December 31, 2019; LAST DIARY ENTRY

Dear diary,

it seems that we've come to our last page, you and I. You've been my faithful companion for the last several years and I've been able to tell you things I couldn't tell my parents or my friends. Sometimes you could listen, with no ears, better than humans who have two. But as a new decade descends upon us, as I leave the only life I've ever known in the old one and enter a new stage, or maybe even a completely new life, I feel as if the two of us should say our goodbyes as well.

I will leave you at the bottom of a chest in the attic in my mothers house, just like generations and generations of women in my family before me have done, hoping my brothers grandchildren will eventually find you. It seems selfish to bring you with me, because I don't know if I'm going to have children of my own, or if I'm even able to. I don't know what happens now, but I do know some girl two lifetimes from now will feel weird and confused and angry and for quite some time, you're going to be her only comfort.

I hope you'll serve her well, because you hide my rawest, most darkest and hidden emotions. Ones I haven't shown even to him.

I don't know what time will bring for me, or if I even have much time to begin with. This is how far the story goes, always. The rest is a mystery, a Pandora's box, but one I can't wait to start unraveling.

I know my parents will never be able to understand, I'm not even sure I fully understand, and I know this is going to scar them for life, but I hope they find a way to move on. I hope this doesn't break them, but only makes them stronger. Maybe we meet in some other life where I'll be able to use all of my excuses. But in this one, this is how it has to be.

There's one thing I do know, though. As long as we're together, everything is going to be alright.

"Elena!" I hear my mothers voice in front of my bedroom door. "Are you up? You don't want to be late on your first day!" she says cheerfully, her voice like a melody from my oldest memories.

She knocks on my brothers bedroom door before barging in. "Jeremy!" she screams his name, completely horrified. "You're not even up yet!" I'm not sure if she's saying or asking. She steps into his room, I know she does by the annoyingly crunchy sound her slippers make while she walks. And then, at one point, it stops. I can hear her exhale through a wall - I imagine her nostrils flaring and steam coming out of them as if she were a dragon. "Jeremy, what did I just step into?"

I groan and pull my covers over my head, wishing for everything around me to disappear, wishing I could travel through time to the beginning of summer.

Wishing for something doesn't make it real, of course, so I push my covers away in order to face my cruel, cruel destiny. Senior year. A year when every senior in Mystic Falls is going to realize they've wasted three years of their life on studying, junk food and lame ass television, get drunk couple times more than they're supposed to, maybe even get high, have sex with a wrong person, pretend they don't hate 90% of their classmates, feel nostalgic and cry over the fact they've probably messed up their entire future for the reasons listed above. At least that's, you know, what happens in movies.

I crawl out of my bed and head over to the bathroom. It's not like my high school experience has been bad. I'm in honors roll, I'm in a debate team and no, it's not as lame as it sounds, I'm in the cheer squad but only because Caroline made me join. My parents own The Grill, which is the only hip place in town where everyone, literally everyone, meet up, and where every party is held. Which means I can't have a beer or kiss a boy without my father watching me from the other side of the room, or my mother trying to shove french fries down my throat. The good news is that there are not that many boys in Mystic Falls my age I would even want to kiss - I can count them on fingers of a single hand. And I don't mind french fries being shoved down my throat that much. Keep 'em coming!

I squeeze out some strawberry flavored toothpaste, because I'm still 8 years old, and push my toothbrush into my mouth. I would say staying up late last night was a big mistake, which is what my brain's trying to tell me, but the memory of him smiling makes up for it. We were supposed to discuss our post-summer future, but we got distracted by more important things.

If this was the real world, and not an angst ridden web of relationships where every untold truth counts as betrayal, I could just come up to my friends and say 'Hey, remember that guy, the one you said looks like he's torturing puppies for fun? Well, I'm hooking up with him!' If I actually told my friends that, they would probably send me to some kind of mental evaluation and ostracize me from society. I can even see some kind of intervention being thrown, because Caroline is dramatic like that.

