Fated Truth (The True Witch Saga) (2 page)

My mother stopped
me on my way out of the door. “What on God’s sacred earth are you wearing, Ella?”

Omgosh
does she always have to make her voice so shrill?
I thought. “Listen, I’m running out of time. I’m well and truly late! I can and will wear what
I
want and how I want to wear it. If you don’t like it
Mother,
then please make a
scene
. I’m sure your cronies down at the quilting circle would
love
to hear all about it!”

“You are truly a child of sin,
” she accused.

“And what does that make you, Barbra?
I’m your child after all. Aren’t I?” I replied.

I was pretty sure at that
point my mom was going to blow chunks. She looked sweaty and grayish. That was definitely my cue to leave. I booked it out the door as fast as my chucks would carry me and jumped in Jessa’s clunker, banging the door closed. I sat in the passenger seat panting, wondering what the next thing to jump out at me that morning would be. Jessa looked at me like I was crazy.

“Drive dill hole, she’s in a mood this morning. You should have
seen her face when I tried to leave just now. She looked like she wanted to claw my eyes out for not wearing the Amish clothes she bought me over the summer. Ugh!” I explained in exasperation.

Jessa gunned it out of the drive and squealed her tires as she shot
down my quiet little street. I was sure our neighbors were on the phone with everyone they knew exaggerating everything they’d seen out their windows that gosh awful morning.

Jessa nodded.
“Your momma is seriously cray, cray,” she said, explaining it as only Jessa could.

I couldn’t help but laugh. That was why she was my best friend. She did
n’t come from the best home like me, either. Her mom almost died of cancer when Jessa was ten and her father worked all the time. Sure, he bought her whatever she wanted, but what she really and truly wanted was a parent that gave his time, not one who wrote a check and called it a day.

I met Jessa when we first started junior high. We
had lockers next to one another and I had been blocking her way. She called me a wench and told me to move my Amazonian ass so she wouldn’t be late to her next class. And I have loved her blunt, brash ass ever since that day.

In the looks d
epartment we’re basically polar opposites. I’m tall and mostly slender, but she’s short with banging curves, topping off barely over five feet. And while my hair’s coal black and stick straight, hers is short curly and golden blonde. When you see her, you see a Monroe look alike, until she opened her mouth. Then you have to wonder what trucker crawled up her ass and took control of her speaking functions. Some of the most outrageous things could slip out of her mouth at the most inconvenient times. The girl truly didn’t have a filter. It’s one of the many things I loved about her.

We pull
ed into the student lot, careening around like we were on a race circuit. Haven’t I told you the bitch can’t drive? Well she can’t. Every time I ride with her, I make good use of the ‘oh shit’ handle. Trust me; she could make the least religious person start to pray with her behind the wheel. We glided into the only open space near the front of the lot with smoking, squealing breaks. I looked over at Jessa and gave her the stink eye.

“What? You know I
know what I’m doing, girly. Stop being such a priss and just go with it.”

Yeah like that wa
s going to happen. “Have you ever heard of Driver’s Ed? Yeah, well your mini me ass needs to enroll ASAP!”

“Don’t call me short
, glamazon. You know you wish you looked like this.” She looked herself up and down. She was wearing black leather leggings, an off one shoulder sparkly yellow top, and the highest black booties I had ever seen. They had to at least reach six inches. I just rolled my eyes, stepped out of her death trap, shrugged my bag across my body and waited for her while she gathered her things at the front of the car. I seriously didn’t have a clue how she could saunter in those shoes. They would trip me up with every step. When she finally made it over to where I was standing, strutting her shit the entire way, she pulled her new schedule out of her Gucci bag.

“So, how many classes
do we have together for this sem?” she asked as we started walking through the hordes of other students toward the front doors of our tiny high school.

Pinewood High had an amazing stude
nt body count of only twelve hundred. Everyone knew everything and everyone’s business, again, the joys of living in a small town. Nothing changed. Everything stood still. Stagnant. I reached into the back pocket of my skirt, took out my schedule, and handed it to her.

“
Squeeee!” She bounced like a little kid at Christmas. ”We have five out of seven together and lunch. GO US!” she shouted. “I’m so glad we’re going to be out of here soon, Ella. Seniors!! Can you believe it? I wonder if we have any fresh meat this year. The buffet around here can use some new sumthin, sumthin. Ya know?”

That’s when I saw him, the
Nordic god
, standing off to the side almost directly in our path. I looked quickly down at my feet. Trying and failing to fight the full body blush that I could feel coming on.
Damn those vivid, mouthwatering dreams
. I shook my head to clear the wickedly sexy scenes creeping into my psyche. Keeping my head down wasn’t going to work, so I peeked up through my eyelashes to check that he hadn’t caught me blushing.
That would seriously be cringe worthy. To be caught fawning over him like some simpering, stuttering school girl,
I thought.

What I saw when I got another clear view of his smexiness made me huff inwardly. Of course h
e was surrounded by all the beautiful people that took up the top shelf of our class, but he seemed to only have eyes for me. Again, he was staring at my face like he knew me or like there was something stuck on it. I tried to discreetly wipe away whatever has caught his attention once again. He just smirks at me and continues to lock eyes with me. Today he has his long almost white hair tied back with a leather band, was wearing light wash jeans that probably cost more than three times what Jessa’s car did, a black faded rolling stones tee that hugs his massive arms and chest, with leather cuffs on his wrists. It makes me wonder what he rode to school in or on.

As we pass
ed by I couldn’t help but snark in his direction. “Stare much?”

He just
did that annoying eye brow lift and leered at me.

