I AM SO SORRY I HAVEN'T UPDATED IN SO LONG, BUT HERE'S A NEW CHAPTER!
Also, this chapter is split into two parts because it was WAY too long to be just one.
I played with my fingers nervously as I waited for Noah to pick me up the next morning. I hadn't talked to him since the awkward car ride home last night. What was the proper protocol for making out with your best friend to cover up snooping through your teacher's computer for clues about murder and then not talking about it? I was new and completely ignorant to all of this.
The sound of tires crunching on gravel signaled his arrival and I let out a breath I'd been holding. I tucked my hands in my cardigan pockets and tried to make it not look like I was trudging as I made my way to his car. My stomach was in knots by the time I opened the door; maybe I was making a big deal out of something that wasn't a big deal. I could hope, right?
"Hey," he said, smiling dorkily at me. "How are you this morning? Any run-ins with crazy teachers or bloodthirsty students hell-bent on revenge?"
"Someone watched the Halloween movie marathon on AMC last night," I grinned, falling into our regular banter gratefully. "Where was my invite, Foster?"
"Would you believe it got lost in the mail?" he laughed, turning onto the main road that led to the high school. "I mean, I sent it."
I rolled my eyes before looking out the window by my shoulder. The town looked normal, nothing like a town that would hold a homegrown serial killer. I guess it was always like that in horror movies though, no one ever thought their particular town would go under until it did. I was watching a hedge line pass when some unnatural movement caught my eye. There was someone moving out of the hedges and into the shadows!
They stayed too far away for me to see any details with my limited vision; I was basically blind, even with contacts in. All I saw was a body with a black hood over the head and hands tucked into pockets. Whoever it was really wanted to stay inconspicuous and unnoticed. A shiver coursed through me –what if that was the person that killed Nina, Tyler, and Riley?!
"So then I had sex with Kieran and now I'm pregnant with his baby. Emma's kinda upset, but I think she'll get over it and give us a wonderful shower," Noah said, making me look at him with raised brows. "Just seeing if you were paying attention, you were spacing out that window pretty hard."
"I'm sorry, I just thought I saw someone by the hedges back there," I told him shakily. "I didn't really sleep very well last night, I was too wound up."
His cheeks dusted pink and he tapped his hands against the steering wheel nervously. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Why do you think I watched Michael Myers chase scream queens for six hours?"
"I'm sorry, I keep making things weird between us. I swear I won't do it ever again, SWEAR," I said, still not looking at him. "Jesus, I'm a mess."
"Yeah, I don't think it's just you," he said under his breath right as Audrey banged her fist against his window.
"You woke me up at three in the morning ranting about some breaking news about Branson being the murderer. You'd better have world changing news or you're gonna be murdered," she barked, glaring at him icily.
I guess that was the end of our conversation for now, but I wanted to know what he meant by what he said. He jumped out of the car and led the two of us into the school. His sudden discovery explained why I had to be ready for school almost an hour earlier. He wanted to do something in the building without running risk of getting caught again.
"He's definitely hiding something; I did some digging into 'Mr. Seth Branson,'" he said as we walked briskly down the hallway. "You know what I found?"
"He doesn't exist?" Audrey supplied.
"No, c'mon, it's 2015. I found four guys, but none of them are our Mr. Branson," Noah continued.
"That's kind of sketchy, but maybe he doesn't have any social media. Stranger things have happened, even in 2015," I said, playing devil's advocate.
"That's an option, but it's not the right one. This Mr. Branson didn't exist until he moved to Lakewood," Noah grinned, finally looking at the two of us and pausing in the middle of the hall across form Branson's classroom. "You don't change your name unless you've got a secret."
"Like trolling teens through their webcams to find a victim," Audrey said, following the same brain wave Noah's was on.
"Exactly!" he agreed. "Cops turn themselves inside out searching for logical suspects, but we could just be looking at your garden-variety psychopath."
"So Branson's a Manson?" I questioned, knitting my brows together as I tried to piece the puzzle together like they were. "I don't buy it."