I get dressed pretty fast, partly because I've picked out yesterday what I'm going to wear today, partly because women who spend hours and hours deciding what to wear are as much of a myth as mermaids are.

When I go downstairs I make a mental note that my brother is still not down, which means he's not even close to being ready. And I'm supposed to be driving him to school.

"Good morning," I say groggily, my brain still half asleep.

"Morning sunshine!" my mom beams up when she sees me slugging towards the stool. "What do you want for breakfast? Cereal? Waffles? Bacon?" my mother is a breakfast Santa. You want it? Just name it and she will mix it up in a matter of seconds.

"Just a cup of coffee, please," I manage to fake a smile for her. She looks a bit disappointed, with a horrified my-children-are-all-grown-up expression plastered all over her face, but she doesn't fight me.

"Elena," my dad says my name as if this is the first time he has actually noticed me since I came downstairs. Well, it probably is, since this is the first time he has pulled his head out of the newspapers. "Will you be able to help out at The Grill today after school?" he asks sweetly.

I sigh internally. I don't want to work at my first day of school. I want to get slushies with my friends and gossip about who was seen doing who over the summer. But I also don't want to seem like an inconsiderate bitch. My parents gave me everything I ever wanted in life and the only thing they ask in return is that I help at The Grill from time to time.

"Sure," I try to fake a smile. "Can I finish early, though? There's this party tonight, we're doing something to mark the beginning of our senior year, and I would really like to be there."

"Of course," he pulls his lips into a tight smile.

"Mom! Where's my green hoodie?" Jeremy yells from upstairs. Great, he's still not ready.

I give my mom a pointed look before taking a single apple from the fruit bowl. "Tell him I'll be in the car. If he doesn't come out in ten, I'm leaving without him," I shoot a warning before disappearing out of the kitchen. Before she has time to retort, to make an excuse for him.

I swing our front door open and as soon as I step outside, someone grabs my wrist and pulls me away, my body flailing in the air like I'm a rag doll, my knees all jelly and weak. Just as I'm about to scream, a palm appears in front of my mouth, and my back bump against a wall on the other side of the house, away from the wandering eyes.

My mind produces such a silly thought - there are better ways to die than this.

"Elena," I hear my name through a whisper said by a sweet, angelic voice and my mind is instantly put at ease. I know I'm not going to die, at least not right now and not by his hand.

I open my eyes and they meet his. He slowly removes his hand away from my mouth once he's sure I'm not going to scream.

I clench my fingers into a fist and punch him in the chest. "You scared the crap out of me," I hiss at him through my teeth, very quietly in case there's anyone nearby.

"First of all, ouch," he places his palm over the spot on which my fist landed. "Second of all, I had to see you."

My heart skips a beat. "Oh, did you now?" I try to play it cool, but inside I'm as sappy as a Celine Dion song.

He shrugs, his lower lip twitching. "I was in the neighborhood."

I cock my eyebrow at him. "You live on the other side of the town."

He smiles. Not fully, he never smiles fully like normal people do. The corners of his lips go up only halfway, where they freeze. He places his open palm against the wall, leaning in. "You like to torture me, don't you?"

I bite my lower lip, tearing my eyes away from him. With his other hand, he wraps a wandering strain of my hair around his finger, tucking it behind my ear where it belongs. "This is only practice, one we desperately need, since this is the only way we'll be able to meet."

I keep my look pointed down. "I wish things could be different," I say regretfully.

"Maybe one day, they will be."

"I'll try to ease my friends into it.."

"No," he says firmly. I look up at him through my lashes. "I don't want them to ever look at you the way they look at me. I'm not going to be your demise."

"Elena!" Caroline and Bonnie scream my name in unison when they see me on the parking lot. Jeremy huffs, annoyed, and when they start running towards me, he goes his own way.

