by L. J. Smith
But Elena could feel him watching her in the halls, as clearly as she could feel Damon watching her on the streets. The other day, she’d glanced at Stefan in class without meaning to and seen his green eyes fixed on her. His gaze had been soft and longing, hungry. She wanted to comfort him, but Elena already knew how that would end.
The speaker set high on the classroom wall crackled, jolting Elena out of her thoughts. She half listened to the morning announcements, snapping to attention as the vice principal’s voice said, “Senior Homecoming Court nominations have been tallied. This year’s nominees for Homecoming Queen are Sue Carson, Caroline Forbes, Elena Gilbert, Bonnie McCullough, and Meredith Sulez. Voting will take place in the cafeteria over the next week. Congratulations to all the nominees.”
Elena gripped the edge of her desk, a sudden panic running through her. No. No way.
Homecoming had been when it all began. A dizzying whirl of images rose up in Elena’s mind’s eye. Herself, determined that Stefan wouldn’t turn her down. Leaving the dance in Tyler Smallwood’s convertible, the taste of whiskey sharp in her mouth, her hair blowing wildly in the wind as they sped down the highway. The lid of the tomb in the ruined church shifting under her hand. The ripping sound as Tyler tore her dress.
Stefan saving her, taking her in his arms. Her whole world changing.
She couldn’t let it happen again.
“Congratulations, girls,” Mrs. Halpern said to Meredith and Elena as the speaker clicked off. “There’s a meeting for all the Homecoming Court nominees with the faculty sponsors in the office third period.”
Elena raised her hand. “Mrs. Halpern,” she said. “I don’t want to be on the Homecoming Court. Is there something I have to do to drop out of the race?” She heard Meredith’s gasp of surprise behind her.
There was a moment of utter silence as everyone contemplated the thought. Elena Gilbert, queen of the school, refusing to compete? She was sure to win, they all knew that.
“Uh, no,” Mrs. Halpern said, her forehead crinkled in a puzzled frown. “If you’re sure, Elena, I can just let the sponsors know.” At Elena’s nod, she made a note on her clipboard.
Ignoring the whispers around her, Elena waited out the rest of the period. When the bell rang, she pretended not to see Meredith striding toward her and slipped out the door alone. She would have to figure out some kind of explanation to give Bonnie and Meredith.
Outside, Matt was waiting, a smile stretching across his handsome, all-American face. “Congratulations,” he said, pulling her close and kissing her easily, just a sweet press of his lips. “You’re a shoo-in for Queen. Tell me what color dress you’re wearing, and I’ll make sure to get the right kind of corsage.” Despite his words, there was a wary look in his eyes, as if he was bracing himself for a blow.
“Oh, Matt,” Elena said, feeling stricken. She’d been avoiding him, avoiding this moment, and of course he’d noticed.
Whatever happened, her relationship with Matt was over, and she couldn’t keep him hanging on. She needed to let him go, kindly, before she went after Damon.
The smile slipped off Matt’s face, and he bowed his head. “I’m guessing you’ve got something to tell me, huh?”
Elena pulled him aside into a little alcove past the lockers, ignoring the curious looks of students passing by. It wasn’t nice—it wasn’t fair—to spring this on him here, right in the middle of the school day, but she couldn’t string Matt along any longer.
“I do love you,” she said in a fierce whisper, when they were as private as they could be. “I do.”
Matt flinched a little and then gave Elena a smile that was almost a grimace. “I guess that’s why you’re dumping me, huh? Because I’m just that loveable. I should have realized before.” His voice was hoarse and, spontaneously, Elena wrapped her arms around him, pushing her face against the rough fabric of his letterman’s jacket.
Unbidden tears rose in her eyes. “Oh, Matt,” she said, muffled against his shoulder. “You’re my friend. My true friend. Don’t love me like this anymore.”
Matt sighed and stroked the back of Elena’s head, running his strong fingers through her hair. “It’s not that easy, Elena. I can’t just stop how I feel. But I won’t try to hold onto you, not if you don’t want me to.”
