A Demon Made Me Do It by Penelope King

lock.
    I take a deep breath. “Okay, if you’re
really desperate, I guess I can help you out. But if you change
your mind, I’ll understand.”
    “ I won’t,” he says, his
eyes sparkling again. “When’s a good time for you? My afternoons
and evenings are free for you—”
    “ Afternoons only,” I say
hurriedly. “”Evenings are out. Totally.” He gives a quizzical
glance but just nods.
    “ I understand. Hey, thanks
a lot. I really appreciate it.”
    “ No problem…today’s no
good, though,” I say as I remember a special errand I have to do
later.
    “ Tomorrow,
then?”
    I nod.
    The warning bell rings, and we enter
class together. This time, I’m not surprised when he takes the
empty seat beside me.
    “ So, we meet again,” he
raises an eyebrow and winks.
    For the first time in a long time, I
laugh.
    ******
     
    Tatiana is sitting in the
lotus-position levitating dried rose petals when I get home. I know
better than to bother her when she’s ‘feeling the flowers’—her
version of reading tea leaves—so I retreat to my room to start my
homework and do some laundry.
    I plop on my bed and set up my laptop.
First up: A ten page paper on the causes and effects of the French
Revolution. Thrill me now. I deliberate for about thirty seconds
before my fingers fly across the keyboard, and less than twenty
minutes later I’m done, footnotes and all. I spend five more
minutes on Trig, an assignment that’ll take even the brightest of
my classmates over an hour to complete.
    Sigh. I can’t even count on schoolwork to distract me for very long.
Again, my thoughts return to Kieron, not that they’re ever really
far away from him. He’s always there…lurking in the back of my
mind, patiently waiting for me to indulge in the fantasy. The one
where I don’t turn
into a monster at dusk. The one where someday I’ll be able to find
happiness with him, or maybe even someone else. The one where I can
fall in love and live happily ever after.
    Yeah, that fantasy. The
completely insane, ridiculous, and impossible one.
    I decide to surf the web for a bit and
click on the page for local news. When I see the headline I
gasp…sickened:
     
    LOCAL MURDERS HAVE CITIZENS ON
EDGE
    Beneath the headline are
three pictures: an adorable little girl who looks to be around five
or six, a teenage boy with pimples and a huge smile, and a
middle-aged black man. All of them look so happy .
    I scan the article. Few clues and no
apparent connection between the victims. All were brutally
murdered, either at home, or in the case of the little girl, right
outside. It says she was killed playing on her front porch as her
mom ran inside to answer the phone. She’d been gone less than three
minutes and returned to find her daughter’s head twisted clean
off.
    “ What kind of monsters
could be capable of doing something so horrific?” the mother is
quoted as saying. I close my computer and taste the bile in my
throat.
    I know exactly what kind of monsters are
capable of such horrors.
    I was twelve years old when my two
best friends were viciously murdered right in front of me. The
memory of watching them die is the last thing that Lucky and I
experienced as a singular being. After that, she went her way and I
went mine. It still makes me nauseous to think that technically I’m
part of a breed of monsters that are capable of committing such
atrocities.
    Tatiana has told me I shouldn’t hate
myself for the actions of a few “bad elements”. Humans kill one
another quite regularly, and they don’t despise themselves for the
crimes of others. That’s fine. She can say what she wants. She
didn’t see what I saw. She doesn’t know what I know. It’s
impossible to forget…or forgive…the hideous cruelty that I know
flows through my veins.
    Stop it, stop it, stop
it! I have to force myself to push away the
awful memory and to think of something else. Tall. Black hair.
Electric blue eyes. Sexy smile…
    Augh!!
    I flip on the radio