Footsteps of Destiny - Blood Ties

This is my first post on YWS... so please be kind if I didn't do it right! Anyway... This is one of my oldest stories and this is the second time I've revamped this, but I think it's working this time. =D

I've always had a fascination with vampires, so this is my take on it. Oh, and I know that Zephyr is a guy's name, but I'm using the name for a girl. Just in case anyone was going to mention that...

And without further ado...

--

Prologue

Standing at the foot of the stone steps, Zephyr Mulligan and her mother looked up at her new school. The cool autumn breeze caused the few wispy hairs that weren’t pulled back in her braids to blow in front of her face. It was one of the best schools in the country- perhaps even the world. Both of Zephyr’s siblings were going there and now she was following in their footsteps.

She and her mother strolled up through the breezy walkway to the school entrance beyond its enormous front gates. They reached the room with the other kindergarten and preschool students and bid each other farewell. When her mother left, she went to play with her classmates.

One that caught her eye was another young girl with her silky black curls pulled back into pigtails. She had red satin ribbons tied in bows on her pigtails. They were the kind of ribbons Zephyr had always wanted to have to tie on her own braids. The girl was using building blocks with another boy with violently curly umber hair. Zephyr hurried over to them, eager to make new friends.

“Hi, I’m Zephyr!” she squeakily excitedly, grinning with all her crooked teeth.

The boy looked up. His eyes were the most beautiful color Zephyr had ever seen- a stunning almost orange hazel color. He gave her a crooked grin back, his two front teeth missing. He, too, looked excited about getting new friends.

“Hello,” he said, cocking his head. “I’m Dave,” he pointed at his chest, “and that’s Nymph!” He stuck a pudgy finger in the girl’s direction. She looked up at him as though she was confused at her name being mentioned. She had been very engrossed in her block city that was shockingly elaborate for a four-year-old.

When she realized that Dave was talking to someone behind her, she turned around and saw Zephyr. She stared at the other girl with an intense fascination. Zephyr jumped and looked at Nymph wide-eyed.

“Your… your eyes…” she stuttered. “I… I’m gonna go… finger-paint.”

Zephyr scampered away while Nymph’s bright red eyes gave her an icy cold glare boring holes into the back of her head.

~.~.~

Later that day, all the children were sitting at their little round tables finger-painting or coloring and generally being child-like. Nymph and Dave were sitting at a table adjacent to Zephyr’s, but the latter’s back was to them.

Looking at Dave, Nymph gave an evil grin. He laughed and nodded. They didn’t need to speak to communicate their plan. Nymph took her blue paint and turned around so she was facing Zephyr. The other girl had no idea she was there. First, she took Zephyr’s braids and dipped the ends of them in her paint until you could hardly tell it was hair at all. Then Nymph covered her hand in paint and slathered the gooey blue substance all over the back of Zephyr’s jumper. Once she had finished, she smiled, pleased with her work. Finally, she turned around and returned to her finger-paint portraits.

By the time Zephyr noticed, Nymph was once-again deeply engrossed in her painting, as though she had been doing so the entire time. Zephyr somehow knew otherwise.

“You ruined my favorite jumper!” she screamed at the top of her voice. “She got paint all over my dress!” She pointed at Nymph. Their instructors exchanged looks that plainly said, “We’ve got a drama queen on our hands, folks.” They hurried forward to keep any further damage from being done.

“Nymph,” said the teacher’s aid, kneeling down to the girl’s level. “Did you get that paint on Zephyr’s jumper, dear?”

Looking up at the adult doe-y-eyed, tears brimming in her eyes, Nymph answered, “No. I don’t know what she’s talking about. I didn’t put that paint on her dress, I promise.”

The aid and the teacher exchanged looks again. How cute is she! Nymph sniffled and the aid turned back to her.

“Oh, honey, you don’t need to cry, we believe you,” she soothed. Turning to Zephyr, she said, “Zephyr, I think you might have just gotten paint on yourself to get attention. Is that possible? Do you want attention, sweetheart?”

