There may only be two of you, but y'all are the best readers! You review the chapters and make me feel good about my writing! I was really iffy about posting this, but now I know it's good. Thank you.
Nina Patterson died four days ago and people were still gossiping about who did it. I rode to school with Sophia and Jackson this morning because Noah had to go talk to the sheriff, and they were even talking about it. Jackson I understood, it wasn't exactly a secret they slept together, but Sophia wasn't even in high school yet and knew everything. I guess drama knew no grade level.
"Thanks for the ride," I said after Jackson parked in the student lot.
"Like I had a choice," he muttered before jogging away to join his jock friends.
Great talking to you, bro. It's good to know you hate me as much as everyone else in the family hates me. I was chewing my lip to pieces when I got my books out of my locker. I knew Audrey was right the other day when she said I wasn't trying either, but it was really hard to do. My mom died and they didn't even try to comfort me, they just expected me to be fine.
I reached up and grasped the moon pendant hanging around my neck. My mom had the sun that attached to it, she was even buried with it on. I felt the familiar burn behind my eyes and the tightness in my throat that told me I was about to have a complete breakdown. I slammed my locker and walked as quickly as I could around the corner of the school and slid down the wall, covering my mouth with my hand to hold in my sobs.
My whole life it was just me and my mom because dad walked out before I was born. Even as a kid, I knew to never ask about him –she would tell me when she was ready. That happened when I was twelve and she told me the whole truth about the entire situation. He didn't want to be a dad or believe that he even WAS my dad. The truth just brought us closer and made it even more devastating when I lost her.
"Hey, are you okay?" Audrey asked, sitting beside me against the wall.
"Yeah, we saw you exit stage right and thought we'd come check on you," Noah added, sitting on the other side of me.
"They hate me," I sobbed, not even trying to hide that I was crying. "They're my family and they hate me."
"They don't hate you, it's not possible to hate you," Audrey reassured, rubbing my shoulder affectionately.
"It's like I'm ruining their lives being here," I cried, tears still pouring down my face. "I lost my mom, my best friend, and it's like they're punishing me or something. I don't even know what I did."
Noah wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. I laid my head on his shoulder as Audrey rubbed my back and I tried to pull myself together. Having friends was really nice, I've never really had ones like these before.
I pulled myself back together a few minutes later and fixed my makeup. "Thanks, guys. I'm a mess, but I'm working on it."
Audrey just brushed it off and stood up, offering me and Noah her hands. She pulled us to her feet and we made our way over to Nina's memorial. All the things here were almost a fake as she was, handwritten notes stuck to every surface available. Teddy bears and flowers were all over the ground like she was a little kid or something.
"I miss you, Nina Bobina. Rest in Prada, Miranda," I read from one of the thousands of cards stuck to the fence line of Nina's memorial.
"Isn't that the girl Nina fat-shamed into some questionable Guatemalan liposuction?" Noah asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
"That sounds like our Nina," Audrey smiled, sarcasm dripping from every word.
Like we were all linked together, we looked over at the same time to see a woman with glasses and a tape recorder talking to Mr. Larson. She was asking about Nina's relationship with the other students and he was gushing about how "loved" she was by everyone. I heard Noah scoff and it took everything I had to not laugh out loud.
"Who's that?" I asked, not bothering to be quiet.
Like she heard me, the woman walked over to us with her tape recorder still held in her hand. "Hey, guys, I'm Piper Shaw. I'm doing a story for…"
"Autopsy of a Crime," Noah said suddenly. "Yeah, your show is completely addictive."
Now that he mentioned it, her voice did sound familiar. Sophia insisted on having the podcast plugged into the aux cord the entire way to school. It was interesting to her, but I would've chosen music over it. Maybe I just liked listening to The Smiths more...
"Thank you," Piper smiled
"Uh, I'm Noah Foster and this is Audrey and Gwen," Noah said quickly, obviously flustered by meeting her.
Piper eyed Audrey like she was trying to place her and I felt Audrey tense. "You look really familiar…"
"You probably saw my video…" Audrey added, not breaking her gaze.
She just nodded and went back to her original questions. "I'm trying to get past all the faux-BFF BS and get a clear picture of the real Nina Patterson. Did any of you know her?"