"Yeah, well, neither did the victims of the BTK Killer 'til they were staring down the business end of a boning knife," he argued.
"I thought Branson was your favorite teacher…" I said, looking at him curiously.
"He is," Noah said dismissively. "Which is why the possibility is so alarming. I mean, maybe he was being manipulated by a different psychopath… Nina."
"What? Did Nina discover some deep, dark secret about him and blackmail him into planting the malware on everyone's computers?" I asked in disbelief. "That's crazy!"
"Not really, not any crazier than what's happening in Lakewood right now," Noah replied, looking me in the eye. "Kids are being murdered, our language arts teacher isn't who he says he is, and our friend Emma's dad was stabbed by our very own Leatherface!"
"If this is actually what's happening, then everyone Nina trolled could have a motive to kill her," Audrey said, trying to smooth things over. "The guys she slept with, the guys she didn't, the girls who envied her, and the girls who despised her."
"That is a huge list," I said, trying to go along with what they were saying even if I thought it was crazy. "It basically says everyone's a subject, the three of us included."
Noah's face turned creepy and made me snort with laughter. Audrey looked up at me and then at him before laughing along with me. The boy had a pretty good resting creep face, I had to admit it.
We were all sitting in class, me trying to not look as weary about Branson as I was. Every time he came near me, Will, and Noah, my entire body would tense and I would stop breathing. When Noah's hand reached for mine under our desks, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
"Gwen? Are you okay?" Will asked, looking at me with raised brows. "I can feel the tension coming off you."
"I'm good," I replied, smiling at him and watching his cheeks dust pink as he looked at the desk. "Let's just finish this stupid project."
There was a brief knock on the door before it opened and two police officers came in. "Mr. Branson? We have some questions for one of you students. Audrey Jensen, can you come with us, please?"
Noah's grip on my hand tightened uncomfortably as Audrey met out eyes. She looked absolutely terrified; the only reason they could want to talk to her would be because she was a suspect. I mean, hadn't they already ruled Rachel was a suicide, no matter what Audrey argued? They couldn't be asking her anymore questions about that, there couldn't be any left.
As soon as the door closed, the room erupted into rapid whispers including Will. "What the hell could the cops want with Audrey?"
"Maybe they wanted to talk to her about what happened with Rachel…? Tie up some loose ends?" I didn't sound very confident and was basically clinging to Noah's hand with both of mine now.
"That's a phone call, not a perp walk out of class," Noah hissed.
When the bell rang, Emma rushed over to the two of us while Will stalked away. I guess the two of them still weren't talking. I wouldn't talk if I found out I was a bet AND my first time was filmed then distributed to the entire school population. She glanced down at mine and Noah's interlaced fingers but didn't say anything, I guess she was too concerned about Audrey to ask too many questions. That was a good thing because I couldn't seem to make myself let go of his hand.
"What just happened?" she asked, sitting in the seat Will just abandoned.
"We found out the webcam malware came from Mr. Branson's homework server," Noah explained quietly, his thumb rubbing soothing circles over my tense knuckles. "And he's using a fake name."
"Wait –Mr. Branson brings his soup to school in a thermos," Emma said skeptically, not exactly following what Noah was trying to say.
"Villains have to eat, too," I reminded her.
"Exactly," Noah said, picking up where I dropped off. "Kingpin eats; the Joker eats. Bane probably doesn't because of his mask, but there's probably some sort of, like, nutrient…"
"Hey, Noah, can we focus for a second?" Emma asked, snapping her fingers to regain his attention.
"The bad news is Mr. Branson might have seen us looking at his laptop," I said, my nerves leaving so I could finally talk without stuttering. "If he thought we could expose him, he might have tried to scare us by trying to frame Audrey for the murders…"
"Why are you guys still here? Didn't class end a while ago?" Mr. Branson asked, coming into the room and making my heart hit my knees.
"Mr. Branson! Hey! Hi," Noah said nervously, making me roll my eyes and turn to face him after I dropped Noah's hand.