Zephyr glared at them. Her tears were genuine. Why wouldn’t they believe that demonic little girl did this? Those morons.

“You… you…” Zephyr fumed, looking at Nymph with fire in her eyes.

“What?” said Nymph angrily, some of those tears spilling over her cheeks.

“You… meanie!” Zephyr exclaimed, tears flying from her eyes. “I promise I will make your life miserable from now on Nymph! I promise!”

However, all that happened was Zephyr got dragged away to get reprimanded for her mean words and Nymph went back to her finger painting. At least, that was all that happened that day.

Because, as Nymph Osenbaugh could attest to, Zephyr Mulligan made her life a living hell for the next eleven years.

Chapter I – A Day in the Life of Nymphadora C. Osenbaugh

“Nymphadora! Nymphadora, dah-ling, please fetch me another soda. Come along, quickly now. And clear those dishes, would you, they’re in our way. Oh, and can we get a dessert menu? That would be just peachy.”

Before Zephyr could call her name again, Nymph Osenbaugh scurried over to the table where Zephyr and her cronies were seated, tray in hand. It was their regular table- the one they sat at when they came for lunch here every Saturday.

Taking a deep breath, Nymph plastered on her false grin that could pass for sincere and approached the table. “Will do, Miss Mulligan. Thanks so much for your business.”

“Hurry with those menus? We’re on a rather tight schedule,” Zephyr added as Nymph piled the dirty dishes onto her tray.

Trying not to slug the other girl and point out that she had already been there for an hour and half, Nymph replied, “I’ll do my best, but as you may have noticed, we’re very busy and I have a lot of customers. Do you have somewhere you need to be? I’m sure I could arrange to have one of our other waiters assist you.”

“No,” answered Zephyr, “I like you. So I’d really rather you do it.”

Gritting her teeth, Nymph gave them a final smile and then turned tail, heading to the kitchen almost at a run. She loved working at her parents’ restaurant except when she had to serve people like Zephyr Mulligan. No, not people like her. Just her. When she reached the kitchen, she put all the dishes in the sink and then slammed her empty tray on the counter with surprising force.

“Whoa, steady there, tiger,” came a voice from the back entrance to the kitchen. “Don’t want to break the expensive machinery.” Turning around, Nymph squealed and ran over to her brother Darren. She threw her arms around his neck and he spun her around the kitchen, much to the chagrin of their cooks.

“Darren!” she screamed happily, an honest smile cracking her cool façade. “Oh my God, I didn’t know you were coming home for a visit!” Laughing, Darren placed his sister on the ground and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Well, I obviously came for your birthday, you goof,” he replied, tousling her hair.

“My birthday isn’t for two and a half weeks! And I’d appreciate it,” she removed his hand from her head, “if you wouldn’t do that.” She sighed and squealed again. “I’m so happy to see you!”

“You too. You haven’t seen Mom around, have you? I’m trying to avoid her until I get home.”

“You don’t want to work. You go to college and you get lazy!” Nymph laughed.

“Darren!” said a voice from behind them. The voice belonged to Drusilla Osenbaugh, tall, beautiful, and no-nonsense- an intense presence by any means. “I didn’t expect you home so soon. You’d best exchange that leather jacket for an apron and get started on your shift, young man.”

“Mom, I have a life, I will have you know. I just came to see my darling little sister before I went out. I have some things I need to take care of while I’m in town.” Darren gave his mother his best charismatic, there’s-no-way-I’m-going-to-work-today smile.

“No way. Now that you’re here, you can take over my stuff. My shift is over in…” Nymph checked her watch, “thirty seconds. Later!”

“Wait just one moment, young lady. You aren’t going anywhere.”

“Mom! My shift just ended, come on!”

“Your shift doesn’t end for an hour, Nymph.” The teenager checked her watch again and groaned. Her mother was right. She had another hour before she was free.

“Please, Mom? Pretty please, I have to get ready. Please.” Nymph looked at her mother with puppy-dog eyes. It was her best weapon against the tyranny of a restaurant-owning parent. “I’ll work extra shifts all next week, but Dave and I have plans tonight, please let me go.”

