Cursed (Book 1, The Watchers; Young Adult Paranormal Romance)

My life is
cursed.  I’m not sure why I thought my fortunes would magically change when I entered
the hallowed realm of college.  Perhaps I believed the hype spouted by the
recruiter on how I would be able to start a whole new chapter in my life just
by going to college.  According to her, I would be granted my heart’s desire and
become a new person with a sea of endless possibilities laid at my feet.  If I
had truly wanted that to happen, I suppose I should have moved to another continent
instead of only sixty miles away from home.  It simply didn’t put enough
distance between my old life and the new one I craved, especially since I
shortened the physical distance between myself and the one person in the world
I never wanted to see again, Will Kilpatrick.

As I was walking
to my very first college lecture, I saw Will handing out flyers to welcome the freshman
class of 2012.  I hadn’t seen Will in two years, but my one time best friend
still looked the same, heartbreakingly handsome.  He was dressed in a light
blue button down shirt tucked into a pair of well fitting grey slacks.  His
short blonde hair was cut in the latest shaggy style accentuating his lean,
angular face and bright blue eyes.  The friendly, welcoming smile he bestowed
on the group of moon-eyed girls surrounding him made my heart beat double time.

Not wanting him to
see me, I quickly made an about face to head in the opposite direction of the
boy I had shared my very first kiss with, someone I had once upon a time hoped
to share the rest of my life.

Seeing Will again
played havoc with my psyche and had my heart racing into my throat.  I silently
berated myself for allowing Will to have such an affect on my physical well
being.  Intellectually, I knew by choosing to attend Southeastern College I would eventually have to run into Will, it was basic statistics.  It was only after
seeing him that I realized what a delusional fool I had been, thinking my heart
had purged itself of the love I once harbored for Will.  I began to wonder if I
would ever find a way to leave my adolescent fantasies, featuring Will in the
role of Prince Charming, behind and go on with my life.

My first day of
college had started off badly with the addition of Will back into my world and it
seemed determined to get worse from there. 

I ended up missing
my first lecture because I couldn’t find the classroom.   The science building was
like a real life version of M.C. Esher’s
Relativity
with its meandering
staircases in odd places. I finally asked someone for directions and found out
the classroom I was looking for was one of the few rooms which could only be accessed
from an outside stairwell since it was housed in the basement of the building. 
When I finally found the room, my class had already been dismissed.  The
teacher, a kindly old man with balding grey hair, told me not to worry about
it. 

“There’s always
one person each semester who can’t find the room, Ms. Nightingale,” Dr. Floyd said. 
“Don’t fret over this one failure.”

Great.  Not only
did I miss my very first college lecture but I felt sure from Dr. Floyd’s tone
he expected me to round out the bottom of the class’s bell curve.

My second class,
English composition went a lot better.  My life long best friend and roommate, Tara,
shared the class with me and saved me a seat right beside her.  Tara and I had
grown up living right next to one another in the trailer park her grandmother,
Utha Mae, and my mother lived in.  I always envied the close connection Tara had with Utha Mae, one I was never able to achieve with my mother, Cora.  Whenever I
wanted to feel like a part of a real family, I would sneak over to Tara’s trailer and pretend we were sisters.  There was no way anyone would ever believe we
actually were sisters considering how the dark ebony color of Tara’s skin
contrasted against the pale ivory of my own, but if someone were to look beyond
the superficial, I was sure they would find us more alike than not.

Tara giggled when
I told her about missing my first class.

“Sounds like something
you’d do,” she just shook her head at me like I was completely hopeless, which
wasn’t that far off the mark if I were being honest with myself. 

After English composition,
I had general chemistry I.  Tara had tried to get the same class as me but wasn’t
able to due to her job.

In order to afford
to live off campus in an apartment of our own, we each had to take a job
working on campus.  Tara found work in the library, and I found a position as a
teacher’s aid for a professor in the chemistry department.  It wasn’t great
money but pooled together we were going to be all right.  Plus, Utha Mae had
saved up some money over the years for each of us.

My mother wasn’t
as prepared.

Cora gave me what little
she had in her savings account and told me to ask for help if I needed it.  I
wasn’t completely sure, but I got the distinct feeling my mother was jealous of
my attending college, trying to make a better life for myself.  I suppose there
had to be a time in my mother’s life when she envisioned herself living the
perfect life of a white picket fence family.  Who dreams of becoming a single
mother at the age of eighteen living in a trailer park barely scratching by
month to month? 

After my chemistry
class, I met Tara in the Commons for lunch.  I was never a big eater of lunch
so I just grabbed a pack of nabs and a soda from the vending machine.  I
scanned the crowded tables trying to find Tara but couldn’t locate her at
first.  She must have seen my confused face in the crowd because she stood up waving
her arms in the air like I was a plane which needed landing instructions.

When I finally
made my way through the maze of tables and students, I saw Tara was sitting
with a couple of girls I recognized from our English class.

“About time you
made it, girl,” Tara said, as I sat down in the seat next to her at the table,
“this here is Nora and Michelle.”

“Tara says y’all
know Will Kilpatrick,” Nora said with one of those almost fake sounding
southern accents like some actors use in the movies.  For a moment, I thought she
might swoon out of her seat as Will’s name squeezed out between her glossy pink
lips.

“What about him?”
I asked more curtly than I had intended.  It wasn’t this poor girl’s fault she
had touched a sore spot with me so early on in our acquaintance.

Nora looked at
Michelle a bit uncertainly, like she was afraid to talk about Will now.

“Oh, it’s just
that Michelle and I noticed him at the freshman picnic.  He was in charge of
it.”