When she lifted her head to look at him, there was devastation on his face, beneath the steady eyes and the crooked grin. How had she not seen this the first time? She barely remembered this conversation. It had just been a means to an end: getting Matt squared away so that she had an open field to go after Stefan.
A curl of self-disgust twisted inside Elena, and she lowered her head again, wiping her eyes against Matt’s shoulder. She’d gone through this part of her life with blinders on. And poor Matt, once he’d gotten over her, his next girlfriend had become a vampire and finally killed herself. All the craziness here—Fell’s Church, Dalcrest, all along the ley lines—had ruined so much of Matt’s life.
When she pulled back from their hug, Matt was staring at her, his forehead creased with concern. “Are you all right?” he asked.
Elena bit her lip to keep back a hysterical giggle. If she kept up with these mood swings, remembering the future that might not come, everyone was going to think she was having a nervous breakdown. “Listen, Matt,” she said, “we’re good friends, we really are. I love you so much. But there’s nothing for you here. As soon as we’re out of school, you should go. Take a football scholarship. You’re bound to get one.”
He had been offered one, hadn’t he? A good one, at some big football school. And he’d turned it down. He’d come to Dalcrest to help them protect the innocent.
Elena thought of Jasmine, with her easy smile and soft eyes, her fiercely loyal heart. “You’ll meet the right person for you someday,” she told him, trying to make him believe. “She’ll be smart and kind, and it’ll be so much better than we could have been together.”
The smile was gone from Matt’s face. “You’re the only person I want to be with,” he said flatly. His eyes narrowed. “Does this have anything to do with the new guy? He’s always watching you.”
“Stefan?” Matt had always seen more than she’d given him credit for. Elena met his gaze squarely. “I don’t want to date Stefan Salvatore,” she said honestly, and after a moment, Matt nodded, his shoulders slumping.
“I guess there doesn’t have to be someone else for you to break up with me,” he said. “You always know what you want, Elena. And what you don’t.”
“You’re one of my best friends,” Elena told him. “I just want the best for you.”
Matt shook his head, confused. “You’re different since you came back from France,” he said. Then the corners of his mouth tilted up in a small, sad smile. “Maybe the trip was good for you, too.”
“But if you broke up with Matt, who are you going to go to Homecoming with?” Bonnie asked after school, as they turned down the walk to Bonnie’s house. It was a warm afternoon, and Bonnie had invited Meredith and Elena over to hang out.
“I don’t know,” Elena said. “Does it matter?”
Meredith and Bonnie stared at her with identical expressions of shock.
“Does it—” Bonnie echoed incredulously.
“Elena, is there something wrong with you?” Meredith interrupted. “You’re really not acting like yourself.”
Feeling defensive, Elena shrugged. “I guess I just don’t think Homecoming is all that important.”
“That’s what she means when she says you’re not acting like yourself,” Bonnie said tartly, opening the front door.
Yangtze, Bonnie’s family’s fat, elderly Pekingese, greeted them with shrill, yapping barks, trying to wiggle his chubby body out through the open door. Bonnie pushed him back, and he growled and snapped at Elena’s ankle as she went by.
Katherine had killed Yangtze, Elena remembered. Bonnie’s mother had cried off and on for days. The dog was so spoiled, she was the only one who could stand him. But there
had been no sign of Katherine in the cemetery the other evening, no wild surge of Power to send the girls running screaming across Wickery Bridge. Maybe if Elena and Stefan didn’t fall in love, none of the terrible things from Elena’s first time around—not even Yangtze’s death—would happen.
Gingerly, Elena reached down and patted the dog’s back, earning another snarl. But wait, she thought, pulling back her hand. If Yangtze didn’t die, wouldn’t the world be different, in ways Elena couldn’t even predict? The dog was the smallest part of all this, but every piece of the world made a difference.
Something terrible might happen, Elena thought, suddenly cold with panic. What if Bonnie tripped over the dog’s small, round body on the stairs and fell, cracked her spine, and wound up in a wheelchair? What if the dog finally managed to push its way out, ran into the road, and caused a fatal car accident? Anything could happen. At the realization, all the breath went out of Elena’s body in a sudden gasp, and she clapped her hand over her mouth.
