Dancing With Darkness: Chapter 1

Chapter 7

I sat on my bed for who knows how long crying and reading over my letter. I forced myself up and changed into pajamas. I went into my bathroom to see how awful I looked. My tears had smudged my eyeliner and mascara causing it to streak on my face. I was horribly pale and my eyes looked flat. I scrubbed off my ruined make up and made my way over to my dance studio. In the room I had posted up inspirational dance quotes, some of my old dance shoes, and pictures of my dance idols. One by one I tore everything off until the walls were bare. I put the things into the corner by my stereo. I left the room and shut the door. For good. I never wanted to enter that room again. It was a memory of my failed goal. I never wanted to dance again. I entered my room again and grabbed all my dance costumes I had acquired over the years from recitals and what not. I carried the heap downstairs and tossed them into a garbage bag.

"What are you doing!" Seth and Nate were still here. They had taken up residence on the couch and Seth was staring at me in disbelief.

"Throwing away memories. I still need to call the academy, but I will once I throw these away." Seth hadn't even got up off the couch, but had managed to appear by my side in an instance. He tore the bag away from me.

"No you are not! You are going to that academy and you are not throwing away all your costumes." I shrugged him off and found old photo albums in the living room. Nate was watching me like I was insane. I pulled out the album that had all my dance photos, and stuck it in the fireplace. Seth stopped me before I could set it on fire. I tried to pull away from him, but he refused to let go. Nate snatched the album from the fire place and set back in the cupboard with the other albums.

"Let me go! Seth!" I screamed and struggled against him.

"You seriously have lost your mind. I called Elsie while you were up stairs. She will be here any minute." He turned me around so I was facing him.

"No! Why did you do that! You two are going to kill yourselves!" I shrieked hysterically. He must have a death wish. The doorbell rang and he handed me over to Nate who sat me down on the couch. I tried to get up, but Nate held onto me so I couldn't move. Why were they doing this? Did they want me to watch Seth get executed? Seth let Elsie in and I opened my mouth to scream for her to leave, but Nate put his hand over my mouth, muffling my protests. Elsie looked at Nate and me curiously. Seth brought her into the living room so I could see them clearly. He picked up the stake from the coffee table and gave it to her.

"Elsie. I don't know if you know this or not, but I am a vampire. Whitney lied to you earlier. She already knew about me, Nate, and the other vampires." Anger took over Elsie's face when she saw Nate holding me back.

"I should have suspected. I can't believe that I am friends with you! You vampires sicken me! Killing people. Using humans to feed your disgusting hungers!" She clenched the stake. A new wave of tears spilled from me and drenched Nate's hand that prevented me from saying anything. This was pure torture! I closed my eyes. Maybe this was a dream. It wasn't and I wasn't going to wake up from this nightmare anytime soon.

"I am your friend! Sure I need blood occasionally, but I eat just like you do. Elsie, can't you see what this is doing to Whitney! She accepted this and she wants you to accept it too. She doesn't want you to kill vampires, including me. Because of this she has decided not to go to Burlin!" Elsie's face softened when she saw me crying.

"I won't kill you because I know it will hurt Whitney. I am though, no longer your friend. You better not hurt her, and if any of your vampire friends hurt her they will die." She said coldly. She took the stake and stormed out of the house. Once she was gone Nate let go of me. I fell against him and cried until I couldn't any more. If I kept crying like this I would run out of tears soon.

"I want to be alone." I stood up and opened the door, indicating that they needed to leave.

"Please don't cancel your audition. I will see you tomorrow." Seth left and I pulled Nate back.

"Don't pick me up in the morning. I am not going to go to school. Tell the office that I am sick." He nodded and left. I checked the clock, it was 6:45. Despite it being early I headed up to my comforting room. My head landed on the pink satin pillows on my bed and the second I closed my eyes I was back in the Vampire realm.

I was wearing  my sweats again. I was in my bed and I sat up to find Nate strolling in.

