Chapter 2 - The Art of Being Needed

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The day was gloomy, dark clouds dotted the sky and a chilling breeze ran through the air, yet I felt happy for the first time in a while. A cup of hot chocolate sat in front of me along with a warm muffin. Pictures of Victoria were scattered on the splintered cafe table and Pete sat across from me wearing a lopsided grin.

"Really? You broke ten of their mugs in one day?" I laughed, feeling the sides of my eyes wrinkle the way they always did when I smiled big.

Pete nodded as I gave him a incredulous expression. "I'm just that clumsy. I'm still not sure why this place had hired me in the first place but I'm glad I got to work here. It's where I met Tori."

I smiled. I remembered that day too. Not because I was there but because Tori had eagerly told me all about it just a few hours later. She had come to our group sleepover, painting her nails and blushing the whole time she told the story.

"Yep," he continued. "I was bussing tables and she walked right into me. She broke about ten mugs too." I casted my eyes on the rack of mugs resting in the cupboard above the back table. I wondered if Tori drank out of any of those mugs. It was a weird thought.

"Two klutzy goofs, a match made in heaven," just as I said it, I wanted to take it back. It created a pit in my stomach to think that half of that match had ended up right back in heaven only a few weeks ago.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"

I'm a complete idiot, an insensitive idiot.

"It's fine. Really," Pete said with a shrug. "You don't need to know all the right things to say. I mean, no one does."

I was taken back a moment. He wasn't angry? I sighed in relief. Thank goodness he was so understanding. It's nice to have someone who doesn't expect perfection.

He chuckled at my relief, his dimples showing. I wondered how he did it. How he made every smile seem so natural, so genuine, so free.

"Thank you." I took a sip of my hot chocolate and tried to savor the moment. I wasn't yelled at or scolded for messing up. It was okay. For once it was okay. Pete seemed a little thrown off by my relief but he didn't comment.

My phone vibrated on the table. Hannah's face appeared on my smartphone screen along with 3 missed calls.

I inwardly groaned. She was going to kill me. One of Hannah's number one rules was to always answer her calls.

I had done a good job of keeping these meeting with Pete a secret. We agreed to meet up a few days after the funeral and we just kept meeting up. It was kind of our way of coping. We got to talk about Tori and remember her. Plus, I got to spend time with someone who wasn't in my little group circle. It was as close to freedom as I could get. I was actually really enjoying his company. I did not want Hannah to take this away from me.

"You look upset," Pete observed narrowing his eyes at my phone. "Is it Hannah?"

My blue eyes flashed while meeting his hazel ones. How did he know? "Yea. But it-it isn't a problem. Nothing's wrong." I took a breath to make my voice more steady. "I'm gonna take this."

He nodded and I walked off to the corner of the empty cafe. It was a local place that got a steady stream of business. Mostly people from our small town came there. It was rare to see a new face.

My thumb tapped the answer button. It was moments like these that made me wish I had gotten the chance to jump off that cliff the day Tori's body was found. Hannah couldn't get to me if I was at the bottom of the ocean. I was sick of her, sick of the group, sick of everything. Losing Tori only made things worse.

"Arielle Rae Winters!" Her voice was sharp. "Why haven't you been answering your phone? After what happened to Tori I thought something might have happened to you! For heaven's sake there's a murderer on the loose!"

"I'm sorry..." My mind fumbled for a good excuse. I didn't want to lie but what choice did I have? "It's just- I'm dealing with a family emergency and-"

"I smell a liar," she sang. "Turn around, my little guppie." I span around and there she stood in her mini skirt and wedges.

"Hannah-"

"You don't have to lie to me, Ari. You could have just told me you were seeing Pete. With Tori gone he's fair game." Bile rose in my throat at the self proclaimed know it all in front of me.

How dare she?

"I'm not seeing him romantically," I whispered as to not gain Pete's attention. He sat oblivious to our scene, fiddling with straw wrappers. "We both knew Tori well and talking to each other is like getting closure."

"And I didn't know Tori well? Listen, if you want to talk to Pete that's fine and dandy but I need to talk to you about Tori now. It's important." She moved her head to the side signalling to follow her out. I sighed, giving up.