“What is it?” Meredith asked warily, but Elena just shook her head, her mind spinning. Anything could happen. The Guardian had told her that, but she hadn’t really thought about it. Elena was changing everyone’s lives, and what if she accidentally changed them for the worse? At least in Elena’s own reality, Bonnie, Meredith, and Matt were more or less safe.
Not Stefan, though. Stefan had died.
Not Elena, who was dying.
And not Damon. She was the last one he had left. For a long time, Stefan had been the only person in the world Damon gave a damn about. And then Elena had come, and their bond had tethered Damon to her, to humanity. And now, in her reality, Elena was dying and Damon was losing the last bit of that humanity he had left.
In the McCullough’s living room, Bonnie’s sister Mary was unpinning a nurse’s cap from her wavy red hair. “Hey girls,” she said, dropping her cap on the table. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes.
“Long shift?” Bonnie asked. Mary worked at the Fell’s Church clinic, which was always busy.
Mary sighed and closed her eyes for a second. “We got a pretty bad case in today,” she said. “You girls go down to the cemetery sometimes, don’t you? Down by the Wickery Bridge?”
“Well, sure,” Bonnie said slowly. This wasn’t something they talked about. “Elena’s parents …”
“That’s what I thought.” Mary took a deep breath. “Listen to me, Bonnie. Don’t ever, ever go out there again. Especially not alone or at night.”
“Why?” Bonnie asked, bewildered.
Elena’s stomach clenched. It shouldn’t have happened. Things had been different this time, down near Wickery Bridge.
“Last night somebody was attacked out there,” Mary said. “They found him right under Wickery Bridge.”
Meredith and Bonnie stared at her in disbelief, and Elena with a dull, wondering dread. Bonnie clutched Elena’s arm, her fingers pinching painfully tight. “Somebody was attacked under the bridge? Who? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Mary said, shaking her head. “This morning one of the cemetery workers spotted him lying there. He was some homeless person, I guess. He was probably sleeping under the bridge when he was attacked. But he was half-dead when they found him, and he’s still unconscious. He might die.”
Stefan. Elena felt weighed down by guilt. She had thought things had changed. Was Stefan following Elena in this reality, too? Had he been overcome with the need for blood and attacked the homeless man anyway?
Or was it Damon who had attacked the man under the bridge? Damon had been at the cemetery.
Maybe fate wasn’t changeable after all, Elena thought, chilled. Maybe the man had been destined to be terribly hurt that night at the bridge, no matter what.
If so, perhaps her mission was doomed to failure. Maybe she and Stefan and Damon would continue on the same path, no matter how she tried to alter things. It was possible, wasn’t it, that all roads would end with Stefan falling, a false friend’s stave in his heart, with Elena drifting to death in her big white bed? With Damon’s heart breaking, all his steps toward redemption lost?
“His throat was nearly ripped out,” Mary said grimly. “He lost an incredible amount of blood. They thought it might have been an animal at first, but now Dr. Lowen says it was a person. And the police think whoever did it may be hiding in the cemetery.” She looked at each of them, her mouth tight.
“You don’t have to scare us,” Bonnie said, her voice strained. “We get the point, Mary.”
“All right. Good.” Mary rubbed the back of her neck and sighed. “I’ve got to lie down for a while. I didn’t mean to be crabby.” She left the living room, heading for the stairs.
“It could have been one of us.” Meredith said. She bit her lip. “Especially you, Elena. You went there alone.”
“No,” Elena said absently. “It would never have been one of us.” She barely noticed the way the other girls stared at her, shocked by the certainty in her voice.
Elena clenched her fists, her nails biting into the palms of her hands. It couldn’t all be inevitable. There was a way to save Mr. Tanner, a way to keep the town safe from all the havoc Katherine, Damon, and Stefan had, in their own separate ways, brought down upon it.
She had to find Damon, and soon. Halloween was coming fast, and she would need time with him if he was going to fall in love with her, if she was going to show him there were things more pleasurable than destruction.
