Death In Her Eyes - Erin Bedford Page 0,4

hounding me since day one to let her know how she dies and every time she asked, I gave her a different answer. A hit and run. Suicide. A freak accident involving a blender. And now bees. She was more obsessed with death than I was. Really why would you want to know when you die?

It’s not like I didn’t know. I just didn’t want to think of her that way. If I let myself think of the way she goes then that was all she would be. A label permanently imprinted on her face every time I saw her and there would go my one and only friend.

I let myself be ushered into the black limousine reserved for immediate family and leaned against the door. I knew her. If I told her she would never let it go. She would be looking over her shoulder all the time, more worried about dying than living. I couldn’t do that to her.

Nikki’s small hand pounds against the glass of my window. I tried to school the emotions on my face to show nothing as I rolled down the window. Giving her my best poker face, I waited for the usual explosion of questions.

“Come on Elle! You can’t be serious! Bees?” Her face would almost be funny if I hadn’t seen it so many times before when I had fed her one of my previous lies. I rolled my eyes at her and started to roll the window back up.

“You’ll just have to wait and find out like everyone else.” I bit back a grin when she smacked the glass and let out another muffled “Come on,” before she marched towards her own vehicle.

“You really should be nicer to that girl. I don’t know how she stands to be around you as it is.” Aunt Kate snide remarks always made my day. It maybe mean and unkind, but the fact that I know exactly how she dies fills my step with a little bit of a pep whenever she got into one of her tirades about my character.

“Oh Katie, leave Elle alone.” Aunt Sue glared at her sister and reached over to pat my hands with a small smile. I quickly moved it out of her reach and stared down at her own paused in midair. She cleared her throat and dropped the hand. She knows not to touch me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…well anyways, don’t listen to her. She’s just a bitter old woman. You’re perfect the way you are.”

“Thanks Aunt Sue.” I gave her a small smile in return and turned to look back out the window. For all her suspicions, I have always like Aunt Sue. She’s always standing up for me against Aunt Kate, even if her older sister was right in most occasions. At least I wouldn’t have to see any of them for a while after this. College was right around the corner.

One good thing about not having that many friends growing up was there was always plenty of time to study. I actually had the highest GPA in my graduating class. If I wasn’t a social leper, I would have been valedictorian, but no one wanted to hear inspirational speeches from the death girl. I could just imagine what my speech would entail.

“Thomas Jefferson’s class of 2019, though many of you will die before you have time do anything exceptional in your lives, you made it through high school. Your lives will go on to be completely boring and meaningless and while your husbands and wives have affairs behind your backs and your children end up in juvie, you will think back to this day when you were at the height of your lives. Congratulations you poor sad fuckers.”

Or something like that.

While I wished I could say I got into Princeton or Harvard with my stellar GPA, but unfortunately the big Ivy League colleges looked at more than just grades. So, what if I didn’t want to be a cheerleader of a mathlete? Did that mean that I didn’t deserve a great school? I could be the next Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin but no they only cared if I had spirit. Which I didn’t. Not at all.

Unlike Nikki. She had so much spirit it was coming out of her wazzoo. But since Nikki didn’t have any such high standards, despite what her parents would want for her, I would be joining her at the big UN of O in the fall. Majoring in