April 9, 2010 (24)
3:00 p.m.
Mimi’s Diner

His hair was blonde now. It was also straight and styled in unruly spikes. His eyes were also a pale green now, obviously due to color contacts. And rather than his usual prep attire, he was sporting a pair of jeans with a casual t-shirt. But even through this disguise, I could tell that it was Michael.
It took every single ounce of self-control that I had left in me not to scream in terror. This was just too surreal for me. The guy who’d pushed his own girlfriend down a flight of stair, the guy who’d tried to murder me, the guy who’d been stalking Will and I was now sitting right in front of me. No one else even knew of his past either. Everyone thought he was some innocent newcomer to the town. Everyone accept for me.
And his little girlfriend. Angie had platinum blonde hair that was pin-straight and came down just below her chin. Her eyes were dark brown and the eyeliner around them was very thick. Her lips were coated with a deep ruby red lipstick and despite the weather outside, she was wearing a short denim skirt with a blousy red top. Apparently, both Michael and Valerie had gotten themselves new identities.
“Ashton, hey,” Michael said to him. The sound of his voice sent chills down my spine. Normally, he wouldn’t say something as casual as “hey”. Normally, he’d say “hello”. But apparently, Ben was a much more laid back person than Michael was. “You must be Addison,” he said to my new roommate.
“Yep, that’s me,” she replied with a warm smile. “And this is my new roommate, Evalynne,”
He turned to look at me, flashing me a wide, toothy grin. “Nice to meet you, Evalynne,” he said to me.
I gritted my teeth together in rage. He was enjoying this. My fear seemed to amuse him. “Nice to meet you too,” I remarked through clenched teeth.
“This is my girlfriend, Angie,” he told all of us, pointing at Valerie.
“Hi, it’s nice to meet you all,” she said sweetly. She looked up at me, smiling and raising a perfectly arched eyebrow smugly. I so desperately wanted to smack that smile right off of her face.
“It’s nice to meet you too, Angie. So, Ben told me that you were thinking about applying for a job here too.” Ashton said to her.
“Yeah, I figured it might help us earn a little extra cash,” she replied. Not that they needed it. The McKnight family was rich.
“Well I’ll make sure to put in a good word for you with the boss,” he assured her.
“Thanks, I’d really appreciate that,” she told him with another smile. She was beginning to really irritate me.
“In other news, Will McKnight, brother of Michael McKnight, has finally been found by the police.” The sound was coming from the television hanging from the ceiling in the corner of the small restaurant. “In fact, he turned himself in early this morning. In court, he plead guilty, admitting to the abuse of Evalynne Mongolia.”
I felt my stomach twist up into knots when I saw this. Why did they have to have the news on right now? This was just great. Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced at Michael and Valerie to see what they’re reactions would be to this news.
Michael looked back at me, a grin flickering across his lips. Valerie on the other hand, shook her head disdainfully. She shot me a look that clearly meant “I told you so”. It was like they both expected Will to end up hurting me or something. And that made me very angry.
The same picture of me with my bruised up face from earlier today filled the screen and Ashton immediately walked up to the TV and changed it to a different channel. I was grateful for that, but it was a little too late. Everyone had already seen the news report.
“Oh, Evalynne, I’m so sorry,” Addison said, turning around to face me, a look of sympathy in her green eyes.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, needing to get out of there as quickly as possible. So without waiting for a response from anyone, I turned on my heel and rushed over to the hallway where the bathrooms were located. I headed into the ladies’ room and locked myself in one of the stalls, taking deep breaths the entire time.
Luckily, no one else was in the bathroom so no one could hear me crying. This was all way too much for me to handle. Michael couldn’t be back. He just couldn’t. But he was and I needed to do something about it. I couldn’t just sit back and wait for him to kill me. I needed to call officer Nielson right away to tell him that Michael had found me. So I sucked in a deep, shaky breath and pulled out my cell phone. But before I even got a chance to flip it open, I heard the door to the bathroom open followed by the sound of someone padding inside.
