Page 127 of Phobia

I hated failing, and being back here felt like the biggest failure of them all. Logically, I knew that I could go back to Seattle and continue my school year, but every time I thought about it, the paralyzing fear took a hold of my body, making it difficult to breathe.

So, I stopped even thinking about it. I stopped dreaming about the life I could have had.

“What can I get ya?” a waitress I didn’t recognize asked just a couple of minutes after I sat down. She smiled brightly at me, oblivious to the whispers from the table opposite of me, where a couple I knew very well sat, gawking at me.

Gabriel Lacroix and Helena Thornton.

I would like to say that I didn’t like seeing them because they did something to me, but in reality, their entire group mainly ignored me throughout their senior year in high school. No, I hated the idea of them and everything they could do. The freedom that they possessed just because they had money to their names, and families who supported them.

We couldn’t have been more different even if we tried, yet I couldn’t fault them for having everything when I had almost nothing. We were never poor, but there were days when choosing between buying food and paying for heat put a strain on the relationship I had with my mother. She thought I couldn’t understand, but I did. I understood better than she thought, yet she still treated me like a child, like I couldn’t think for myself.

“So?” the waitress repeated, impatiently tapping her pen on the small paper pad she held in her hands.

“Just an orange juice please,” I mumbled, not looking at the menu. I wasn’t hungry, hadn’t been in a long time. Food had lost its taste months ago. I knew that the only reason why I was still standing was because I knew I didn’t want to die.

But I wasn’t exactly living.

“Only that?” Her wide eyes would’ve been comical if it wasn’t for her high-pitched voice that alerted every single patron in the diner that I wasn’t ordering more.

“Yeah,” I grumbled. “Only that.”

I didn’t wait for her to confirm that she understood or to see her walk away. I turned my entire body toward the window overlooking the street in front, my eyes tracing every passing car driven by people rushing to get home, probably to go and be with their families.

Mom was probably going out with her friends. I wasn’t lying when I said I wouldn’t be home either. There was a carnival in town and I prayed, hoped, that maybe it would make me feel better if I went there, just for a couple of hours. Maybe surrounded by happiness, no matter how temporary it was, would make a difference.

I would later blame my wayward thoughts and my adrift mind for not seeing him before, maybe even feeling him, but the presence behind me wasn’t the waitress from before, as I would realize once I turned around.

Judah Blackwood stood next to my table, smiling down at me as if he was genuinely happy to see me. And we both knew that was a lie.

He had no idea I existed in high school, and why would he? I was nobody to them, just another freshman starting high school, eager to get it all over with so that I could get out of this town.

“Danika, right?” He was the first one to speak, his words laced with honey and spice, and everything nice, but I wasn’t buying it. There was no reason for him to be speaking to me. No reason for him to be standing here when his buddy Gabriel kept glaring at his back, ignoring Helena while she spoke to him. “You probably don’t remember me, but we went to high school together.”

“I remember you,” I said, less than amused to have him standing here. I was hoping that getting out of the house would give me some semblance of peace. People rarely spoke to one another in Winworth, unless they really knew each other, and the majority of my friends weren’t living here anymore. “I just didn’t think you would remember me.”

Rumors surrounding the Blackwood family, along with the other founding families, were something akin to the script from Mexican Telenovelas. The hushed whispers that their family was part of the Mafia, or some other syndicate, always made me laugh, but I had to admit—there was something weird about them.

Without an invitation, Judah sat down opposite of me, scanning my face as if he was memorizing it, storing it in some hidden part of his brain. Shivers ran over my body at his perusal. The sick feeling that I was being measured for something I had no idea about was running through my head, and I hated it.

“How can I help you, Judah?” I asked bravely, annoyed at his blatant staring.

He leaned on the table, his elbows on the top, and licked his lower lip. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re really beautiful?”

There were a million other things I expected him to say, but not that. Never that. Yeah, I wasn’t exactly ugly, but people like Judah almost never noticed the girls like me. We were of the wrong bloodline, wrong design. The blood running through our veins was crimson and not blue, which was one of the requirements to even sit with them.

There was a legend that his ancestors came all the way from Germany, running away from the Church for the crimes they had committed, but it was just a story. I knew better than to believe everything people in this town said. Somehow it felt better when they ignored me, when they decided that I wasn’t interesting enough to even look at, because being looked at like this… I suddenly knew how prey felt when the predators started stalking them.

I took a deep breath, just about ready to tell him to fuck off, when he decided to start speaking again.

“There’s a party happening tonight.” He grinned as if I should be thanking the gods that he even mentioned it to me. “I think you should come.” People like him didn’t know what no meant, and I had a feeling that was the reason why he didn’t ask.

He was telling me, expecting me to say yes no matter what.

“I don’t think I’ll be a good fit for one of your parties,” I mumbled, pressing my back to the leather backrest, my arms crossed over my chest. “But thank you for inviting me.”

“Oh, my darling Danika.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Trust me, I expect you to come. Tonight.” He stood up abruptly, shaking the table as he went. “You know where the Morass Asylum is?”

Were unicorns pretty?