The fact that Drusilla was not only the owner but the manager of Puget Bistro, one of the nicest and most expensive restaurants in Seattle, meant that she had the ability to do exactly what her daughter was asking. However, just because she could didn’t mean she would.

“Nymph, I’ve done this time and time again for you and you always say it will be the last time and it never is. Dave knows your work schedule as well as you, so he knows when you can and cannot have plans.”

“But Mom, when I’m not working, he is! Something you totally do on purpose, I think.”

“He has different extracurricular activities than you, Nymph, he has an entirely different schedule. You have to give me credit, I put you two together as often as I possibly can.” Sighing, Nymph conceded. Her mother did put her and her best friend on the same shifts as often as she could. However, because Dave was the ‘jock’ of her friends, he always had sports practice to go to.

“But Mom, Dave was going to take me to Abyss tonight. Please can I go? I can’t go to the club looking like this.”

Drusilla sighed. She was always had a soft-spot where Dave was involved, since she and her husband had such high hopes for him and Nymph.

“Okay. Darren, take over the rest of her shift. I’ll pay you double.” Hearing this, Darren pulled on an apron with no complaints, excited at the prospect of getting paid twice as much for an hour’s work.

Nymph, meanwhile, took her bag and headed for the bathroom. Heading into one of the two small stalls in the fancy washroom, the fourteen-year-old changed from her work uniform (black pants, white tux shirt, red button-up vest and a tie, along with the obligatory apron; it was a unisex uniform) into her street clothes. She pulled her long hair out of the ponytail she put it in for work and tousled it, hoping to eliminate any lines produced by her hair elastic. Stuffing her dirty uniform into her backpack, she stepped out of the stall to get a look at herself in the mirror.

Seeing her hair, a long line reaching all around her head from where her ponytail had been and tiny curls frizzing out from her head that were caused by the humidity, she thought better of her decision to pull her hair down. Taking the elastic from her wrist, she put her hair back in the high ponytail she’d had it in earlier. Otherwise, she thought she looked pretty good- if she did say so herself.

Nymph was wearing sleek black pants and a brightly patterned kimono top, complete with black trim. The sleeves that reached her elbows billowed out at the bottom creating the illusion that they were longer than they were. She looked much older than almost-fifteen in this get-up. Deciding she looked sufficiently cute, Nymph pulled on her black pea-coat and walked out of the bathroom. As she headed towards the front entrance of the Puget Bistro, she was stopped by her mother.

“Stay warm and drive safely. I don’t like you riding around on that scooter of yours in weather like this,” said Drusilla. “Have fun tonight. Just not too much fun. Alright?”

Nymph smiled at her mother. Giving her a hug, she said, “Okay, Mom, I’ll be safe, just like you’d want. And you know Dave will keep me in line if I’m not. Safe, that is.”

Drusilla kissed her daughter on the cheek. “Have fun. See you when I get home.”

“Alright, bye Mom.” Heading out to the parking lot, Nymph walked briskly over to her Vespa- what her mother liked to call ‘that scooter thing of yours’- and got on. To make sure she followed her mother’s instructions to stay safe and to keep her hair from being further damaged by the rain, she pulled on a helmet. Starting up her motorized scooter, Nymph sped off to her home.

~.~.~

Nymph reached her cliff-top home within twenty minutes. She had tried not to exceed the speed limit on her way home. She had failed miserably. She desperately wanted to get home so she could shower before she and Dave left for Abyss 49, one of the coolest and most exclusive clubs in the city. Nymph had never been there before- she was hardly old enough, she had another year to go before that rolled around- but Dave had been for almost a year. However, if she was with Dave, no one would question her entering the club. It was one of the perks of having a friend who was not only a bona fide hottie, but well-known to boot.