"What do you want?" I said in a nasty tone. I almost felt bad, but then I told myself that I had every right to be mean if I wanted to. He didn't look offended. Actually he looked like he pitied me!

"To see you. I am sorry about the thing with Elsie and Seth. Seth wants you to go to Burlin and he needed to prove to you that she wouldn't kill him while you are away." I refused to look at him. He came and sat on the bed beside me.

"Is there any way that I can help?"

"No." He gently grabbed my shoulders and tugged my body to his. He grabbed my face in his hands so I had to look at him. Before I knew what was happening his lips were on mine. I started to kiss him back but then pulled away. What was I doing!? No one, not even Nate would be able to take my pain away. Besides if I opened up to him, I would just get hurt.

"Whitney, let me try to take your hurt away. Please, don't torture yourself over this. You can't help it if Elsie and Seth are no longer friends. There is nothing you can do about it. Stop beating yourself up about the situation." I wanted to give in, but I couldn't. What if Nate was the next person to crush my heart? How much more pain would I be able to take? Well, what more could I lose? Maybe taking a risk was a good thing. I placed my lips against his.

"Please don't give up on dancing." He said when we pulled apart.

"I won't. I will go to the academy." I don't know if I was saying it to convince myself or him, but either way I meant it. Now I was thinking clearly again. What was wrong with me? One minute I would be all upset and hormonal, and then I would be able to think rational thoughts after I freaked out. Something weird was going on with my body, and I wasn't sure that I liked it.

"Good. Now go get dressed. I am going to take you out on a date."

"In the Vampire realm? That certainly seems like a pleasant idea. You guys should have a slogan. It could say "Welcome to our wonderful realm, where you an find interesting people, go partying, and get eaten." I smiled at him and he laughed.

"You will be fine. I am going to go change and I will pick you up in thirty minutes." He gave me another kiss and vanished. I opened my closet. I had no clue as to what would be in here since this wasn't my closet I had in the human realm. I shifted through clothes and finally found what I was going to wear. I picked out a pair of jeans, a black tank top with red crystals that formed swirly patterns across it, and a pair of red wedge heels. I put on a black choker and tied my hair into a curly ponytail with a couple thin tresses left down. I stuck a pair of black chandeliar earrings into my ears. I did my makeup, which was a smoky eye style with red lip gloss. I found my cell phone and stuck in in my jeans pocket. On my way downstairs I snatched up a thin black hoodie. I walked out of the house just as Nate drove up next to the sidewalk. As always it was night time with a full moon.

"So where are we going?" I smirked at him when I was in the car. He couldn't stop staring at me.

"Earth to Nate! I asked you where are we going?" I snickered as he blinked and shook his head. He looked good himself. He was wearing a tight black t-shirt, dark wash jeans, and a red zip up jacket. His orange eyes were as bright as ever.

"We are going to go to a club downtown and meet up with Seth and his date." I couldn't help but grin at that.

"Seth gets dates?" I joked. I couldn't imagine Seth not getting a date, but as his bestfriend I was designated to make fun of him.

"You think you are so funny don't you? She's really nice. Tall, blonde, pretty blue eyes-"

"Stop talking. Right now." I cut him off mid sentence. Ok, maybe my jealousy got the best of me, but whatever.

"I am kidding. No one has prettier eyes than you. She is nice though, a good match for Seth. I thought I already told you that blondes weren't my type anyway." I smiled at the compliment on my eyes. They were a goldish green and stood out against my dark auburn hair with brunette highlights.

"That was pretty funny. Until the cheerleaders gave me deadly looks."

"Eh. They're just jealous of you. I thought Bridget was going to kill you at lunch."

"Do you know her?" I am sure he knew most vampires. Even if they didn't go to our school he still could know them from here.

"Yeah, she's my second cousin. Sad isn't it?" Woah, she was his cousin!?

"I can honestly say that I feel bad for you." He smiled and parked the car on the street across from a busy looking club. The line was pretty huge.

