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

by S. J. West

  Cursed

  By

  S.J. West

  Chapter 1

  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.”

  “I know where that is if you’d like an escort.”

  “Sure.” I tried to sound enthusiastic without sounding too enthusiastic.

  In reality, my heart was doing flips inside my chest at the thought of walking around with my own god in the flesh. Who would have thought I’d be of interest to someone like Brandon Cole? He could probably have any girl on campus. Why was he interested in spending time with me? It wasn’t like I had boys beating down my door to ask me out.

  “So tell me about yourself,” he said as we walked up the stairs of the chemistry building. Unfortunately, this was going to be a short walk. Dr. Barry’s office was just up the stairs and down the hall from our physics class.

  “Not a lot to tell really,” I shrugged. “I’ve lived in Reeve all my life, went to South Clark High School and now I’m here. My best friend and I are renting an apartment off campus.”

  We reached the second floor and slowly started to walk the short distance to my destination.

  “There has to be more to you than that. Why don’t you come out with me tonight? I’d really like to get to know you better.”

  I suddenly felt like my stomach was full of knots. Before my hormones overruled my common sense I regrettably said, “I can’t do that.”

  It was instantly obvious Brand wasn’t used to being turned down by the surprised expression on his face. “May I ask why?”

  “Well, I know this might sound old fashioned, but I just met you and I know absolutely nothing about you. It just wouldn’t feel proper to go out with someone I hardly know.”

  Brand smiled like he was proud of me trying to protect myself. “I completely understand,” he said without a trace of condescension. “What about lunch tomorrow in the Commons? There’ll be plenty of witnesses around to make sure I remain a perfect gentleman.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “That would work.”

  “Does eleven-thirty sound all right?”

  “Yes, that’s fine.”

  “Ok, see you then.” He winked at me as he turned to leave. I have to admit: he looked just as good walking away and every girl in the hallway seemed to agree with me.

  Tara jumped me as soon as I walked into our apartment when I came home after work that evening.

  “How could you not call me?” She demanded excitedly. “I had to hear from some strangers that this Brandon Cole guy asked you out! Tell me everything, girl.”

  I filled her in on what little there was to know.

  “Well, I’m glad you kept your head,” Tara said with a nod of her own. “We don’t know enough about him yet.”

  I just rolled my eyes at her and went to the kitchen to make myself a sandwich for supper.

  The next day I did actually find my world civilization and college algebra classes all on my own. Unfortunately, Brand wasn’t in either one of them. By the time eleven-thirty rolled around, I had completely stressed myself out over what to say to him during lunch. I mean, how much of yourself do you reveal on a first date? It wasn’t like I’d experienced many of those. I decided to take a page out of my mother’s playbook and just go with the flow. What else was I going to do? It wasn’t like a test I could prepare for.

 
It wasn’t hard to find Brand when I entered the Commons at lunch time. He was sitting at a table by himself in the middle of the room, but almost every female in there was as close to his table as they could possibly get without actually sitting in his lap. If I hadn’t been so nervous, I would have laughed at the absurdity of their behavior. It was like he was literally a babe magnet.

  When Brand saw me enter, he immediately stood from his chair, almost like he was relieved by my presence and walked towards me.

  “You look lovely today, Lilly,” he said taking one of my hands and kissing it lightly. I could have sworn I heard audible sighs come from our attentive audience.

  “Would you mind if we ate out on the terrace? It’s a bit more private out there but you won’t be completely alone with me. It just seems a bit overcrowded in here today.”

  The expression on Brand’s face seemed odd to me. It was almost like he was experiencing physical pain by having to be in a room full of willing female adorers. Most guys I knew would pay good money to have so many girls fawning over them, but Brand’s expression told me he desperately wanted to get outside as quickly as possible.

  “That’s fine,” I replied. “More privacy would be nice.”

  I happened to glance behind Brand and caught sight of Nora. I swear, if her eyes could have shot out daggers, I would be have been dead where I stood.

  Brand took my books from me and put a guiding hand on my elbow to escort me outside.

  There was only a man and a woman sitting at one of the two tables on the terrace. The terrace faced the rose garden in front of the Commons building. In the middle of a Mississippi August, most people prefer to be inside with the air conditioner blasting cold air in their faces, but I didn’t mind sitting out under the awning. The atmosphere was definitely not as estrogen driven.

  “Do you always have that affect on the female population wherever you go?” I asked jokingly but quite interested in the answer.

  “Usually.” Brand said it so matter-of-factly I couldn’t tell if he was making a joke or being totally serious.