff in annoyance. Why didn’t she wake me up?

After a shower I go downstairs. Mom is still outside, but she’s standing on the driveway with a neighbor I recognize as the one that lives across from our house. I burst out the door into the heated day air and give her the most exasperated look I can come up with. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

My mom turns her sunlit laughing and smiling face to me. As she and Owen examine me more closely, the brightness of her face lessens and Owen starts looking a little concerned.

“Are you alright?” Owen asks me. “You look pale.”

“You look old.”

“Haha,” he replies sarcastically.

He actually looks around thirty-five (he refuses to tell me his age—pfft), around the same as my mom—she’s thirty six. He has short, spiky blond hair and blue eyes. He likes to talk with my mom, and is always smiling around her. He also came to our house for lunch a couple of times. He’s alright. Don’t know how he can manage to talk with such a liar, though…if not saying something in the first place is lying…but I guess I should let that go. I’m not going to act like some spoiled brat who finds out too late that they’re adopted, and then starts putting on some freak drama, crying their little eyes out and completely hating on their parents. ‘Oh no, I’m adopted! You’re not my real parents! I hate you! I’ve been living a lie all my’—no. Don’t need to hear it.

Okay…the fact that I just said all that means that it really is bothering me. Sigh.

I glance at my mom and can tell she’s giving me a look that says you-better-be-glad-I’m-not-mentioning-how-long-you’ve-been-unawake. I don’t care. She can say what she wants to Owen. I leave them talking and laughing there.

I’ve got to stop thinking about this or I’m going to snap.

Kewjo

“Are you kidding me?” I ask incredulously. I seriously feel my jaw dropping to the ground.

“Are you kidding me?” Cheyenne asks. “Mike?” She turns to face him, who’s sitting on the other side of her.

I see Mike shift around a little. Michael Santos, fidgeting? The world has come to an end. “I don’t know what’s up with this…but Jesse isn’t usually popping up into my dreams,” he says. “Maybe it’s his future girlfriend?” he jokes. Future…girlfriend?

“So basically you had the same dream?” Yenne asks him. “The one with that girl talking with—”

“Yeah,” he says. He’s about to say more as he looks up but then shuts his mouth. I casually turn around and see Hazel coming our way with two Cokes in his hand. He had gone off to get a Coke for himself, then offered to buy anyone else one. Of course, Yenne had to ask for one. She’s wild over two things: coke, and free stuff.

Once he gets here, he throws one coke into his left hand and then lets the other one roll off his right. “Here,” he says, tossing it over to Yenne. She caught it easily. Then he sits down beside her and opens his own. I can see the cool condensation wrapped around the can. It’s so hot outside…I think I should’ve asked for one. “So what were you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Cheyenne says, a little too quickly. She can never learn to be casual or subtle about these things, can she?

Hazel gives her a quizzical look as he took the can away from his mouth. “Okay,” he said, shrugging it off.

It’s Monday all over again. Another day of utter laziness and calling each other when we get home, forgetting about any homework we knew we had. We would all go out if our parents didn’t obtain unnecessary-for-them-to-know-knowledge that our every Monday is cruelly taken over by week-long assignments to turn in on Friday. Then Saturday and Sunday are our only free days to do anything, as the next cycle of crap starts the day after.

After a minute, Mike and Hazel start discussing randomness. I can’t understand most of what they’re saying because of two things: one, they are speaking guy-talk, something completely incomprehensible to me and Cheyenne; and two, they’re speaking Spanish, their second language. Literally, second language. They both learned Spanish after they learned English, so it makes it look bad on me and Yenne since we had equal opportunities. Plus the fact that Mike knows a little Irish Gaelic and Hazel knows Romanian makes me feel even worse.

So Yenne and I start talking about randomness too, but in our own (pathetically enough) single language, English. I mean, I know a little Russian, but who else does here? Not Yenne or anyone else I know.

The Spanish-speaking-people get up and start walking around and talk about something that sounds like football, and the Bucs. It sounds like they lost, but I don’t care, because I don’t know a thing about football.