"It's going to take us forever to get in!" I complained as he wrapped his arm around my waist. He didn't say anything and walked us up to the front.

"Hey Nate. How's it going?" The bouncer asked as he opened the door for us and smiled at me showing his shining white fangs. I gave him a slight closed-mouth smiled and entered the club with Nate. Music was blaring and it was amazing inside. It was black, but I could still see and colored strobe lights were flashing. Nice furniture was placed on one side of the club with tables and the like. We headed over to the bar where Seth was with his date. Nate gave me the understatement of the year when he described her. She had long, straight, platinum blonde hair, piercing ice blue eyes, was like size zero thin, and was pale, but not sickly pale. She was wearing a short, but simple black dress and blue heels. She gave me a beaming smile and I smiled back.

"How much did Seth have to bribe you to go on a date with him?" I asked and she let out a laugh that sounded like symphonic music.

"Nothing at all. It was a pity date." I laughed along with her. I was definitely going to like her. Seth made a face at me and I made one back at him. Nate ordered us drinks and I sat down beside her.

"My name's Crystal, nice to meet you. Seth talks about you all the time."

"Really? So you must know who I am."

"Yeah, so I hear you just found out that your school is full of vampires. I also hear that you humiliated Bridget today too."

"I sure did. It was hilarious. She had insulted me during second period and at lunch I accidentally squeezed my orange too hard and it kind of fell apart. I decided to repay her the favor of humiliating me in class so I walked up to her and shoved the orange down her shirt. I thought she was going to throw a pom pom at me." Crystal found this really funny. Maybe I was making a new friend. I felt bad because of Elsie, but I doubt that Elsie was going to hang around much since my new hobby was spending time with vampires. Nate came back with two drinks and I raised and eyebrow in question.

"Drink, don't ask." He sat in the chair next to mine and I sipped my drink carefully. It tasted like a normal margarita. Despite my worry that the margarita might have something other than alchohol and strawberry flavoring I downed it. Now was Nate's turn to look worried.

"Do we have a drinking problem Whitney?" I slapped his arm playfully.

"No. Are you implying that I have a "problem"? I don't have a "problem"! Why would you ask such a thing?" Nate rolled his eyes. For what must have been an hour all four of us talked about everything and anything. It was strange that I was having a normal conversation with vampires, but I had been doing it all my life, so it felt natural. After a couple more margaritas I began to feel the booze set in.

"We gotta head out. I think Whitney won't be able to walk if she drinks any more." I giggled insanely at this. The strobes lights flashing around us made me really woozy, so I had to agree with Nate on wanting to leave. I would probably get sick if I stayed in the club any longer.

"I know how to hold my liquor Nate. Bye guys. It was really nice to meet you Crystal." Nate helped me out of my chair and we waved goodbye. I wobbled out the door with Nate holding me up.

"That was fun! Do we have to go to school tomorrow? Oh, I have an idea! How about we both skip out on school? I need to pack and since I am leaving in a week I don't think it will really affect me." I was slightly drunk, but not enough to the point that I couldn't think coherently. I actually didn't want to go to school.

"Sure. We can have Seth tell the office that we are sick. He can say that you got the flu and I caught it from you."

"Does alchohol affect vampires?" He didn't seem drunk at all and he had way more drinks than me.

"It does, but it takes a lot to get to us." He parked the car in front of my house and helped me to the door. I kept missing the key hole with my key and I couldn't stop giggling. He chuckled and grabbed the key and unlocked the door. I took off my shoes and almost fell as I climbed up the stairs. He ended up grabbing me up into his arms and carrying me to my room. He layed me down on my bed. He turned to leave but I reached for his hand.

"Stay with me until I fall asleep. Please." I made a puppy dog face and he layed down too.

"Go to sleep. I will see you in the morning." He whispered against my lips. I closed my eyes and fell into a dream that didn't involve vampires.