"Yeah," Audrey said, answering for all of us. "Nina was a stone-cold bitch who got what she deserved."
"That's pretty clear," Piper exclaimed, pushing her glasses up her nose in surprise. "Can I quote you on that?"
"No!" Noah and I exclaimed at the same time. But Noah kept talking, "No, she's just saying words."
Piper turned to me and eyed me curiously. "What about you? Do you have any thoughts on Nina and her murder?"
I shrugged indifferently and pulled my bag higher up onto my shoulders. "I just transferred this year, I didn't really know her. It's sad when anyone dies, it sucks that she doesn't get to live her life anymore."
That was the realest answer I could give without speaking ill of the dead. I saw Noah chomping at the bit to say something about her, but Jake's pissed voice broke through the dull chatter of mourners around us.
"Someone's ass is toast!"
"Uh, some other time I would love to tell you what I think," Noah said as Jake rushed over and grabbed him by the collar, holding him against the lockers.
"Noah!" he shouted, his face really close to Noah's.
"What's up, Jake?" he asked, trying to sound as normal as possible with Jake's knuckles pressed firmly against his larynx.
"Was it you, nerd? Was this payback for the lake?" he shouted, refusing to let go or back down.
Noah raised his brows, but I saw mischief in his eyes –whatever Jake was yelling about, the idiot totally did. "Was what payback?"
"My truck," he seethed, spit flying from his mouth dramatically. "It went viral!"
I pulled my phone out of my bag and saw that he was telling the truth. His big black overcompensation of a truck was all over my Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram feed. Someone wrote "doosh" on the side of it in red paint, but the misspelling made it a lot funnier. He looked like an illiterate dick, which he kind of was…
"Well, I mean, you know…" Audrey said, trying to remind him that he wasn't the only one with an embarrassing viral secret going around the school.
"Can it, les-beast!" Jake shouted, making me jump in surprise.
"Hey, leave him alone!" I shouted, grabbing Jake's arm and pulling it away from Noah's throat. "It's just paint, it'll wash off. Stop being a jerk! You don't even know for sure it was Noah."
Jake pulled up out his phone and shoved it in Noah's face instead. "You know anything about this?"
"No, but, you know, it is a sad statement of the decline of our public schools," Noah sassed, making me want to slap the back of his head in frustration.
"That's the wrong answer," Jake said, grabbing his shirtfront in both hands this time and lifting Noah's feet off the ground.
"Whoa!" Noah exclaimed, his voice flustered and gaspy. "I swear I didn't touch your truck!"
Jake slammed his back against the lockers once more before dropping him and walking way. "If I find out you were lying, I swear to God you are dead!"
Everyone went back to what they were doing as soon as the spectacle was over. I looked Noah over to make sure he was okay before slapping the back of his head. He winced and raised his brows, but his smile was understanding.
"Misspelling douche was an interesting choice," Audrey remarked after we started walking to our lockers from outside.
"Yeah, well, I should've used the spray stuff," Noah remarked, tossing his arm around my shoulder carelessly like usual. He wiggled his fingers in my face and said, "I got paint all over me, looked like Carrie at prom by the time I got home."
"You could've just been the bigger person and not tried to get revenge," I mused knowingly, handing him my backpack as I grabbed my books.
"There's no fun in being the bigger person, Gwendolyn," he replied, waggling his eyebrows at me playfully.
"My name's not Gwendolyn, it's Guinevere," I sighed, the two of us having this argument more times than I could count as Audrey watched passively from the sidelines.
He just shrugged and pushed my locker shut. As if on a timer, all the phones in the hallway dinged simultaneously. I looked at mine and saw it was a GIF. When I clicked on it to load, I gasped and covered my mouth in surprise. A person with a deformed mask was standing in front of a pool with Nina floating in it. It didn't take a medical degree to know that she wasn't alive anymore.
"What the hell is this?!" I asked, moving to look at both Audrey and Noah.
"It looks like Brandon James standing in front of Nina's body after he killed her," Audrey answered, looking from her phone to us and back again. "This is twisted."