"Pete, it's been great but I have to run." I reluctantly began to gather my stuff, not meeting his eyes. I knew how it looked: Like I was some trained dog, having to bark when Hannah said bark and leave when she said leave. But it was true so what was the point of caring anymore? He would realize who I was soon enough.

Still, Pete remained warm. "That's alright. I hope to see you again."

"Yeah, me too." I stared at him for a moment and couldn't help but notice his posture had changed significantly. He was no longer slouched. Instead, he sat up straight, his head held up and hands on the table, like he was anticipating an attack. He only broke eye contact with me to eye Hannah who was snapping her fingers at me.

"Chop chop, red head. We don't have all day." She began to walk out and I followed trying to remember what it was like to be able to say no, to have a voice.

Her shoes made an annoying tapping noise as we stepped onto the gravelly parking lot. It was empty aside from Pete and Hannah's car.

"Okay, tell me everything you told the cops when they interviewed you about Tori's death," Hannah commanded pausing in front of the car. Her features remain neutral like her question wasn't out of the ordinary.

"Wh-what?"

"What did you tell the cops when they interviewed you about Tori's murderer?"

A hollow feeling took over my chest. I didn't want to talk about it or think back to it. But whether I wanted to or not didn't matter. Hannah would get the answer out of me one way or another.

It had been only an hour after Tori's body washed up on the shore and the ambulance already had her in that horrible black bag, wheeling her into the truck. I refused to watch. Instead, I sat on a rock in the distance, away from the crowd with Norah. My back was to the scene and I had my head down thinking about how that was supposed to be me being wheeled away. Not Tori. Anyone but Tori.

I hadn't shed a tear yet. I wanted too. I felt the waterfall within me like a dam about to burst but there was a wall blocking it. A wall built of another emotion and another thought. I couldn't place what it was. I still can't.

"I can't believe this is happening. I want it to be a bad dream. I want to be able to wake up," Norah sobbed. I placed my hand on her knee in comfort. It was all I could do.

Hannah came over to us. She seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. It was clear she had heard what happened. For once she wasn't wearing that powerful smirk or calling us by demeaning pet names. "I know you're all upset. I am too. But you need to keep something in mind."

We both stared at her, waiting.

"This was a murder which means what you tell the police who interview you matters. If you're not careful with your words they will find a way to pin this on you."

I was repulsed. Tori was dead and all she cared about was saving her butt.

"Think about it," she continued as if we weren't convinced. "Tori came to this beach alone yet somehow all of her closest friends ended up on the same beach the same time she's found dead. It sounds suspicious, even to me."

"We'll be careful, Hannah," I said to shut her up.

"Good," she said. She turned to gaze out into the ocean just a few feet away from us. It was hard to think that the same ocean drowned Tori. "It's crazy how something so close to you could be so dangerous."

"I hardly remember," I confessed with an uneasy shrug. "It was pretty traumatic. I think my brain blocked out most of it."

"Well, you better start remembering. My mom got a phone call today. She said the police want us to go in for some more questioning today."

"What? All of us? Why?" My mind was racing. I didn't think I could handle it. Sitting in a room talking about Tori's murder was the last thing I wanted to do. And why would they want to question us again? What did that mean? Did they think we were lying or we'd remember more now?

"I don't know but we have to be prepared. Don't change up your answers. Stick to what you said last time and remember to not let them think they can intimidate you." Hannah got in the car and I followed.

"You say that as if we have something to hide," I said watching her carefully. How well do I know Hannah?

"Don't we, Arielle?" Hannah tilted her head and gave me a look losing its patience. "Just because we don't talk about the things we did, doesn't make them disappear. There are a number of things we don't want them to find out. You should know that."

Buckling her seatbelt and turning on the radio, she gave a small chuckle. "For example, what would happen if the police found out what you did last July?"

A shiver ran down my spine. "No. I'll be careful."

"That's what I like to hear," she gushed. "I always knew you were smart."

A few minutes later she added,"We are picking up the girls and then going to the police station."

During the drive all I could think about was what she said. Was she threatening me? Suggesting that if I messed up the interview she'd spill to the cops? This scared me. Why was Hannah so invested in this?

