ANOTHER FISH HIT THE GROUND AND FLOPPED UNTIL JEREMY PICKED IT UP. Charlie sighed, slightly giggling as she watched him struggle to put the fish in one of the tiny bowls in front of them. "Will you please stop killing the fish? We only have a limited number of these before we have to go buy more."

They were setting up things for the carnival that night that Caroline was in charge of setting up. Since she was in the hospital and unable to do her job, that made her freak out and make everyone else do it. She wanted to make sure that it was perfect, and as much as the Lockwood girl loved the blonde girl, she could be a bit of a contrl freak, especially when she was not there to do it all herself.

"It's not dead," he protested before gesturing to the moving fish in the bowl that was a little lopsided as he swam in circles. Even though it was technically happy, it did not seem very happy to be so. "See? It's all swimming and happy."

"Barely," she argued, rolling her eyes.

As she dropped another fish into one of the bowls using her net, he responded with a playfully bitter expression, "Well, not everyone is an expert in fish scooping like you are."

"It did require years of vigorous training," she told him sarcastically because it was not that hard to not dump the fish onto the ground. "I mean, I guess I can't expect you to not hold the freaking net upside down!"

"You yelling at me is not helping!" he shouted back as he failed to scoop another goldfish out of the really big tank that they had.

Before she could retort, Stefan walked over to them with a small bottle in his hand. Charlie furrowed her eyebrows, examining it as he got closer, and she realized that it was vervain. As he approached, he asked, "Am I interrupting something?"

"Just Jeremy starting his career as a fish murderer," she replied, causing the Gilbert boy to glare at her with a frustrated expression. She looked to the Salvatore man as she placed a fish in one of the last bowls. "Hey, you want one? Jeremy didn't kill as many as I thought he would, so we're gonna have some left over."

"I'm good," he answered, waving her off. He did not really have the time to take care of an animal, no matter how low maintenance it was.

She sighed before crouching down next to the tank where about ten goldfish were swimming around, scared that they were about to be scooped up at any moment. It was like the goldfish apocalypse. "Okay, little guys, it looks like you're coming with me."

"Hey, what if I want some?" the brunette boy questioned with raised eyebrows.

"So you can have the fish homicide you always dreamed of?" she asked before shaking her head as the vampire smiled at them. "No way. Back away from the fish."

Jeremy sighed, sticking his tongue out at her. "Will you just let Stefan talk? The poor guy doesn't want to stand there and listen to you yap. He's got stuff to do."

"Fine. Stefan, what do you want?" she asked kind of rudely with raised eyebrows.

"Hello to you too," the boy greeted with a sarcastic smile before turning to Jeremy and holding out the bottle so that they could see it. "Elena told me to give you this. It's vervain. It protects you from being compelled by vampires, and when you digest it, it keeps them from feeding on you too." As the Gilbert boy nodded, Stefan looked to the Lockwood girl. "Charlie, do you need some too?"

She shook her head and waved him off. "Nah, my mom slips it into my drinks every meal and thinks I don't notice. Before I knew it was vervain, I thought she was putting poison in my coffee."

"Oh," the Salvatore man muttered with furrowed eyebrows.

"Oh, there's JJ. See you," she told them, and she did not give them a chance she reply before she bounded off toward the blonde girl that was walking into the school building. The blonde turned around and smiled when she saw her as she asked, "How is my lovely girlfriend doing?"

The Martin girl looked a little confused as slightly concerned when she noted, "You're in a good mood."

""Well, I just put three hundred goldfish into tiny little tanks so that they can be won and given to teenagers that will forget to feed them so that they die," the brunette informed her.

JJ giggled a little bit at that. "And why wouldn't you be happy after that?"

"I know, and I haven't even gotten to the good part yet," she told her excitedly and jokingly before continuing, "We had, like, ten left over after Jeremy tried to throw a bunch on the ground so that they air-drowned, so now I have ten new pets."