So that was the Brandon James mask everyone was talking about. Not being a Lakewood native meant I had very limited knowledge of the entire situation. All I knew was what Noah told everyone in class the other day, which was just the scratching the surface.
It seemed all the dramatic moments at school happened in Mr. Branson's classroom. Granted, there was only one other one, but that's not the point. I guess it was because we usually had our phones out and got contact to the outside world.
"All right, guys, you know, phones down!" Mr. Branson announced like he'd read my mind.
"But the Brandon James GIF put us on the map, Mr. B!" Jake exclaimed, holding his palm up to Will who just ignored him. "I mean, we've got like seven of the top ten trending hashtags right now!"
"You know, maybe you should focus more on your studies and less on Lakewood's web-buzz," Mr. Branson said, also ignoring Jake's stupidity.
I saw Noah's smirk out of the corner of my eye and waited for the sarcastic remark that I knew was coming. "Who can resist a murder selfie? Which is what the killer is counting on."
"All right, Will Graham, what is this killer's design?" Mr. Branson asked, leaning back against his desk and crossing his arms to listen to Noah's rantings.
"Well, murder's a lonely game, you know? I mean, you're the killer, okay, -you sneak into Nina's house, you skulk around and scare her, and then you kill her. Boom!" Noah said, his monologue gaining everyone's attention. "But then what? You take a victory lap around the pool? You just stand there, watching blood spread out in the water thinking your creepy thoughts?"
"Creepy monologue alert," Jake said, making Brooke roll her eyes and turn her back to him –the dumbass was two for two friends ignoring him now.
"So maybe it's no good if he's the only one who's watching," Riley said, looking over at Noah with big, loved up eyes that made my stomach flip uncomfortably.
"Exactly, yeah! It's the age of Instagram and YouTube and Tumblr," Noah said, smiling at Riley and flashing her the same eyes she had. "I mean, we need to share the things we do or it's like it never happened."
Someone's phone went off again and I mentally face-palmed at the idiot who forgot to put it on silence. I glanced back at Riley and saw she was the one. Her jaw dropped and she gasped, making Mr. Branson look at her in annoyance.
"Riley, phones off," he warned, shoving his hands in his pockets and standing up straight.
"Sorry, Mr. B," she said looking up at him with her jaw still hanging open. "My friend from St. Mary's texted, a girl that goes there died."
"No way! Who was it?" Brooke asked, instantly paying looking up from her nails and participating in class.
"How'd it happen?" Jake added.
"It doesn't say," Riley replied, looking back down at her phone.
"I have, uh, to go to the bathroom," Audrey said, pushing up from her desk and running out of the room quickly.
That girl in the video with her went to St. Mary's… there was no way it was the same girl. That school had to have at least two hundred girls that went there, the odds of it being Rachel were miniscule, right? The odds of Nina being murdered in her backyard was also miniscule… Shit, Lakewood was a total shit show.
I glanced over at Noah and saw that he came to the same conclusion I did. The two of us were about to get up to check on her when Emma beat us to it. Well, that was an interesting turn of events. I guess the two of them were getting close again. I remembered her talking briefly about them being best friends when they were younger.
When class let out, Noah and I went on the hunt for Audrey. She wasn't very hard to find, sitting in front of the office with her bag on her lap. We sat on either side of her with him in a chair and me on the arm of hers. Things were silent for a minute before Noah finally spoke.
"Hey, you, you going home?" he asked awkwardly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
"Uh, my dad's coming to pick me up," she answered, her voice breaking pitifully. "I am officially distraught."
"I'm so sorry, Audrey," I gushed, squeezing her shoulder and trying to be supportive. "God, this sucks royally."
"Yeah, well, our relationship wasn't even legal under the bylaws of Lakewood Municipal Code, so…" she trailed off, her eyes filling with tears.
"Right… Gay rights joke," Noah tried to quip, but it wasn't very genuine.
She leaned her head against his shoulder and I leaned mine against hers. The three of us sat together until her dad came to get her and we had to go to class. Even though I wasn't the one who lost someone, Noah wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight before we parted ways.
I'm trying to slowly ease the romance in while staying true to the timeline. Of course things are going to vary the further I get into the story line, but I'm trying!