I
rolled my eyes and strolled on like I had all the confidence of a supermodel. So
not
. Jessa was watching all of this and stayed silent for once. I couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say about him once we reached a fairly quiet space. It was so not normal for her to be so closed mouthed about anything. Maybe she was struck mute by his seemingly physical perfection. I wouldn’t doubt it. He seemed to be charming the masses, judging by the horde of giggling priss-bots surrounding him like a lynch mob.

When we reach
ed our lockers, Jessa pretty much exploded. Not even noticing that our three peat was waiting for us. Devon was the third of our friendship triangle, and one of the most attractive guys in school. He had sandy blonde hair, deep rich chocolate eyes, kissable lips, and stood well over six feet tall. To the dismay of most of the priss-bots of our school, Devon didn’t swing the girly way. Didn’t stop people from thinking we had some kind of
friends with benefits
on the DL.

“OMG Ella! Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that you knew
Thor
out there? He was practically eye fucking you while he was surrounded by the hordes!”

I
tried to quiet her. Not that it helped. “I don’t know him. Jeeze can you be any louder? He just busted in on my father’s sermon yesterday morning. I mean literally kicked open the doors then gawked at us all and strolled away. I haven’t ever talked to him. I swear!”

Devon decided
to get into the convo. “Okay. Who, what, and where are we talking about?”

“
Pshhhh, Ella has a new boyfriend. He was all but drooling at her,
while
he was surrounded by the prissy bitches. Can you believe that shit? I’m so jealous. He was most def, bitable.” Jessa mimicked tearing into a steak as
Thor
passed us down the hallway with his groupies trailing behind.

I look
ed at Jessa and tried not to laugh because Thor decided at that moment to look over at us and caught her gnawing on air.

“Okay let’s get our shit and go. We are all going to be late for first.” I turn
ed around and shut my locker after grabbing my English Lit book.

“What
do you guys have for first?” Devon grabbed for my schedule.

“English Lit with Mr. Sizemore. You?”
I replied.

“Same. Well
, ladies, let’s haul it so he doesn’t blow what wad he has left,” Devon suggested.

He linked
arms with us and we started down the hall way, dodging students left and right. We got to the door of our class and guess who just happened to be sitting in my favorite seat? Yup, you guessed it,
Thor
in all his glory.

Devon pulled
us to a stop as if stunned. “I thought he was into
you
, Ella. Why’s Sabrina Queen Priss-bot all up in his shiz?”

“Babe
, does it really matter? Someone that pretty doesn’t stay untouched for long, in this meat market we call High School,” Jessa said, rolling her eyes as she headed down the row of desks toward the back of the room.

I fe
lt eyes burning into my back the entire track to my seat. His or Sabrina’s, it really didn’t matter. Like I could really compete with
her
superior status. So I pushed it to the back of my mind and contented myself with thinking of all the lovely STD’s he was going to catch when he dipped his wick into that well used pool.

Mr. Sizemore rushed
into the room seconds ahead of the bell, sweating and panting, his hog jowls wagging. “Attention. Attention. I said, quiet, class!” he fairly shouted. “Let’s get underway shall we? This year is going to be tough. This is not a free pass class. I fully expect you to take notes and read the required reading each night.” He looked at everyone in the room until his eyes landed on me. “Ella.”

“Yes, Mr. Sizemore?”

“Please come to the front of the class and pass out the syllabus for this quarter.”

I shuffle
d my feet to the front of the room and took the stack of papers from the teacher, turned to each row and handed stacks to each student in the first seat for them to pass back. On the second to last row I met the eyes of
Thor
and I swear that he was searing into my soul. What was it about him that overwhelmed me? Guys just didn’t affect me like that. My parents had a no dating rule, I know, no surprise there. I hadn’t really had a boyfriend before. So I didn’t know how to deal with the turbulence that he was causing. I broke the connection and moved to the next row. Sabrina was giving me the evil eye. Not a very pretty look for her. What was her problem? It wasn’t like she had any competition for the guys in this school. Queen bee needed to chill.

Soon enough the bell rang and we we
re all gathering up our new texts and scrambling to leave the room as fast as possible. Jessa was babbling about something as she walked out beside me. Devon looked like he was lost in his own thoughts, as usual. Boy was a deep thinker.

“Ya know, I think
Sabrina was jealous of you, Ella. Did you not see the looks she’s been giving you all hour? I swear I was waiting for her head to start spinning!” Jessa started cackling at that moment, drawing all eyes to us. Including Sabrina’s, as she strides by and shoulder checked me.

“Watch where you’
re going, skank,” She spewed at me as she passed.

Jessa decided
to put her foot in it by yanking Sabrina’s messenger bag back as she passed by. “You watch it, you Barbie wanna be! Or did you want to taste my boot in the back of your throat?”

“Whatev,” Sabrina sneered as she catted
down the hall.

I just
strode slowly with my head down toward my locker. I wasn’t like Jessa, brave enough to stand up to the masses or brave the hordes of drama. I was more of a ‘go with the flow’ type of girl. It wasn’t like I could win against Sabrina anyway, so what’s the point? When we got to our shared locker, Jessa was fuming at me.

“Why’d
you let her treat you like that? You should’ve yanked out those nasty fake extensions she’s been sporting today.”

“
Jessa, you know why I don’t. The last time I got into trouble at school, my parents went postal and locked me in my room for a week. Literally. Lock. Key. And bolt. I was only allowed to leave for church services and to eat whatever they deemed I deserved to eat that day.”

“I know
, sweets, I just wish you had something better to look forward to going home, too. Emotionally abusive bastards.”