I take this opportunity to fill Yenne in about Jesse. So I take a deep breath and tell her everything, as in, every single thing Emily told me.

“And so, apparently there’s something in the way that’s stopping him from fully becoming a vampire. I honestly have no idea what it is, even though I’m not hot on the idea of him being one, anyhow,” I finish fast and catch my breath. “Not that I think he is, either. On the idea of being one,” I quickly add.

Cheyenne just stares at me. I can tell she’s about to ask me to repeat myself, in which I will not, but all she says is “Oh my god”.

“Yeah,” I say in response. To which part, I don’t know.

“So…feel any better?” I ask Hazel. It's after school and we're at the park.

Hazel waits a moment before speaking. “Yeah, I’m fine. I felt pretty crummy last week, but I don’t know…I’m sort of getting used to it.”

I turn my head in his direction as we move back and forth, passing each other by every few seconds. “Is it a good thing to get used to a fever? How does that happen? I mean, whenever I had one, it was only for a day or two, and I don’t know, it got worse if I didn’t take any medicine.”

“Same with me before.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I haven’t taken anything."

I push back on my swing. “So, the water’s been keeping your temperature down?”

“I guess.”

“That’s good, then.” I swing by him another few times and then I speak. “So you really don’t feel like crap anymore?”

“Uh…yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Kew!” Right as we were about to go past each other, he looked at me funnily. “Why all the questions?”

He had me there. “I—don’t know. I talk too much, you know that.”

Hazel agrees. “Think too much.”

“Yeah, that too.”

I look down at the moving sand for a moment. I see the shadows of the swing sets and myself going forward and back. Then I see an odd-shaped one. I’m up in the air at the back right now, and I look up in front of me just in time to see a little kid walking in front of the swing sets, but way too close. And now she’s right in front of me.

“Aah!” I yell, and as I’m heading forward, I look around quickly and grasp the long vertical bar attached to the whole apparatus beside my swing—which is startlingly close. My arm jerks and I squeeze the bar as hard as I can. Ouch! What a stupid way to stop myself. But I didn’t really have a lot of options, you know? Anyway, the girl screamed and fled to her mother, who glared at me.

I sigh and let go of the bar and I wobbily start swinging back and forth.

“Holy crap.” Hazel’s looking at me like it was my fault the girl got in the way.

“What?” I frown.

“Your arm didn’t rip off.”

Oh.

“..I felt close to it.” I jump off the swing. He does the same. I start walking off on the sidewalk. Hazel catches up with me.

“What’s up with you?”

“Nothing.”

I see him looking at me doubtfully through the corner of my eye. “A lot on your mind,” he says.

I squint at him through the sun. The sunlight is outlining him a golden orange. You’d think he was an angel coming down from heaven. “How’d you know?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. When I suddenly want to walk off, I just want to think about something else—but then I end up bumping into something or someone.”

“So why are you walking with me?” Ouch. That was totally uncalled for. And what’s worse, my tone wasn’t even harsh. And what’s even worse, I had no idea why I just said that.

“Well…to make sure you don’t do the same.”

I don’t know why, but right now, I’m starting to feel a little pissed off. I look away to my right, staring at random trees as we walk.

Hazel looks around me. “What are you looking at?” he asks curiously. Then I can feel his eyes on me. It’s like he’s drilling holes into the back of my head. “Turn around.”

Excuse me? “No.”

“Come on, I have to tell you something,” he says.

“Then just say it.”

He sighs. “Okay. I actually haven’t been feeling all that great.”

“And is this not enough logic to support all my questions?”

“No. I mean that…” he searches for the right words. “I have this sense of…dread.”

I look at him. “Dread?”

“Yeah.” He raises his eyebrows slightly, like he always does.

“Everything feels fine to me.” I stick my hands in my jean pockets and keep walking. I wonder why he’d feel dread. “Like a sick feeling…of fear and… frustration?”

“…I guess. Something just doesn’t feel right, that’s all.” He shakes his head. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.”

Yeah…okay. I believe that.