“Oh.  Yeah.”

And that was the
exact reason Tara and I didn’t go to the picnic meant to welcome the new class
of students to Southeastern, but I didn’t tell them that.  Why should I?  I
hardly knew these two girls.  Plus, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know them any
further if all they wanted to do was talk about Will.

“Well, he wasn’t
the only one we noticed,” Michelle chimed in to break the noticeable tension I
had caused.

Michelle was a bit
of a mousy girl.  Short, thin with board straight brown hair and plain brown
eyes hidden behind a pair of silver wire rimmed glasses which only made her
disappear even further.   She was a stark contrast to Norah who was blonde and
beautiful with a seemingly perky demeanor.

“Have you guys
seen Brandon Cole yet?” Michelle asked breathlessly.

“I don’t think
so,” I said, slowly opening my pack of nabs, feeling my defenses slacken a
little with the change of subject.  “What’s he look like?”

“Oh, you’d know if
you seen him,” Nora said.  “The proverbial tall, dark and handsome, expect not
so dark really.  He has the palest skin but it’s so beautiful, like porcelain,
Adonis in the flesh.”  Nora cupped her chin in one hand with her head tilted to
the side as if ogling this Brandon Cole with her mind’s eye.

I really wasn’t
warming up to Nora very much.  Michelle seemed ok, like someone I might like to
hang out with outside of class, but Nora was quickly setting my nerves on fire.

“Well, I like my
men a little bit darker,” Tara said taking a bite of her pizza.  “Y’all can
fight over the white meat.”

I scowled at Tara but she didn’t seem to take any notice, as usual.

Thankfully lunch
was short.  I discovered Michelle and I had the next class together, physics
I.  I breathed a quiet sigh of relief having found a lab partner who might
actually be a great contributor to our projects.

After we took our
seats in the lecture hall our physics class was held in, I heard Michelle take
in a sharp breath like someone had just punched her in the gut.

“Are you ok?” I
asked, worried she might become physically ill.

“That’s Brandon
Cole,” she said in a whisper like she was unable to breath, discreetly pointing
to the boy who had just walked into the room. 

I followed the
direction of her gaze and felt the earth beneath me give way, or at least
that’s the message my brain was sending to the other parts of my body.  Nora
had been right.  Brandon Cole was Adonis in the flesh:  tall, at least 6’1 or
2; perfect, glowing white skin like he had a permanent spot light on him; wavy
dark brown hair in a short crop and handsome, well that didn’t really seem to
be enough of an adjective to describe him.  He didn’t look like he was
eighteen, more like he was twenty-two or maybe twenty-three.  He must have
sensed my staring because just before he took the seat right in front of me his
eyes locked with mine.  He had the most beautiful grey eyes with silver flecks which
seemed to absorb the light around them and illuminate his entire face.  When
his gaze met mine, I wanted to look away but just couldn’t.  All I could do was
smile like a child who had guiltily put her hand in the cookie jar one too many
times and had just been caught by her parents.

“Hello,” he said
sitting down in the seat in front of me and turning around to face me.  Holding
a hand out, he introduced himself.  “I’m Brand.”

Thankfully, all my
years of southern hospitality kicked in and I had the sense to shake his hand
and make my own introduction.  “Lilly.”

“Nice to meet you,
Lilly,” the way he said my name actually made me think of the delicate flower I
had been named after.  As if he needed more added to the list of his perfections,
he had the one thing that is every American girl’s kryptonite, a British
accent.

I heard a small
squeak come from Michelle beside me, which was the only way my attention was
going to be drawn away from Brand.

“This is
Michelle,” I told him before Michelle had a chance to make a complete fool out
of herself.

“Hi!” She chirped,
raising a nervously excited hand at him in greeting like a fan meeting her
favorite actor or rock star.

Brand didn’t seem
to mind Michelle’s odd behavior and extended his hand out to her.  “It’s nice
to meet you, Michelle.  Have you had a good first day so far?”

“Yes,” was all she
was able to say.

“And how about
you, Lilly?” Brand asked, returning his undivided attention to me.  “How has
your first day been?”

“Well, I sort of missed
my first class.  Couldn’t find the room,” I shrugged.  “By the time I figured
out biology I was on the basement floor of the science building, class had been
dismissed.”

“Lilly Nightingale?”
Brand asked, a soft laugh and glint of amusement in his eyes.

“Yes,” I said
hesitantly, confused by his knowledge of my last name.  “How did you know that?”

“I’m in that class
too,” Brand said with an easy grin.  “Dr. Floyd asked us to keep an eye out for
you in our other classes so we could tell you where the room is.”

I literally hung
my head in shame.  “Well that’s just great, now everyone in that class is going
to think I’m a complete idiot.”

Brand chuckled. 
“No, no one’s going to think that, especially not after you ace the first test
in there.”

“Thanks for the
vote of confidence.”

“I have a feeling
about you.”  Brand granted me one of his smiles. For some unfathomable reason,
I actually did feel like I could do anything, be anyone, conqueror the world! 
Ok, so I was completely taken by Brand in those few short minutes.  Who
wouldn’t have been?

I was only human.

At the end of
class, Brand asked, “Can I walk you to your next class, Lilly?”

Out of the corner
of my eye I could see a look of envy on Michelle’s face.  It wasn’t a malicious
envy though.  It was more like a “why can’t I be her right now” jealousy.  I
couldn’t blame her.  If the tables were reversed I’d probably have the same
expression on my face.

“I don’t actually
have a class next period,” I told Brand. “I have to go to Dr. Barry’s office. 
I’m her teacher’s aid this semester.”