"I see a pet store date in our future," the blonde girl sang as she opened the door for her girlfriend.

The Lockwood girl chuckled, taking a step into the building dramatically. "See? This is why I love you. You just get me."

"I love you too," the Martin girl responded with a grin, and the brunette girl loved the feeling in her stomach that she got when she looked into the bright blue eyes of the girl.

"Hey," Charlie muttered with a playfully seductive voice. She grabbed the blonde's hands and began pulling her toward the place where people on ladders were hanging banners from the ceiling. "Wanna...hang decorations with me?"

JJ giggled as she winked at her girlfriend. She joked, "In front of all these people? How scandalous."

☾❄☽

ABOUT TWELVE HOURS LATER, THE GIRLS WERE SITTING on a bench, eating ice cream at the carnival. Charlie was very proud with herself for somehow pulling all of it together with Caroline yelling at her through the phone. Bonnie and Elena had agreed to actually work the carnival since she had spent almost five hours after school getting it together.

As she licked her vanilla soft serve, the blonde girl looked over to her girlfriends and raised her eyebrows. "We haven't gotten to talk too much lately. How are you doing with your dad and everything?"

"Surprisingly well," she answered with a shrug, thinking back to the awkward moments spent at home where she had to sit at the same table with Mason and her brother, both alpha males that think they were the men of the household. "My Uncle Mason's in town, which sucks because he's almost as much of a dick as my dad was."

"So, I don't wanna meet this guy?" JJ asked, remembering the dirty looks that Richard Lockwood had shot her at the pageant and other social events, especially the ones hosted in his own home.

The brunette girl responded, "Probably not."

"Noted," the Martin girl mumbled, adjusting the napkin that was wrapped around the cone so that she could get to it since she had gone through all of the ice cream on the top. All of a sudden, Charlie tensed up, her ears twitching as she listened in to something that she had caught in passing. The blonde girl furrowed her eyebrows. "What's wrong?"

"I have to go. I'm so sorry," she muttered, taking one last bite of her dessert before passing it off to her girlfriend who was still a little bit shocked. The brunette girl was not sure what she was hearing, but it did not sound good. If it was what she thought it was, then it most definitely was not good.

JJ was really confused. She furrowed her eyebrows and looked in all of the directions just in case she could somehow see what was going on around them. "What? What's happening?"

"I think it's Caroline," the Lockwood girl told her before running off. She sprinted to where she thought the sounds were coming from, and her eyes widened when she found the people she heard behind the bathrooms.

Damon and Caroline were standing there, their bodies touching, and the Salvatore man had a wooden stake in his hand, ready to plunge it into her back. He whispered, "It's the only way."

"Get the hell off her!" Charlie ordered, and she did not really process anything that was happening around them. All that she cared about was the fact that he was trying to kill her friend, so she rushed over to him and pulled him off the blonde. She could not push him very far since he was stronger than she was, but he enhanced strength helped her a little bit. She whipped around to make sure Caroline was okay, and that was when she saw the blood dripping down her mouth. She looked to the side, and she suddenly noticed the body on the back of a truck behind her. She put two and two together, and came to a realization. "Caroline, you're a—"

"Stefan!" Damon groaned out, cutting her off, and she saw the younger brother pushing the jackass away and knocking the stake out of his hand.

Elena, who must have arrived with Stefan, tried to grab her friend's shoulder and comfort her. Caroline wrenched herself out of her grip and pulled a confused Charlie to her side, blocking her a little bit like she was trying to protect her. "Get away from me! You killed me!"

"No, no, no, no, Caroline, That wasn't me. You know that. That was Katherine," the Gilbert girl protested, and that jsut shocked the werewolf even more.

"No! Then why did she look like you?" Caroline quizzed through sobs as she looked down at her body and clothes that were covered in blood. "And why, why did she do this to me?"