I knew the answer. She had something to hide, something about Victoria's death.
_______________________

Turns out the police wanted to interview us all individually. They were saving me for last. The cops words were pretty scary. Kind of like they were teasing me, trying to get me nervous, trying to imply I was hiding something.

"Oh no, Arielle," the detective said with a sarcastic tone. "We won't be needing you here. We're saving the best for last. Go home and relax for a bit. You'll need to get your thoughts in order."

Not only that but the same detective, Detective Brookes, made a comment about the fact we came all together.

"Ah, so you girls travel in a pack. Interesting."

I'm not sure if it was the nerves just getting to me or the detective was actually implying we were hiding something. Either way, when I got home I took the time to go through the shoe box I kept under a loose floorboard next to my bed.

My house was small compared to the rest of the homes in town. It was because with my parents gone, my grandmother and I have been living on the money they left us in their will. Still, I loved my room. It was tucked away in the back of the house, second floor, with only one window. It felt like a safe place to hide, like no one could reach me there. I was very selective on who I let into to my room. Only Victoria had been in here before.

I pulled the old ballet shoe box out, hearing the contents shuffle around inside. In it, I kept a bunch of the souvenirs. They weren't ordinary souvenirs you got from trips and vacations. No. I wish. They were much darker than that. I knew the other girls had something just like this in their possession though we never talked about it.

I started with the mild objects. I'd work my way up from there.

The label of the hair removal bottle rested in my hands. My first crime among many. Before Hannah adopted me into the group, I was bullied. It was a non-stop thing and it seemed to be getting worse each day. Hannah claimed that I wasn't defending myself the right way. That telling the teachers wasn't going to get them to stop. I had to act.

So, sophomore year in the girls locker room, I swapped out my antagonist's shampoo for a hair removal product. She came to school two days later as bald as bald gets. She was furious, determined to find out who had done it. Later that day, Hannah and I cornered her in the bathroom and told her it was I who had done it and that was only the beginning of what I could do if she kept messing with me. I expected an explosive reaction but instead she ran out of the bathroom crying. She never bothered me again.

The feeling of relief only lasted for a while until the guilt sank in. But Hannah had this way of making you forget about the guilt for a while. Sitting in my bedroom staring at the label, I wished I hadn't done it. It was cruel. It made me just like the one I hated the most.

I move on to the lighter. Now this was a souvenir for something we could get into serious trouble for.

This mission was for Helen. Helen had a super big crush on this boy in our biology class, Trevor. The problem was he had a girlfriend, Amanda. Amanda was cruel and controlling. She had him on a tight leash like a dog and didn't let him talk to many other people. Trevor never seemed to disobey Amanda except when it came to Helen. They were becoming close but the only way for them to actually start something was if the current girlfriend left the picture.

Hannah came up with the perfect plan. She proposed we'd blackmail her. Of course, we followed along. We sneaked into Amanda's house late one night. She lived down the block from Helen and always left her windows opened. We went into her bedroom and looked for anything juicy. While Helen kept look out and Norah and I searched her room, Hannah wandered the house. She eventually found some files from her father's office. With a smirk on her face, she flashed us the writing written on the tab.

"Amanda's Foster Care Paper's".

We were all speechless. Amanda spent a lot of time bragging about the things her parents would get her because they loved her so much. The last thing she would want getting out was that her 'parents' were being paid to do so. Hannah stuffed it in Helen's purse and we left.

Later that night we texted Amanda with a blocked number saying that we would leak the papers to the whole school if she didn't break up with Trevor. She did. Then she asked how she was suppose to know we wouldn't leak them anyways.

Helen stared blankly at us, the phone limp in her hands. Hannah simply replied by taking out the lighter and walking to the backyard of Helen's house with the files. We followed. Helen threw the files in the middle of the yard and lit them up. She took a picture and sent it to Amanda. It was done.

Helen and Trevor went out on a few dates, were an item for about a month. Then she decided they weren't a good fit.

I put the lighter back in the box and hid it away. It was starting to make me think about July. What would I give to go back in time and change things? I would give everything. I was so dumb, so naive. I had a huge hunch that it would come back to bite me. The only question was when.

My phone buzzed causing me to jump. I picked it up and saw it was a message from Norah. It read:

The cops want to see u now






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