I outstretch my arms just seconds before both of them crash into me. I wrap my arms around them and pull them both into a tight hug. I haven't seen my friends all summer. Sure, we texted and talked over the phone, but that's not as same as being in their company.

"I've missed you guys so much!" I squeal, my voice high pitched. I'm pretty sure they could have heard me in Texas.

"We've missed you too!" Caroline says for both of them.

"Girl, you got so tanned," Bonnie notices once she pulls away from me.

"How was camp? Any cute boys? Spill!" Caroline cuts right to the chase.

We start walking towards the school entrance. Everyone stare at us like we're something alien, something out of this world. It's been like that for four years now and I can't wait for it to stop. It's been Caroline's plan all along, for the three of us to climb on the top of the pyramid, on the top of the food chain. I didn't care much for it, so I decided to indulge Caroline, let her do to my social life whatever she was doing to hers. She enjoys it, making plans on how to control the masses. Honestly, if there's ever the question of national security, Obama should just hire Caroline to calm people down.

But looking at him, this wonderful boy I've spent last two months discovering, discovering that everything I've heard and thought about him is a lie, a lie I was so hasty to believe in, makes me glad I've let Caroline take the ropes of my social life. I wish I could change some things, but at least I wasn't lonely.

"Remember Bryan? The one with the pimples?" I say, making things up as I go.

Both of them nod excitedly.

"Well, he's no pimples, all muscles now." I lie. I've never lied to my friends before. Bryan still has a whole bunch of pimples all over his face and plays the flute. Things actually couldn't be worse for a sickly looking teenage boy.

"Did you hit that?" Caroline wiggles her eyebrows.

I roll my eyes. "No, I did not hit that. I was in camp. We have strict rules there and they monitor us all the time." Not really. Maybe the younger kids, but the older kids are pretty much free to do whatever they want. They roamed our rooms for alcohol every once in a while, but that's that. Quite irresponsible, actually. We could have had thrown orgies few times a week and no one would know a thing. Bryan would probably love that.

We pass by the rest of our cheer squad. They give us a weird look, like we broke a cheer code and disgraced our whole school or something, before bursting into bubbly laughter. We greet them with smiles, but keep going our own way. We're not that tight with them.

"This reminds me," Caroline groans. "Rebekah's been spreading some nasty rumor about you."

I give her a surprised look. "Oh?" I always try to be nice to everyone. I try not to give other people a reason to hate me or spread vicious rumors about me. So yeah, this surprises me, because I barely spoke a word to Rebekah in all the time I've known her. We mostly smile and nod politely at each other and she never seemed like a kind of a person who would just make things up for amusement of other people. I didn't even know I'm on her radar.

"She's telling, like, literally everyone, that you've been hooking up with that freak.." she furrows her brows, trying to conjure a thought. "Uh, what's his name?" she looks at Bonnie for help, so I shift my attention to my other friend.

Bonnie seems uncomfortable with saying it, so his name comes out of her mouth through a whisper. As if she believes that by saying his name three times in a row, she will summon him and it's going to be all her fault when he murders us with an ax.

"Stefan Salvotore."

Everything around me freezes. My brain freezes as well. That's my usual reaction to him, but this time it's not as pleasant as it usually is. This time, it's terrifying.

I have to maintain my cool. "I see. And when did this supposed hookup happen?"

"During the summer."

"While I was at camp?"

"See, that's what I said," Caroline continues. "But she swears she had seen the two of you at some gas station near Atlanta while trying to catch some wifi."

Shit, that's right. Our parents were supposed to pick us up, but my mom called me on my cell saying there's this rush at The Grill, so they won't make it that weekend and his parents didn't come for the reasons he never talked about. So instead of staying at camp, we pretended that my parents are still coming and that his intended on picking him up in the first place, sat on his bike and went on a roadtrip. And we did stop at a gas station near Atlanta.