That was when Charlie intervened, looking at Elena with raised eyebrows and stopping the fight going on. "Wait, wait, wait. Are we talking doppelganger Katherine? The one that looks exactly like you? When the hell did that happen?"

"It's a long story," she answered before turning to her boyfriend. "Stefan, we have got to get her inside."

"It's all right, Caroline. Come with me," he assured the blonde girl, reaching out his hand to her while keeping his eye on Damon to make sure that he did not try to pull anything else while his back was turned.

Charlie rubbed her friends arm, still in shock from everything that was happening. She could not believe that Caroline was a vampire, but her worries were no important at that moment. Helping her friend was. Damon pointed out, "She will die. It's only a matter of time."

"Yeah, maybe so, but it's not gonna happen tonight," the younger brother responded as Caroline hesitantly took his hand. He was still facing the man that was trying to kill her.

Damon did not answer. He just used his vampire speed to pick up the stake from the ground and run over to them. He was about to plunge the wood into the Forbes girl's heart when Elena stepped in between them, and he paused. "Damon, she's my friend." Damon hesitated, staring at Elena who refused to move. Then he dropped his arm.

"Whatever happens, it's on you," he told the Gilbert girl.

He backed up, and they all turned around, ready to head into the bathrooms and help her out when they saw the Bennett witch standing there in shock. She called, "Caroline?" She examined the girl and saw the blood on her face, her eyes widening in realization. "No, you're not. You can't be." She walked over quickly and grabbed her friend's arm. She must have had some sort of witch feeling because he faced contorted in horror. Then, she saw the body. "Oh, God."

"Bonnie..." the blonde girl trailed off, not sure what to say to her vampire-hating friend. Elena just pushed the three of them along, staying behind to tak to the witch and explain to her what happened. Stefan and Charlie led Caroline into the bathroom, cleaning her face as she sobbed uncontrollably. "She hates me! Bonnie hates me."

"She'll get over it. She's just in shock like the rest of us," the Lockwood girl assured her as Stefan passed her more paper towels. She dunked them into the running water of the sink and brought them back up to the new vampire's face.

Caroline did not seem to hear her, at least not very well. "And what about Matt? What am I gonna do about Matt?"

"Sh. One thing at one time," Stefan told her, trying to calm her down as he pushed her hair out of the way. "Let's get this blood off, come on."

"I'm a murderer. I'm a monster," the Forbes girl cried as she thought about the innocent boy out there on the table. Charlie could somewhat empathize with her because of what happened with Jenny, but she was pretty sure that Caroline was freaking out more than she had.

The older vampire continued with his efforts to get the crimson substance off of her while assuring her, "Listen, your emotions are heightened right now. It's part of the transformation. it's completely normal. I promise you. Okay?"

"Why does this keep happening to my face?" she exclaimed, turning around so that she did not have to see the veins appear under her eyes in the mirror. The Lockwood girl had no idea what to say, so she just rubbed her shoulders, trying to comfort her.

"Look at me, look at me, look at me! Caroline, Caroline! Look at me! Look at my face, look at my face!" Stefan ordered, and when the girls looked up, his eyes had veins under them. He looked hungry and desperate for blood. "You see that? When you feel the blood rushing, you tell yourself that you're going to get through it, that you're strong enough. Yes, yes, no matter how good it feels to give yourself over to it, you fight it off, you bury it. Watch me, watch me." He look a deep breath, and his face was back to normal within seconds. "It's the only way you're gonna survive this thing. Try." She took a few deep breaths, and it worked for her as well. "That's good."

The blonde girl just kept crying as she leaned into her friend's embrace. Charlie did not even care if she got blood on her becuase her friend was going through something a lot bigger than that. "Why did Katherine do this to me?"

"I don't know, I wish I did. Hey, hey, I promise you I will not let anything happen to you," he told her, looking through one of the holes in the hug so that he could see her face. She was breathing really heavily, but the comforting was starting to help. It took a few moments, but realization finally hit the brunette girl.

Her best friend was a vampire.