Her house was quiet when she got inside- a rarity for the Osenbaugh household. Her father was probably down in his laboratory and the younger set of Osenbaughs was most likely taking their afternoon naps. As for the adolescent set, Nymph could only guess. She walked up the spiral staircase to the second floor, where all the bedrooms were, hers at the end of the hall. She dropped her bag on her bed and then headed for her bathroom. She had to get a shower. No one liked restaurant grime all over them when they were heading out for a night on the town.

She showered and was able to do damage control on her hair. She managed to make her waist-length black hair look almost decent. She pulled it back out of her face, half-up and put on a bright red headband to match her shirt. Her outfit was the same as she had been wearing earlier- although it had required a little bit of blow-drying.

Nymph gave herself a fresh coat of makeup and was just finishing up packing her purse (with lots of extra mints, for super-fresh breath) when the doorbell rang. She threw on her coat again and hurried to the stairs. Her father was just answering the door when she got down the staircase.

“Good evening, David,” he said, smiling and nodding at Nymph’s best friend. It was no secret to the two teenagers that their parents wanted them to get married and the way the other’s parents acted around them would be hysterical if it wasn’t so humiliating. “How are you tonight?”

“I’m good, sir and you?” Dave always went along with the charade because he was one of the most unfailingly polite young men ever to walk the face of the planet. Nymph could probably prove it too. He was every parent’s dream.

“I’m doing well. You two have fun tonight. Don’t get into trouble.” Nymph rolled her eyes at her father. He threw his head back and laughed, his soft white-blonde locks falling back off his forehead.

“I love you, dear. Have a nice time,” said her father, kissing her on the head.

“Yeah, whatever. Love you too, Dad.” Nymph waited for him to walk away before turning to Dave. Spinning in a circle, she asked, “So? How do I look? Good enough for Abyss 49?”

Dave nodded approvingly and brushed his dark brown curls away from his face. “You clean up good, Osenbaugh.”

Nymph narrowed her eyes at him. Lunging towards him, she bore her teeth menacingly. “You jerk,” she said, smiling in spite of herself. Dave wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

“You know you love it.”

“Yeah, yeah I do.”

“You really do look good, though.” They reached Dave’s motorbike and he handed her the spare helmet.

“Thanks,” she replied, taking it and regretting spending so much time on her hair when it was just going to get messed up by the helmet anyway. Dave hopped on his bike and she took a seat behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“You ready to go?” Dave called over a particularly loud crack of thunder.

“You bet,” Nymph answered, not even blinking at the flash of lightening that arced across the sky as she and her friend pulled away from her house towards the heart of Seattle.

~.~.~

“I ought to suck you dry for this, you moron,” Nymph growled in frustration. Her red eyes gleamed with anger. “I can’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Dave said for the millionth time in the past fifteen minutes. He was annoyed to no end.

“I’m sorry, but that is one of the stupidest things you have ever done. I am not even kidding. You forgot to get gas? You forgot to get gas? That’s not even a legitimate mistake. The vehicle tells you when you need to get gas. Come on!”

Nymph glowered at her friend as they walked along, Dave pushing his bike effortlessly.

“You know, it’s a really good thing we don’t listen to our parents. Could you imagine being stuck together for hundreds of years?” asked Nymph, finally feeling a little bit good natured about the ordeal.

“Oh, yeah. That would suck,” said Dave lifelessly, almost making Nymph doubt his sincerity- if she hadn’t known that he thought the idea of them getting married was as atrocious as she did.

As they approached downtown, Nymph got an idea. “Why don’t you go to the gas station and I’ll meet you at the club?” she suggested. “I’ll head on over-”

“No,” Dave interrupted. “No way. There is no way in hell that I am letting you walk over to the club on your own. Your father would kill me if I lost you.”

“Come on. I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself!”

“Yeah, right, I believe you,” he said sarcastically. “You either come with me or I’m taking you home.”

Finally, the two friends reached the gas station. They filled up the motorbike and then hopped back on, speeding through the wet streets to Abyss 49. Dave parked his bike in the street and they head to the front door, skipping right over the line.