Rebekah wasn't spreading rumors about me, she was simply telling the truth.

"While I was at camp?" I repeat, this time more pointedly, trying to get the point across.

"Relax," Caroline laughs it off. "I never believed my sweet, innocent Elena would ever hook up with a blood sucking monster of the night like him."

Those words coming out of her mouth make me want to punch her in the middle of the face. I'm usually not an aggressive person and I've put up with a lot of Caroline's negative feedback, but hearing her talk that way about him makes my blood boil. She doesn't even know him. All she knows is what she's been able to derive from seeing him for two seconds a day in a school hallway.

"Anyway, meet you after school?" she asks as if she just hasn't dragged someone's bloody corpse across the school hallway. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

"Can't," I pull away from my friends. "I promised my dad I would help out at The Grill today."

"Ooooh," she swoons, wiggling her eyebrows at me. "Is Matt going to be there?"

"Well, her work there, so what do you think Caroline?" I snap at her.

She scrunches her nose, but it's not her reaction I notice first, it's Bonnie's. Sure, she looks surprise, but mostly she looks.. she looks as if she knows. I push that thought away from my mind. How could she possibly know?

"Woah, what's your problem?"

I have to calm down, I can't act as if her words actually bother me. She's can't know. None of them can. Stefan doesn't want them to, for my sake. He doesn't want to ruin my senior year. He thinks people would shove me in the same box with him.

"Nothing. I forgot to pull the stick out of my ass after I woke up this morning. Sorry, won't happen again." Yeah, I'm chill. Chill, fun, cool, laid back Elena. "Pick me up for the party tonight?" I beam up, plastering a wide smile over my face.

She watches me closely for several seconds, trying to find out what's wrong with me, but once she convinces herself that's nothing to find, a smile appears on her face as well. "Of course."

When I finally arrive home, I'm smelly, tired and annoyed. I smell like a Happy Meal, but I don't feel particularly happy.

I need a shower, this instant, so I go straight for the bathroom.

"Hey princess," my brother calls from his room. I roll my eyes, wanting to strangle him for calling me that, but I walk over to his room anyway.

"What?"

"This came in the mail for you today," he throws a brown package at me, and I catch it, but only after it bumps against my chest and falls into my arms.

I squint at him. "Did you open it?"

He doesn't even pretend he's offended by me asking that question. "No. It's not cash."

"How do you know?"

He grins, but doesn't look at me. "I just know."

Weirdo. "Well, thanks."

"Whatever." He puts his earphones back on, and I move towards my intended destination.

I lock myself in the bathroom and start the water running. I'm going to have a long, mild bath with some kind of a girly scent and nothing's going to stop me. As the tub fills with water, I decide to open my package. I rip through the ugly, brown postal paper and dig through the bubbly wrapping, which I save for later. Who doesn't like popping bubbly wrapping?

I pull some kind of a book out of it. No, not a book - a diary. What is this, the 90's? There's a folded paper on top of it and when I take it in my hands and unfold it, I recognize the scent immediately - aunt Helen. That explains the diary, the woman is 80 years old. I start reading her neat, almost too perfect handwriting.

'Dear Elena, as you embark on this journey, one that's going to change your life forever, I send you what's for sure going to be your faithful and often only trustworthy companion. It's kind of a tradition for women in our family to keep a diary and I hope you will continue that tradition with a song in your heart. With love, aunt Helen.'

Oh. A tradition. I guess that's nice. But I don't think my senior year is going to be a life changing journey. And I don't think writing a diary is my thing. Which is why, when I go back to my room, I put it in the drawer of my writing desk where I dispose all gifts that were a nice gesture, but I'm never going to use.

When we arrive to the party, everyone are already drunk, but I don't really care. I'm just glad that for once the party isn't at The Grill, but in Tyler's lovely, cozy mansion, where I can drink and chat with people without my fathers eyes darting in my direction like poisonous arrows.