Elena needed a plan.
A chilly breeze swept through Elena’s hair, and she wrapped her arms around herself for warmth. The sun hadn’t set yet, but there was already a pale moon high in the sky, and dark shadows were spreading under the trees.
She’d really thought Damon would have come to her by now. Elena had made excuses to dodge Bonnie and Meredith after school, and headed out to the woods. She had to draw Damon to her again, needed to start building a connection between them. And here, isolated beneath the ancient oak trees, was just where he was likely to appear.
A bird crashed through the top of the tree above her, and Elena looked up with a burst of relief. But it was just a blue jay, not the sleek black crow she was waiting for.
Maybe she should give up on subtlety and just shout Damon’s name until he answered her. No, that would only make him suspicious.
If he was nearby, there was one thing that ought to draw him out. Blood.
Elena uncrossed her arms and looked around carefully. A rough gray boulder lay half-buried between two trees with twisted roots growing up around it. That might do. Steeling herself, Elena wandered toward it.
Her toe caught on a root, and Elena tipped forward, eyeing the sharp-edged rock. About right. Pretending to lose her balance, she threw herself onto the ground hard.
Her teeth clacked together as she hit the ground more violently than she’d meant to. There was a jolting, blinding pain in her knee. Her palms were stinging, scraped by tree roots. Winded, Elena lay gasping for a moment, fighting back tears of pain. She glanced down at her leg and was relieved to see a trickle of red blood. She didn’t want to have to try that again.
“Let me help you.” The voice, husky and a little unsure, was so familiar, so loved. But it was the wrong one.
Elena looked up to see Stefan Salvatore standing above her, his hand extended. His face was shadowed so that she couldn’t quite see his expression. Tentatively, she laid her hand in his and let him pull her gently to her feet.
Upright again, she winced a little, and Stefan quickly turned her hands palm-up, carefully brushing away dirt and bits of dry leaves. “Just a scrape,” he told her quietly.
“My leg,” she said, looking up into his face. Her voice cracked, and she had to swallow hard. He hadn’t changed. Of course he never changed; he was a vampire. Elena’s heart ached, and for one mad moment, she wanted to forget everything and throw herself into his arms and hold him tightly, weep with joy that he was alive.
“Let me see,” Stefan said, letting go
of her hands. He didn’t look her in the eyes, but instead knelt in the dirt, pulling a white silk handkerchief from his pocket. Unfolding it, he tucked something small—Elena couldn’t see what it was—back into his pocket. Gently, he blotted at her knee and then tied the handkerchief around it as a makeshift bandage. “There, that should get you home.”
He rose, eyes still averted, and backed away. Impulsively, Elena stepped forward and took hold of his leather-jacketed arm. He was so close, so solid, and real. A warm flush of love and relief ran over her. “Thank you,” she said. “Stefan—”
Almost faster than her eyes could follow, Stefan pulled away from her, and stepped back, deeper into the shadows of the trees. “I—” he said and stopped, then began again. “You’re welcome. You should be careful, though, out here alone. Did you hear about the attack?”
“Yes, I did,” Elena said, moving closer to him again, her eyes searching the shadows, trying to make out his face.
“They’re saying whoever did it must have been a monster.” There was an ugly, harsh note in Stefan’s voice. Without the sunglasses, he looked vulnerable and terribly tired.
“I don’t believe it,” she said firmly.
For a moment, their eyes met. Elena could see a wild flicker of hope rise in Stefan’s and then disappear, leaving nothing but grim hopelessness. “Anyone who would do such a thing is a monster,” he said.
Elena was almost touching him now. She wanted to run her hands across the chiseled lines of his face, remind herself how smooth his skin was.
His gaze traced over the curve of her neck, she saw, and his lips parted a little. “You look—” he said. “You remind me of someone I used to know.”
Katherine. Elena suppressed a grimace. The Stefan of this time was still guilt-stricken over the role he thought he’d played in Katherine’s death. She wanted to announce the truth: She’s not dead. Crazy and vicious, but not dead. It’s not your fault.
