• Black Ink


    Prologue


    Sighing, I reach down to the silver chain hanging around my neck, carrying the journal. But then my hand doesn’t touch the thin, linked chain--it just falls against my soft, white Paramore t-shirt.

    “What the…” My hand flies all around my neck, searching for the chain. Suddenly, I start to panic.

    Where the hell is it? I think to myself as my hand searches the back of my neck. I didn’t…

    “What they said at lunch.” I gasp, suddenly understanding. Dropping my black Nightmare Before Christmas choir binder, I push aside fellow students standing along me in the risers, dash across the classroom and out into the hallway, ignoring the calls and shouts of Miss C and the rest of the class.

    I throw my body against the girl’s locker room door to open it, and run over to my chipped red-painted mini locker. I lean forward to grab the lock--but the lock isn’t there either.

    I throw the door open and frantically search through, throwing aside my sweat-drenched, too large, gray P.E. uniform, used deodorant sticks, a worn out extra pair of socks, dirt covered shoes--nothing.

    I search the whole locker room--nothing.

    I rush out of the locker room, past the eighth grade hall, past the choir room--where people in class started trying to talk to me again and following me as I ran--past the band room, past the seventh grade hall. Basically, I run past everything until I made it out of the old, moldy, worn down middle school building and over to the bike and skateboard holder.

    “ALICE!!” I hear Melissa call as she and Jacob run over, followed by most of the class.

    “Allison, what are you doing?” Miss C demands as she steps in front of everybody next to my two best friends.

    I turn to Melissa and Jacob and simply state, “It’s gone.”

    With that said, I grab my skateboard, jump on it and start riding to my house, hoping against hope that the journal is there.

    ‘Allison, you must be very careful with this journal. If it falls into the wrong hands, bad things could happen. Very, very bad things.’ I heard the owner of the Halloween store’s voice in my head once again.

    I suddenly have the feeling that I’m not going to get that iTouch for my birthday.