Bonnie stares me down once we crawl out of Caroline's Toyota. "Did your legs get longer?" she looks at my legs, protruding from a small, white skirt I've decided to wear simply because it creates a nice contrast to my skin.

Bonnie's the shortest out of three of us and she says that, standing next to us, she looks like a midget, and that her legs seem chubby in contrast to our long, lean ones. She's being silly, of course, but a girl can never help her insecurities.

"No!" I laugh as I throw my arm over her shoulder, pulling her closer to me.

"Gather up, ladies!" Caroline announces as if there's a whole army of us. She clears her throat, pink, shiny gloss shimmering on her lips. "We embark the journey known as our senior year, and I'll be damned if we don't make this our year the best one yet. We're gonna party, and drink, and dance, and mingle. Can I get one loud hell yeah!?"

I share a look with Bonnie, and all I can see in her eyes is hard determination not to laugh in Caroline's face. "Hell yeah!" we yell at the same time.

"Also," she grins at me, "This is the year Elena loses her V card."

My smile drops, but I stretch my lips in a condescending way, molding my expression into an unnatural grimace. "Elena's not losing anything."

"You can't go to college a virgin," she argues.

"Caroline, you have to stop obsessing over my love life."

She crosses her arms over her chest, pouting. "I don't understand why you don't give Matt a chance."

I shrug. "He's not my type." Honestly, Matt is the most boring effing person I've ever met. I've talked to him only few times in my life, and the only thing he talked about is how much time he spends in the gym, which is a lot.

She cocks her eyebrow in my direction, amused by my statement. "And what is your type?"

Stefan's picture flashes in front of my eyes. His sandy hair, warm eyes, that half smile of his that could conquer the world. The way my body fits into his perfectly, how I'm able to nestle myself in his arms like I'm a tiny, tiny bird.

"If I see him tonight, I'll let you know."

She rolls her eyes, which means that she has given up on the topic. We start walking towards the house. When we enter, I realize that there are couples all around us. Or at least people who have made a drunken decision to hook up.

Caroline rushes over to Tyler, who's chatting with a bunch of his football buddies, and plasters a wet, slippery kiss on his cheek. He seems to enjoy that, since he doesn't protest, but instead wraps his arm around her and pulls her into a kiss. Judging from the expression the other guys wear on their faces, they seem envious of him.

And they're not the only ones, I can feel jealousy growing inside of me as well, releasing its roots around my heart. Wherever I look, there are people kissing, exchanging affectionate looks, or just plainly making out.

I miss him. I wish he could be here with me. I wish we could walk in here, hand in hand like a normal couple, without anyone blinking an eye. Even if I took time and energy to explain the situation to my friends, I'm not sure he would allow me to.

"And then there were only two left," Bonnie stabs me in the hip with her elbow, a soft smile playing on her lips. But when I look at her, there's something else I see in her eyes. The similar envy and sadness I'm sure she can see in mine as well. "You want something to drink?" she asks, exhaling tiredly.

"Yeah, sure, whatever you're having."

She nods and moves towards the kitchen to get us drinks. Even though Tyler's house is huge, we're very well acquainted with its design, since we've been coming here long before he started throwing these wild parties whenever his parents are out of town.

When I estimate that the distance between me and my friends is wide enough, I take my phone out of my bag and start typing.

'Miss you. Wish you could be here.'

I type with such velocity in my fingers and click send faster than I thought humanly possible.

I count to ten, and my phone starts vibrating in my hands. He's fast, maybe even faster than I am. I imagine him sprawled across his bed, his phone resting on his chest, waiting for me to text or call or beg him to take me far, far away.

'I know the feeling.'

AN: Hello, and welcome to my new story. I hope you'll enjoy the journey ahead of us. I'm looking forward to taking it with you.

This story is basically an idea I had for a book, altered a bit to be more suitable for a Stelena fan fiction, but this is pretty much my test drive, so bare with me.