"We were just talking to Emma about how her project with Kieran was going. Noah, Will, and I have no idea what we're doing and thought we could get some ideas," I said, thinking on my feet quickly.
"About that, I was actually thinking that with Noah's propensity for speeches he could do a monologue," Mr. Branson replied.
"Oh, I don't know about that. I'm kinda shy…" Noah replied even though we all knew that was a total lie.
"Let me show you some options," Mr. Branson challenged, not really giving Noah much of a choice.
Noah's eyes met mine and I'm sure they were full of fear. "Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll just hang around here for a second to talk to you about my monologue."
As much as I hated it, I left the room with Emma. The two of us sat on one of the benches in the hallway to wait for Noah. I didn't want to put too much distance between us while he was alone with the possible killer of Lakewood.
"So you and Noah, huh?" she asked, trying to make conversation. "When did that happen?"
"Uh, yeah, we're not technically a thing," I told her. "We needed a diversion when Mr. Branson almost caught us looking through his laptop. The first thing I thought of was Branson walking in on us making out so that's what I did. Now we're in this weird limbo thing between friends and more, honestly I have no idea what we're doing…"
"Oh, that's definitely interesting. I've always thought he had a thing for you, it's cool you're finally working it out," she told me. "Sort of, I suppose."
Thankfully, the door opened and Noah walked out with Mr. Branson's hand on his shoulder. He thanked him before hurrying over to me and Emma.
"Noah? What happened in there?" Emma asked, scooting over to let Noah sit between the two of us.
"Henry the Fifth or Napoleon Dynamite," he told us with a smirk. "I gotta admit, Mr. Branson so gets my deep-seated hero conflict."
I rolled my eyes and shoved his shoulder harshly. "You idiot, I was about to call 911."
"I think Audrey was right about Mr. Branson being innocent. Maybe he's not a psychopath," Noah said, pushing his shoulder against mine in apology. "If Tyler loaded the malware for Nina while he was the student aid, Mr. B could just be this innocent pawn."
"But what about his fake name?" I asked, not entirely convinced of Mr. Branson's innocence just yet.
"Oh, yeah, well, I actually got that covered," he said, smiling at me and kind of ignoring Emma's presence completely for a second. "I asked Mr. B to input his number into my phone, in case I wanted to rap about monologues. I also programmed this app to record his fingerprints while he did so. If I can trace the past…"
"We can find out if Walter White is actually Heisenberg!" I said, hugging Noah in excitement. "Oh my god, you're a genius, Noah Foster!"
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I quickly pulled away from Noah. I remembered that Emma was with us and we hadn't figured out exactly what we were just yet. I smiled tensely as I fished it out of my sweater, seeing an unknown number on the screen.
"Don't answer," Noah said automatically.
"That hasn't done me very well so far. I say answer it," Emma retorted, making more sense than Noah.
"Hello?"
"Gwen! Thank god you answered, this is Audrey," her voice was quiet and really tense.
"Audrey! Are you okay? You just got arrested in the middle of language arts class!" I said, putting her on speaker so the others could hear her.
"Listen, I need a really big favor," she said, ignoring my question. After I agreed, she continued, "Go to my house, get the SD card from September 30th and destroy it. Please don't watch it."
The line went dead after that and the three of us just looked at each other. Whatever was on the SD card had something to do with why she was calling us illegally in the middle of an integration room. The card had something bad on it and we had to go get it before the police found it.
"What do you think is on that card?" Emma asked a couple seconds after the call ended.
"I don't know, I don't care," Noah said, running a hand through his hair anxiously. "But we should just go get it."
"But, guys, what if it's…" Emma started, but I cut her off quickly.
"Audrey didn't kill Nina, there's no way. Nina was a bitch to her, but she was a bitch to everyone. If that's people's only evidence of her being a murder, than everyone else is also a suspect," I replied, annoyance bubbling to the surface.
"Okay, you're right. I'm sorry," Emma said, embarrassment coloring her voice. "Let's go do this."
This is the best part I could split it, I hope it's still good.
THANKS FOR READING!