“Go on Verone, the sooner you do it the sooner we can all get out of here! Or are you too chicken?” Trey made Verone so angry but if she wanted to fit in she was just going to have to suck it up and go for it.

  All her life Verone had just been trying to fit in. She did everything she could, hung out with every group there was; but she fit into none of them. So when her mum had been transferred, Verone couldn’t believe her luck. She was being offered a chance, a chance to finally fit in, and she had taken it. But where she now found herself wasn’t where she had been hoping to get at all.

“I'm no chicken,” she spat out the lie, trying to make it sound believable.

“Then what are you waiting for?” Chelsea asked. Chelsea was the leader of their group.; a cold and heartless ruler.

“I'm just wondering what the best way to break in would be.” Verone lied again. The lies came so easy nowadays.

“The back door genius, it’s an abandoned house. Just open the door, walk in and find the flag. Then when you get out, you’ll be one of us.” Chelsea said the words easily and Verone wondered how good Chelsea was at lying.

Verone sighed. There was something different about the way they were all acting. They were more persistent for her to do this than they usually would have been. She bit her lip. Maybe she was just being paranoid.

Go on, she said to herself. You can do this. Your one step away from everything you’ve ever wanted. Verone started to move towards the house.

Trey began to make whooping noises and throughout the whole group there were mutters of ‘finally’ and ‘at last’. This only made Verone more determined, and with one final look at the group, she entered Daylight Manor.

The door creaked as Verone pushed it open. How cliché, she thought. She took another step into the house. It should have been scary. It should have made Verone want to run screaming from the place, but it didn’t.

“There’s nothing here to be afraid of Verone.” She spoke the words aloud to comfort herself. “Think about it practically. Chelsea and Trey and all that lot came in here to hide the stupid flag in the first place so clearly it’s not dangerous.” Verone lowered her voice to little more than a whisper. “Besides, this is your chance to make friends, to not be lonely anymore.” She wiped a tear that had silently begun rolling its way down her cheek away. She shook herself and continued walking into the house. She walked down the long hall in front of her and then came to a staircase. Knowing Trey, the flag would be hidden as far into the house as he could get.

“I’m going to kill you when I get out of here Trey.” She muttered. The stairs where solid and Verone didn’t worry about them breaking. She had one thing in her mind and that was ‘this is your chance’. She got to the top of the stairs and breathed a sigh of relief. Now that she had done it, she realised how fast her heart had been racing. Verone looked around. To her left was another flight of stairs, to her right there was a long corridor. The corridor, Verone thought. No way would Trey be bothered enough to go all the way up. She started to walk down the corridor.

Suddenly the floorboards above her head creaked. It could have been anything, she spoke the words in her mind, not trusting herself to speak aloud. Then there was the sound of footsteps. Verone hardly dared to breathe. Someone was definitely in the house with her. She slowly began to move back down the corridor to the stairs. Her hand touched the banister, but Verone was frozen. The house was silent again. Verone shivered and her breathing was shaky. Was it all in my head, she wondered.

Then the sound of feet descending the second flight of stairs made Verone scream. There was a whooshing noise, like the sound the wind makes when you open the car window when you’re driving very fast. And suddenly there was a boy standing in front of her. His eyes glowed red and his skin was as pale as snow.

But that wasn’t what Verone was focused on. What she was focused on was the knife he held in his hand; the knife that was slowly being raised towards her. Verone screamed again but was silenced as soon as the blade entered her stomach. Verone began to fall backwards. She made no noise as she died. But even before she hit the first step of the stairs, all she could think of was that the boys eyes were no longer red; they were a bright blue.

And they were crying.