Truth of Dark Pasts by Serena Wood (free children's online books .TXT) 📖

to be with me and now you’re going back to the freak side and you won’t even give me an explanation.”

“Deciding not to be a bullying brat anymore should be an explanation enough.” River snaps back. Chloe doesn’t take being called a bully well, even if she is one. “Fine,” she hisses and there’s such a hidden threat behind just the one simple word, “We’re not done here, I’m not going to let you off the hook this easy.” is her final warning before she turns back to her minions and orders them to follow along behind her as she storms out of the restaurant. River waits for them to disappear completely before grabbing my hand and tugging me out of the restaurant. “Come on, El. She clearly ruined the fun here, let’s go back to your place.”

I can’t manage to make much of a protest when she’s holding my hand the whole way there and I can’t really manage to bring up what happened at The Latch when she’s going on about pointless things just to keep me busy. So I let it all slide, like I always do. Sometimes I wish I had a back bone.

When we get back to my house, Mom’s already left for work. She left behind this movie on the kitchen counter with a little note that said she thought it was good and that we should watch it before she returns it. I put what looks like a horror movie on the flat screen in our living room but not long into the movie River and I find out it’s one of those scary movies that are more funny than horrifying.

Naturally, River loses interest quickly; finding more interest in kissing me until I’m nearly dizzy. Much like she always does, she moves too fast for me to process how I got underneath her on the couch. Before I know it, she’s kissing and nibbling at my neck; instantly I recognize that feeling in the pit of my stomach. “D-didn’t you just do this at the restaurant?” I find myself asking, for some reason there’s a small protest in me even though I usually wouldn’t complain.

She chuckles a bit, her nervous breath fanning out on my neck. She moves off of me and we settle back into our separate sides. “Right, sorry. I guess I should be giving you a bit more space, I could win the award for worst girlfriend of the year at this rate.” She mutters the little joke as she moves back to her side of the couch but I’m too busy focused on that one subtle word to notice anything else she says. “Girlfriend?”

She smooths out her shirt before looking up at me with this nervous smile that doesn’t fit her personality at all. “Well… If you could even call someone as bad at this as I am a girlfriend then yeah, I guess that’s what you would call me… Right?” First she doesn’t even answer me when I ask her what we are and now such a short time later she’s labeling herself my girlfriend. She’s trying to screw with my mind, I swear it’s like all she does is play mind games with me. Like a game of cat and mouse.

“I thought we weren’t dating?” I peel back the layers of the subject carefully, making sure to start out with a small question; used in a quiet voice. As if the cat would catch the mouse if it said something wrong.

She laughs this zealous laugh that makes her seem even more like the cat in this game. “We just got back from a date at our favourite restaurant, not to mention what happened in the bathroom,” just the small comment sends a blaze of red into my cheeks and she makes note of it with a sly smile before continuing. “I’m pretty sure that makes us dating, Ellie.”

“That was a date? I thought you were just hungry.” I purposely choose talking about the first part of her argument to avoid bringing up something that would only bring out a brighter color of red in my cheeks. “Well, yeah. But it still counts as a date in my book. I mean that is the only successful date I’ve ever been on.” for her it’s a joke, verging on an insult at herself. But for some reason I only see it as some kind of achievement.

After a minute of thought I go back to cautiously trying to peel back the layers from the walking onion I’ve come to know as River. “But I thought you didn’t want us to be ‘dating’.” the confusion whirling around inside of me makes its way out in the form of an almost angry tone. “Why would you think that?” The innocently curious look in her eyes makes the storm of emotions in me fizz out a bit. “I… I don’t know. I just thought because you didn’t want to talk about it and at school…” she cuts me off with a small wave of her hand. “Oh, that. I was just worried about my past and you know, those punks at school. But we’ve kinda resolved all of that so I’m not really worried about admitting we’re together anymore… Unless, of course you have objections.” she gives me that ‘it’s your turn to speak’ look that I’ve gotten from so many people over the years and just like each time before I sputter out my reply in a haste of panic. “N-no… I mean, not ‘no I don’t want to be with you’ kinda no; But like, ‘no, no objections’ kinda no…” I ramble for a few seconds before giving up altogether and staring down at my hands, feeling guilty for being so bad with words.

I glance up at her after a second to gauge how bad I messed up and to my surprise I find her smiling. “You’re such a goof.” she states and it pulls a relieved laugh out of me.

“Now, if we’re done here, I’m already hungry again and I think I’m gonna rummage through your kitchen and see if you have anything to go with this awful movie.” she starts to get up but before she can walk away I pull her back down to the couch, she’s not getting out of this conversation that easy. “I sense you need something?” She questions as she settles back into the surface of the couch. Not knowing what to say or what else to do, I kiss her on the cheek. “What was that for?” she chuckles and somehow just being in this good of a mood with her makes up for the past few weeks.

“For being my girlfriend?” I offer and somehow it causes the both of us to burst into laughter. “Have I mentioned you’re a goof yet?” the comment leads to another few minutes of giggling and joking until somehow we’ve ended up laughing through the whole movie and two more after that.

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The hours go by with such ease that the day not only reminds me of all the past summers we spent together but it somehow seems better than all the days before. As if now we have something new forming where everything older began.

“We should go out.” the statement catches me off guard and I look away from the start of another awful movie to look at her curiously. “Go where?”

“I don’t know just go out, you know, like a date.”

“A date?” I giggle at the idea, “What for? Didn’t we already go on one of those today?”

“Yeah, but you didn’t even know it was a date. It technically doesn’t count. Official dating rules and what not.” she tries to impersonate this pompous british accent that she always did when we were younger. It always had a way of making me laugh. “Alright, O wise one. Where do you suggest we go?”

“It’s a Saturday night, there’s plenty of places to go. Come on.” She pulls me to my feet and starts bouncing up the stairs with excitement. “Where are you going?” I follow after her and she leaves the question unanswered in the air. Until I get to my room and find her throwing clothes out of my closet. “We need something to wear. Here try this.” She tosses a tank top at me and I fiddle with the material in my hands for a minute. “We’re not going to a club or something, are we? You know I don’t like all that noise and people everywhere.” I grumble at her, remembering the one and only time she took me to a party and I threw up in some guy’s lap. I wasn't even drunk.

“Relax, we’re just going to see what kinda fun we can get into. You can trust me, right?” She peeks around the closet door to look at me expectantly. “Yeah, I guess.” I sigh out, knowing I could never really argue with her anyway. “Good... I guess” she mocks me mildly before turning back to the closet to loudly pull out a suitcase from the back that I haven’t touched in ages.

The suitcase is full with a secret stash of clothes we stole from River’s sister over the years. It’s something we’d been doing for a while now, taking little things here and there until the case was nearly overflowing with the most expensive designer clothes I’ve ever touched.

“Here, this’ll look perfect on you.” she tosses me this purple flowery shirt and then a lacey, black over shirt a second later. I change into the clothes with my back turned to her and just like typical River would, she walks over to me and pokes me in the ribs. “You know you’re not hiding anything I haven’t already seen.” The cockiness in her voice somehow brings back the old casualness we had with eachother and after I put on the shirt I elbow her with enough force to send her stumbling back with a startled groan.

The playfulness goes on until she finds a pair of holy jeans for me to where and an outfit for herself. She decided to go with some white band shirt and a pair of black skinny jeans, a look that isn’t much different from her usual attire.

After we change she drags me down the stairs and out the door to look for what I can only guess will be trouble.

Chapter 15, "Demons and Neon Lights"

After dragging me out of the house, River's plan starts to faulter from there and not knowing what else to do we end up walking around the main hot spot in town. Every other normal girl our age would usually go here every Saturday to meet up with friends and drink until they pass out. But unlike the majority of people our age, I find this part of town completly foreign. I find myself walking by countless nightclubs and I realize quickly I’m exactly where mom doesn’t like me at. That part of town where normal, actually social people hang out. The normal place.

River stops to lean against the building we’re currently walking by. “So, we’ve been walking around for ten minutes now. Where do you think we should go?” I stare at her confused, “How would I know?