Bite Me

Chapter 15

    I chuckled. "Actually, you're pretty much whispering."

     Marcella smacked her hands over her ears. "Oh my god, why are you screaming?"

      "Marcella, just how much did you drink last night?"

     "Enough," the blonde girl grumbled. "Never again."

      What was I doing? I was being all buddy-buddy, all boyfriend-y. That wasn't what I was there for, and I couldn't just be super sweet and then drop the break up bomb on her. That would be cruel—crueler than what I'd already done to the poor girl.

      "Like I said, we need to talk," I said, hoping she'd catch on to the serious tone of my voice.

      However, Marcella waved her gave dismissively. "Sure, we will. But first, I need those pills."

It took a solid thirty minutes to start the conversation with Marcella, because she kept finding some way to delay it, almost as if she was stalling. Perhaps she had a feeling, a theory, as to why I was here, and she didn't like it. Perhaps her theory was correct.

"Okay, Marcella," I said seriously as she offered to play video games. "Come on. I said we need to talk, so we're gonna talk."

Marcella sighed and sank down into her mattress. She pulled her knees up to her chest and stared at me with nervous eyes. "I know, it's just...'We need to talk' is usually a breakup line."

Shit, how was I supposed to answer to that? I carefully planned out my response in my head, trying to figure out how to say this in the nicest way possible. It turned out I didn't need to. Apparently, my silence was enough.

"You're breaking up with me," she said softly, staring down at the bedsheets.

Despite the guilt weighing down my stomach, trying to pull me to the floor, I sat myself next to her on the soft bed. I lifted her chin so that she'd look me in the eyes, and said, "Marcella, I'm sorry."

Marcella laughed, though it came out bitter. "No, don't be. It's only been, like, three weeks, it's not a super big deal. Plus...I kind of saw it coming. You were a little distant last week. I thought maybe it involved Kieran, since he was acting weird too, but he said it had nothing to do with you. So after that I thought that maybe it was about us."

I smiled warmly at her, hoping I could communicate the message that I still wanted to be friends. Her expression didn't lift, though; she was smiling, but there was nothing happy about it.

"Can I at least know why?"

Her question startled me. She deserved to know, after I'd strung her along for so long. And perhaps, if she knew, she wouldn't be as upset. I could only tell her so much, though, for Kieran's sake.

"I'm not who you think I am," I said slowly.

"It's funny, Kieran once said the same thing. I still don't know what it means, though."

"It means," I looked down at my hands, which were shaking with nerves. Never in my sixteen years had I shared my secret with a human. Or anyone, really. The only others outside of my family that knew were Kieran and his father and brother, and I hadn't exactly told them. Marcella had kept Kieran's secret all these years, though, so she had to be able to keep mine, too. "I'm not exactly...human. I'm...."