“Come on in, MacMillan,” said the bouncer with a grin. Dave nodded at him and pulled Nymph into the club. He positively had to drag her in, because she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the bouncer. Her eyes were as wide as he had ever seen them.

“Is that Isaac?” she exclaimed. “Damn, since when is he allowed to have the kick-ass jobs?!”

Laughing and leading her to the bar, Dave said, “Chill, Nymph. It’s no big deal. He just needs a bit of extra dinero to for car payments and such-”

“He could have at least told us!” she insisted.

“We haven’t seen him since his birthday, when was he supposed to tell us?”

“You stupid legal people,” she grumbled as they hopped onto two stools at the bar. She turned in her seat and found herself looking at a man down at the other end of the bar. He was being harassed by two other men who must have been full Kovi vampire or full Zefro werewolf, because one could tell by looking at him that he wasn’t.

The man being harassed looked positively miserable. He was staring at his drink with an agonized look. The two other men just kept laughing, throwing their heads back and grinning rudely. Their manner was clearly that of some immature, privileged Kovi vampires that were convinced the world revolved around them. Nymph knew guys like that all too well.

Dave had disappeared, getting them drinks, and Nymph found herself on her own. She couldn’t stand to watch the infuriating young men any longer so she hopped down and walked over to them.

“Hey!” she said angrily. “Cut it out! What did that guy ever do to you?”

“Oh, you want us to stop, sweetheart? What can you do about it?” That was the first man- clearly the leader of the pack. He pushed past his friend and stood over Nymph. He was extremely tall and she had barely hit that last growth spurt yet. His six-foot-four-inch stature trumped her five-foot-three-inch one.

Hearing his words, Nymph realized she really couldn’t do that much. She could hold her own in a fight with someone her own age, but with someone ten years her senior who had at least one hundred pounds on her? She didn’t stand a chance.

“Well… um, not much, really, but I know someone who can do… one hell of a lot!” She was appalled at herself. Using the ‘I know someone more powerful than you’ card? She really must have been desperate.

The man gave a slippery, drunken laugh. “And who would that be?”

“David MacMillan.” Nymph winced. Oh, she was so dead.

“You’re lying,” the man insisted.

“No, I’m not,” Nymph said quietly. She bit her lip.

This guy caged Nymph in, putting his buff arms on either side of her. He leaned in close to her and she could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Now, we both know you’re lying, babe, so why don’t we just forget this whole thing and you come with me,” he suggested, slurring his speech and sloppily giving her a kiss on the cheek. It left her face covered in saliva.

“Please get away from me,” she said, putting her hands on his chest and pushing him away.

He didn’t. He zeroed in for another kiss and got his target this time. He was kissing her on the lips and she was starting to wonder when it would end when the man giving Nymph her first (awful) kiss was ripped away. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Dave asked the man. “Do you have any idea who this woman is?” Nymph couldn’t help but laugh at Dave calling her a ‘woman’. She wasn’t even fifteen. She wasn’t even considered an adult in their society for another year. And yet Dave called her a ‘woman’.

“N-nothing, I wasn’t doing nothing,” the drunk man slurred, his eyes wide. “Holy shite, you’re David MacMillan. S-sorry to have done anything to offend you, sir. Most sorry.”

“Well, you’re going to become very good friends with the bouncer, because you shouldn’t be allowed to be around people when you’re this… smashed.” Taking the man who had kissed his best friend, Dave dragged the man towards the door, smiling at Isaac all the while. “Kindly dispose of this piece of trash, Isaac?”

“My pleasure, MacMillan,” said Isaac, flashing a grin that revealed devilish canines.

“Thanks so much. You’re a gem,” replied Dave. Then he pushed through the crowd back to the bar where the drinks he had ordered for Nymph and himself had arrived. “So you just had to get into trouble. I leave you alone for ten seconds and you have some drunken creep fondling you. Honestly, I’m not going to be able to take you out anymore, Nymphadora.”

Nymph glared at Dave and sipped her drink. She was immediately displeased at what she tasted.

“What is this?” she demanded, giving him a playful glare. "Where's my booze?"