I waited for a moment, waited for them to hurry up and go to the bathroom so that I could make my phone call. But instead of heading into to one of the bathroom stalls, the person walked up to the stall I was in. Underneath the door, I could see a pair of gray Vans and the hem of a pair of jeans. My skin prickled with goose bumps when I realized that this person wasn’t a woman.
This strange person backed up and I thought he was going to leave. But instead, he raced towards the door of my bathroom stall and slammed his shoulder into it with all of his might. I let out a soft yelp of alarm as the door slammed open and Michael made his way inside. He tore my cell phone away from my grasp and moved in even closer to me, until we were only a few inches away from eachother.
Then he looked down at me, a wicked smile spread across his lips. “Hello, Evalynne,” he said to me, sounding like his normal self again. “It’s so nice to see you again. Did you get my text messages?”
“Yes,” I uttered back to him, my knees beginning to feel shaky.
“Good, so you know that if you tell the police about me, Cole’s dead.” he stated, a haughty smirk on his face.
“That’s what you said the first time,” I reminded him. “But I told the police and Cole’s still alive.”
“That’s true, but I did some thinking and decided that it was best you told the police the first time after all. That way you’d be forced to move somewhere far away from your home. That way I’d have you all to myself. And it worked.” His eyes flashed with complacency and he ran the back of his hand down the side of my face gently.
It was an intimate thing for him to do, which made me feel sick. Michael was a true psychopath and I wanted nothing to do with him. I’d moved away from my house in order to protect myself from him. But I’d ended up falling right into his trap. He really was as smart as he said he was.
“Now Will’s finally out of the way so he won’t ruin everything like he did last time. Now it’s just you and I.” he said, his words menacing.
“What about Valerie?” I managed to choke out through my terror.
“I can get rid of her whenever I feel like it.” he replied. He said it so casually, as if killing her wasn’t a big deal at all. And to him, it wasn’t.
“But why?” I asked him. “Why do you want it to be just you and me? Don’t you hate me?”
“Why would I hate you?” he said to me, as if this were a crazy idea.
“Because I’m in love with your brother,” I retorted. If Shaun could stand up to Michael, then so could I.
His eyes filled with fury and his hands balled up into tight fists at his sides. “But you don’t love him anymore. After all, he never loved you. He hit you. He even tried to kill you.”
“So did you,” I pointed out.
“Only because Will tricked you into thinking that you loved him. He does that a lot to completely innocent girls. Most of them fall for it too. But then he ends up hurting them and they realize what he really is. A monster. Those who still believe he’s a good person have no business existing.”
No wonder Will had bipolar depression. He’d spent his whole life growing up with a basketcase. That wasn’t his fault though. It was Michael’s. “The only monster here is you.” I remarked. I was sick and tired of Michael saying whatever the h*** he wanted to me. I was sick and tired of not fighting back.
“I’m simply trying to make this world a better place, Evalynne. I’m protecting it from all of the bad people out there. The people like my brother. He thinks that turning himself into the police will help to make him a better person, but he’s wrong. He knows what an awful person he is and he knows that there’s nothing he can do to fix it. He’s just in a state of denial.”
“That’s not true!” I cried, although I couldn’t help but wonder if this was really how Will felt. If so, then it was all due to Michael’s constant cruelty towards him.
“Ben?” I heard Valerie say as the door to the bathroom opened once again. She walked over to the stall we were in, seeing him standing so close to me. This obviously made her angry. “Oh,” she murmured. “Hello, Evalynne,”
“Valerie,” I remarked bitterly.
“Come on, Mikey,” she said to Michael. “Ashton and Addison are waiting for us.”
“Alright,” he replied. He turned back to look at me, handing my cell phone back to me. “Just remember what I told you. You tell the police about us, Cole dies…and Will finds out what you two did.” He smirked at me as a blush spread across my cheeks. “Don’t think I won’t know if you do either, because trust me, I’ll know. I’m a very intelligent person, Evalynne. You just remember that.”
And then he turned on his heel and followed Valerie out of the bathroom.

Author's Note: I have some videos based off of this series posted on Youtube if you're interested in checking them out. My username is LexiWrites, so go ahead and check them out if you wanna (: