The Vampire Mate

Chapter 04

I didn't mind art. It was actually my favourite lesson, the only lesson where the teacher wasn’t in my space constantly and I could more or less do as I pleased. Damien sat far away from me in this class and I wouldn’t have noticed him if it weren’t for the girl he was sitting with. I recognised her from my first day in Mr Young’s class, I noticed her because she had been glaring at me the entire time. On my table, I was sat next to Ethan and opposite two of his friends, Carly and Aaron.

The girl seemed really focused on her work and the little flirting here and there between her and the guy sitting next to her did not go unnoticed by me. I think I recall him calling her Carly. One of the guys sitting next to us, who I assume was on the basketball team since he carried one around everywhere with him, was very nice to me and helped with where everything was, his name was Ben. The other guy was cold to everyone who wasn’t Carly.

The topic was 'disguise' and Carly was doing a girl applying makeup to her face, Aaron was doing various animals what were actually made from birds and Ben was drawing a man who blended in with a tree. I, on the other hand, had absolutely no idea. Ben said I could do animals disguising themselves with nature but most people seemed to be doing a nature related topic as I look around the class, that and masks.

“I forgot to get paints,” Carly complained when she had sat down after bringing a pile of newspaper to cover the table.

“I’ll get them,” I told her partly because I wanted her to think I’m a nice person partly and because I wanted to see what Damien had painted.

I slid out from the chair and crossed the room to the paints where I squirted a dollop of every colour Carly said she needed onto the cleanest pallet I could find. My eyes wandered to Damien’s seat, it was empty but the piece of paper that sat in front of him was covered in dark colours with highlights of red. I wanted to take a closer look.

I took a step forward, hoping to catch a second glimpse when I turned. A body, tall and strong, met with mine with solid force. I fell back, pulled to the floor by gravity. Red, orange, green, white, purple and blue now stained my uniform and covered my skin.

Damien turned around, eyes wide as if he hadn’t noticed he bumped into me, and then he laughed. Not a laugh I had heard from him before, not that I had heard him laugh, but a laugh I had heard like no other. It wasn’t the type of laugh you would hear from someone who found something immensely funny, but it felt like that’s what it was trying to be. The rest of the class silenced at crash, then erupted the same way Damien in for the few second it took me to stand.

I stopped hearing their laughs, stopped seeing their existence. I saw blinding red as I closed the space between Damien and me. I heard them all gasp when my hand swung from under him and slapped the pallet he held. The plastic clanked onto the lino floor. The paints it once held smothered Damien’s face, tie and blazer.

Carly was at my side immediately. She tugged on my arm, whispering for me to follow her to the sink. Damien stared at me. Blank and emotionless. But his body shook with rage, his hands hung at his side in fists, and there were words, nasty words, that filled his mouth and begged to be released.

With one last smouldering glare at him, I spun on my heel and followed Carly to the skin. I didn’t see Damien leave, but I heard rushing water from the other side of the room, at the second sink.

Carly took a cloth and ran it under the warm tap. “He deserved it,” she whispered. Then her eyes flicked behind me, I followed them and frowned at what I saw. “Abigail,” she answered my silent question.

Abigail pouted at the lack of Damien in front of her. Her eyes, the brightest green I had seen on someone, wandered to me. They narrowed.

“She looks at everyone like that, anyone who isn’t Damien.”

I took the cloth from her and began to scrub my skin. “Why?”

Carly shrugged. “She hates everyone and has a crush on Damien. He doesn’t return the feelings though, and he makes it quite obvious. She’ll do anything to get his attention… it’s actually sad.”

I nodded. Every time I had seen Abigail, she had been alone. Today was the first time I saw her smile and Damien literally told her to ‘f**k off’. “Does she have any friends?”

“Good God no,” Carly exclaimed and then quietened her voice to a whisper, “Abigail is horrible to everyone—even the people who have tried to be her friend.”

“Did you try?”

Carly stayed silent as she thought over her words. “I did… and I’m pretty sure she tried to kill me.”

I stared at Carly for any sign of a joke, but she couldn’t even look at me as she poured new paint for herself.