Ignoring her, he continued, “Seriously, though, I’ve seen those guys round here before… they’re a right pair of bastards, let me tell you. Just… you don’t talk to anyone unless I’m with you, got it? I don’t want to become an enemy of the state. Or the kingdom. Or something.”

Nymph laughed a little. “Guess I have a bit to learn before I really become ‘social,’ huh?” she asked. She had always been sheltered; her parent didn’t want her ‘exposed to the world’ too soon. And yet, they still allowed her to hang around with a boy two years her senior and let him take her to a whole myriad of places an almost-fifteen-year-old girl shouldn’t have been allowed to go to- even if she was a vampire.

“Yeah, just a bit,” agreed Dave in all seriousness.

“Shut up. Just because you’re seventeen and I’m only fifteen, you think you’re so smart.”

“Hello. I’m a junior, I’m in all AP classes and I’ve got a 3.9 GPA. I’m sorry, but I think that warrants me a few smart-ass privileges, Princess.”

“Shut up, I hate when you call me that,” Nymph said in a hushed tone. “I don’t want people… you know. Freaking out about it.”

Dave just shook his head, his dark brown curls bouncing against his cheek covered in stubble. Against her better judgment, Nymph observed that he really was a good-looking guy. If looks were the only thing that counted, she might have actually given her parents wishes real consideration. However, looks weren’t all that counted- even if Dave wasn’t exactly lacking in the character department. He was smart, funny, and chivalrous when the situation called for it. He was pretty much as close to perfect as any person could hope to be. Not like Nymph would ever tell him she felt this way. She didn’t even feel anything. He was like a ninth brother, they’d been friends for so long.

But the fact that she felt nothing except platonic love for him aside, she knew that she couldn’t hold a candle to the kinds of girls that Dave liked. He was a fan of the older, tall, curvaceous women who ate guys like him for breakfast. He also liked the girls who straightened their hair so it was like little sticks, the ones who cut up t-shirts and leggings for the sake of their “style”, the ones who wrote bad poetry that didn’t rhyme but people insisted was brilliant because it was about their pain and problems with their parents. He liked emo girls. Suffice it to say, they liked him too.

Back when she had been in middle school and Dave had suddenly felt out of reach because he was in high school and older, she had entertained the idea of the two of them together. She had tried the emo thing the second she found out he liked girls like that. It hadn’t worked. She may have been a vampire, so she had the graceful alabaster skin and the black hair all those other girls strived to achieve. But her long, naturally wavy ebony locks were far too dear to her for her to go to the trouble of slaughtering them for sake of straightness every morning. She had tried it for awhile but after a few weeks, the split ends were not only bothering her, but Dave as well. He had asked what the hell she was doing and if she was trying out the newest fashion fad. The moment he said those words to her, her precocious thirteen-year-old heart had been crushed and she had dropped the emo thing. She went back to being the elegant goth she had always been destined for.

That was back when she had been living under the shelter of the lower school. Once she got to the upper school of Franklin Prep, she realized how immature it had been, how juvenile her feelings for Dave that last year were. But it wasn’t really that she had given up on those feelings; she had found someone else on whom to place her affections. It was an awful gaze-from-afar crush, but she was content that way. She didn’t mind it. Her friends may have thought her crazy for having a crush on a teacher; she knew nothing would come of it, so she just went on liking him. Nymph had had a crush on Gabriel Maclean since her first day as a freshman at Benjamin Franklin Preparatory Upper School. For some reason, it had always bothered Dave that she liked the older guy, and for some reason, she had always found comfort in his annoyance.

“Nymph? Hel-lo, you in there?” Dave tapped his finger on her temple and she jumped.

“Huh?” she said. “What’s up, what did I miss?”

“You were totally zoning. What were you thinking about?” Dave was giving her this weird puzzled look; a crooked smile played across his lips, the shadow of a grin hinting at his dimples.

Giggling girlishly, Nymph blushed and said, “A boy.”

