Third chapter, coming right on up! All of your reviews are too sweet. Keep em' coming!
I'm planning on updating daily for as long as possible. Right now, I've got an outline, and unless something very unexpected forces itself into my mind, this fic will have approximately 13 chapter, minus the prologue and the epilogue. So altogether 15. I've written up to Chapter Four, I think, but finals are this week, so I can't really focus on writing too much. I've been trying to write a chapter a day, and as long as that keeps happening, the updates will keep coming daily.
Anyways, enough of my useless ranting. Continue on.
Summary: McKinley High goes on lockdown with Marley and Kitty stuck in the choir room together. Karley.
Characters: Marley R. and Kitty
Rating: T
THREE DAYS AFTER
There was a sharp knocking at the door, and a nurse poked her head in, her smile fake and lip-glossed. "Miss Rose?" She asked, her voice harsh on Marley's ears.
"Yes?" She asked, her voice feeble and tired.
"You have a visitor," she said and smiled briefly. Marley's heart leapt for the fraction of a second. Could it be Kitty? Or Jake? Or her Mom?
Reality came crashing back in an instant when the same uniformed man strode into her room. He was wearing the same uniform as the other day, his hair brown and tousled against his pale skin. "Good morning, Miss Rose," he said, seemingly in a better mood than yesterday.
"Morning," Marley said, her voice listless.
The man sat down in a chair in front of her that she hadn't even noticed and pulled out his tape recorder, clicking it on with his thumb. "Now, Miss Rose, we have some more questions," he said, crossing his legs and retrieving his notepad.
"Alright," Marley said as the nurse pushed her hospital bed up to a seating position.
"I know that some of these questions are repeats from the ones we asked you yesterday, but we want you to answer them as quickly and efficiently as possible, alright?"
"Alright," Marley said again.
"Good." The man seemed pleased and clicked his pen. "Now… what is your name?"
"Marley Rose," Marley said without hesitation. What was the point of this?
"What grade are you in at McKinley high?"
"I'm a sophomore. A tenth grader," she said, playing with a rubber band on her wrist.
"Where were you precisely when the shootings started?"
"It was a passing period," Marley explained, shrugging. Her mind transported her back to that horrific moment, but she banished the thought from her head. Thinking about it would only make her lose it even more. She briefly remembered her breakdown last night. She woke up at about 1 AM in the morning, gasping with tears streaming down her face. It had taken her twenty minutes to stop sobbing, and she hadn't slept again. "I was late to class."
The man nodded and made careful note of this. "Did you follow standard escape procedure?" He asked, his voice carefully monotone.
"What?" Marley asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.
The man sighed and rolled his eyes. "Standard escape procedure, Miss Rose. Keep calm, walk, don't run, that sort of thing?"
"Oh," Marley said, tapping her fingers against the hospital blanket. "I-not really," she said, remembering her mad dash through the halls. "But no one was!" She claimed to her defense, watching the man's eyebrows shoot up. The halls had been filled with people running and panicking blindly, with people dashing through the corridors, their footsteps echoing against the concrete.
"Aha," the man said, and Marley felt her temper flare. Let him be in that situation, see how he reacts. He closed his notepad and uncrossed his legs, staring at Marley with a grim expression. "Miss Rose, are you aware of who did the actual shooting?"
"N-no," she said, her heart skipping a beat. Oh, she would love to know who had caused the shooting, who had caused the ruination of her entire life.
"Interesting," the man muttered and wrote something down in his notepad. Marley bit her lip, suddenly nervous. "Do you have any clue who it might be?"
"No," Marley said instantly. "I didn't recognize any of the voices that were talking." Except for one, a small voice in her head whispered, but she silenced it.
"Do you have any ideas of their motive?" The man asked, pressing further. Marley crossed her arms in a subtle display of defiance and shook her head.
"I don't even know who they are!" She insisted, but the man simply sat back.
"I asked you if you knew if they had a motive, not who they were, Miss Rose," he said, his voice carefully soft.
"I don't know," Marley said, thinking wildly. "I-Maybe they were bullied?" She hazarded a guess. The man nodded.
"Precisely," he said, his voice clipped. Marley relaxed slightly, but tensed back up again when he continued to speak. "Miss Rose, how long would you say the pauses between the shots were?"
"Not too long," Marley said carefully. "It changed. Sometimes there'd be a few minutes in between, sometimes about twenty. Sometimes it'd just be… like machine gun firing." She put her head in her hands and sighed. There were a few moments where she'd thought there was silence, but then...
"Did you notice anything strange before the shooting began?" The man cleared his throat faintly and looked at her with an inquisitive expression. "Suspicious figures, or anything?"
"No," Marley said, although she herself was not sure. "I don't remember, really. But nothing stood out." The man nodded.
"Miss Rose, have you spoken to any other students upon arriving at the hospital?"
"No," Marley said. Why would she? They never cared for her. "I don't want to."
The man leaned back even further, an expression of genuine sympathy rushing across his features, gone in a second. "Why not? They're your peers, after all."
"It's just.." Marley shifted uncomfortably. "I was never very popular."
"How long have you been at this school?" He asked, now truly curious.
"I came here this year," Marley explained, shrugging. She hated questions. She hated being asked questions. She hated everything.
"Why weren't you very popular?" The man asked, and all false pretenses of sympathy were gone, the only things remaining cold, hard, curiosity.
"My mother was the school lunch lady," she said, her voice reduced to nothing but a mere whisper.
"Ah," the man remarked. "Your…"
"Mother," Marley whispered, finishing the sentence for him. He nodded and looked at the girl, who seemed quite broken. Something in him seemed to snap, and he bowed his head and got out of the chair, turning off the tape recorder.
"Miss Rose?" He said, and Marley looked up at him. "I'm done for today." Marley smiled flatly, though there was no real joy behind it.
"Okay," she said simply.
He held out his hand for her to shake, and she looked at it for a total of about five seconds before raising her own and shaking the man's hand briefly, giving him a curt nod. He nodded at her once, then turned around and walked towards the door, turning around before he reached it. "Oh, and Miss Rose?"
"Yes?" Marley asked, still staring at the spot where he had once sat.
"Please, go talk to someone." It wasn't a plea for his company, for the police. It was a personal plea. Marley looked up at him and nodded once.
Seemingly satisfied with her answer, he opened the door and let it close behind him. Marley sighed and rolled over in bed, feeling yet another headache beginning to pound at her skull. It was useless. It was all useless. She never wanted to talk to another person again. She wasn't worth it.
She shivered and wished for warmth.
Marley closed her eyes and wanted to sleep, to make up for the restless night she had had. She wanted to sleep without the nightmares, without the choir room coming back to haunt her. She wanted to sleep so badly, to sleep and never wake up again.
"I can't do this anymore," she whispered, her voice hoarse and stuck in her throat.
And she couldn't.