She walked back to the table ahead of me, I took slower steps as I picked the paint from my sleeve. However, someone had the same idea as, once again, our bodies collided again, damp, soapy, and wet with colour. This time, instead of letting me fall to the floor, his hands gripped my waist. Skin left bare to his ice. I would have screamed if I hadn’t looked into his eyes. Lazuli blue looked back at me from pale skin. Damien blinked, his eyes dropped to where his hand sat on my skin then, as if realising, he snatched it back. I steadied myself.

“f*****g hell, Juliet,” he seethed, “do you ever watch where you’re going?”

I stared back, mouth agape.

“You pushed me before, and you’re equally to blame this time.”

"I don't know who you think you are, new girl, but let's get one thing straight, you don't move to a new school and talk to the only person who would stick up for you-" He cut off his own words.

"Stick up for me?” I seethed. Some burning power rushed inside me, fuelling my rage. “Everything said to me was from you so maybe you should come out of your highchair and grow up Damien. Christ, if you really think that you stick up for me all of the time, I would absolutely love to see it from your point of view, but I'm afraid that if I shove my head that far up my own arse it will get stuck." The whole room was silenced. It was like I had to down talked their king within the few days that I've been here and crosses the line that no one even dared to look at. Maybe there was a reason for it, but someone had to knock that metaphorical crown off his big head.

"You don't realise who you're dealing with."

"You don't realise how jealous I am of all the people who haven't met you."

"You're just as sharp as a bowling ball, Juliet."

"That still makes me sharper than you."

***

“Mrs Stafford has asked me to collect you both, do you have any idea why?” Mr Young asked me and Damien. He came into our English class and told us to follow him to his classroom where we sat on opposite sides of the room. He leaned against the front of his desk with his arms folded over his chest.

“Because you’re our tutor,” Damien put blankly.

Mr Young shook his head at his son. “Not that you aren’t right, but that is not why she asked me.” He uncrossed his arms and looked to me. “Juliet, do you think you know why you’re here.”

I said with a dramatic sigh, “because Damien pushed me over and I retaliated?”

The teacher stayed silent for a moment. “You’re both here because Mrs Stafford was appalled by your behaviour in her class.” He picked up a note next to him and read it. “You both messed on with and wasted paints. Damien spilled paint over Juliet and Juliet knocked his paints over him. Other students could have been hurt…” Mr Young furrowed his eyebrows.

“We know what we did,” Damien spoke monotonously, “and we know we were bad, we won’t do it again, I’m very sorry. Can I go now?”

“She wants me to give you a detention and she wants an apology from the both of you.”

Damien stands but sits back down as soon as Mr Young tells him to. “You will mean your apology to her, and you will tell her you both have detention with me. If she asks you when, you tell her you will find out from me tomorrow morning.”

Damien gets up again to leave. “Wait do we have detention or not?” I ask making Damien stop his movements.

Mr Young shakes his head, “no. Detention punishes the teacher just as much as the student, so I never do them.”

I smiled. So all we need to do is apologise for wasting paints and I can get away with basically anything because Mr Young doesn’t want to stay here after hours. Damien looks at me with a smirk, as if he’s thinking the same thing…

We leave the classroom together after promising Mr Young to apologise to our art teacher. Damien and I didn’t walk he made a turn away from the exit to the art corridor.

“Where are you going?” I ask. “isn’t the exit that way?” I point over my shoulder to the big door that led outside.

Damien smirks. “I’m going to apologise.”

“Seriously? You’re actually going to apologize to someone?”

My comment doesn’t seem to hit him as his smirk grows more devilishly. “I guess you could say that.” The look on my face must have told him that I didn’t know what he meant. He raised curled his finger for me to follow, and I did.

He assured me that Mrs Stafford wasn’t in her classroom so what we were about to do would be fine. Not that I had any idea about what we were going to do. I followed him blindly to the classroom and, just like he had told me, Mrs Stafford was nowhere to be seen.

He made himself comfortable by jogging towards the array of paints left out on the side. He grabbed the blue bottle and threw it to me.

I caught it. “And what am I supposed to this?”

His lips stretched into a feline smile. He grabbed the yellow bottle and squeezed the paint onto the table. “Apologise.”

With the yellow paint, he began to write our apology. After writing the first word, he gestured to the other table. I smiled, and squirted the blue paint into words.