The smile dropped off Dave’s face in a fraction of a second. “Maclean again? Nymph, he’s a bloody teacher, nothing is going to come from that. You should just stop liking him right now. He’s too old for you anyway.”

“I like him because nothing is going to come from it. I know that it’s just a useless crush and it’s a good thing to do every so often. Keeps me healthy.”

“Keeps you crazy is what it does.”

“He’s not even that much older than us,” Nymph continued as though Dave hadn’t spoken. “He’s only twenty-three or something.” Snorting with disgust, Dave downed his beverage and slammed a hand on the bar.

“Drink up, I want to go dance,” he said, several decibels louder than he had been before. The drink was pumping his adrenaline.

Slowly and gracefully, as was her custom, Nymph finished her drink and let her friend drag her out onto the dance floor. They danced for several hours and finally, at around midnight, they trudged off the dance floor, their legs heavy as lead. Looking over at the bar as they left, Nymph saw the man who was being harassed earlier still sitting in the same spot. They made eye contact and, despite how embarrassed she felt, she couldn’t rip her eyes away from his gaze. It was positively hypnotic.

He gave her a small, half-hearted smile and a wave- to show his gratitude for her chivalry earlier. She smiled back at him and nodded. As he looked down at his drink again, Nymph was struck with the strangest feeling of déjà vu. She knew that man from somewhere, she knew it. However, without a familiar background, she couldn’t place his face.

“Nymph, come on, we’ve got to do homework tomorrow,” Dave said, pulling on her arm and suppressing a yawn. “What are you looking at?”

Shaking her head to clear it a little, Nymph replied, “Nothing, nothing. I wasn’t looking at anything. Let’s get going.”

They bid farewell to Isaac and walked out onto the street. It was raining, but not as violently as it had been earlier. The calm patter of the rains quieted the two teenagers as they began the drive back to Nymph’s home. Wrapping her arms around Dave’s waist, the girl laid her head against his back, almost falling asleep on their way home. She felt a strange comfort just leaning against him and he couldn’t have really complained. However, neither would ever voice these feelings on the matter. It was their unspoken agreement: show no emotion that might mess up the friendship, no matter how hard it is. Suppress everything.

As Nymph was removing her helmet and starting up the steps to the door, Dave stopped her. He had a look of concern on his face.

“Don’t like Maclean, Nymph. The guy’s bad news.”

Nymph furrowed her brow at this out-of-the-blue comment. What was Dave talking about?

“I don’t know what you mean. He seems like a perfectly upstanding citizen to me.” She was surprised at her own wit when she was this exhausted. Dave, however, didn’t find it amusing.

“I’m serious, Nymph. He’s been… noticing you. And I don’t want you to be in one of his classes and liking him and… I’m just looking out for you.”

“Gee, thanks, Mom,” Nymph said sharply.

“I’m not being-”

“Yes, you are. You’re my friend, not my parent, okay?” she said, her pretty features marred by an angry frown. “I appreciate the intent, but you can just butt out. If I get into one of his classes, it’s really none of your business.”

“Don’t go to bed angry. I’m not trying to butt in, I’m not trying to be a jerk. Let’s just forget about this till morning. Is that okay?” Dave looked beseechingly at his best friend.

“Yeah, sure, whatever. See you in the morning.”

“See you. ‘Night, Nymph.”

As Nymph was getting ready to go to bed that night, she thought about what Dave had said. Maclean had been… what was it he’d said… noticing her? While it was a tad ridiculous, the more she thought about it, she realized Dave was right. She’d caught Gabriel Maclean staring at her across the courtyard on more than one occasion of late. And that man at the bar tonight- it was Maclean he had looked like. Of course, it could have just been her active imagination working under the stress of the evening. Dismissing the rendezvous at the club as pure coincidence, Nymph fell into a fitful sleep.

---

Constructive critiques are appreciated! Also, I'd like to have know, I have absolutely NOTHING against emo people, girls or guys. My characters' opinions are NOT my opinions, so please don't get mad at me for things like that in my story! ... ^^;