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Half Truths - chapter 23

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Chapter Twenty Three

The silence continues throughout the whole of Sunday, and Mamrie doesn’t offer her a ride to school the next morning.

She slams the door on the way out, too, after a morning of cereal and ice cold silences. Their mom breathes out a sigh, as the china in the cupboards reverberates slightly with the aftershocks, and then looks at Hannah.

“At what point do your father and I get involved in this? Because you twonever argue, this is completely unlike you both…”

Hannah shrugs, staring into her finished cereal bowl, and then standing to put it in the sink.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Give us a couple of days, we’ll figure something out.”

Her mom makes a noise which sounds a lot like I’ll believe that when I see it, but Hannah doesn’t have the mental energy for a conversation right now, not when she thinks about the day ahead. So instead she presses a single kiss to her mom cheek by way of goodbye, and walks to the bus stop.

Her headphones do a good job of insulating her from the outside world, and Hannah can almost ignore the rest of the bus. She can’t shake the feeling that Lindsay’s eyes are burning into the back of her head, but Hannah can’t begin to process that either, this supposed crush that she thinks that Tyler might have entirely pulled from his ass. From Lindsay’s past behavior it is a bully crush at best, which is something that Hannah isn’t interested in in the slightest.

It is only when the bus pulls up at school, and Hannah spies Grace waiting for her, that the pressure in her chest starts to lift.

Grace smiles quietly as she approaches, and then pushes herself up off the wall she was sitting on, reaching out towards Hannah to adjust the collar on her shirt.

“Hey… how is Mamrie?”

Hannah shrugs, and looks past her to where she can see Ashley, Lyle, and Tyler, trying to look inconspicuous while hanging pointlessly around, twenty metres away.

“Pissed. Like, she’s gone into silent rage mode, which is a setting I don’t think I’ve ever seen on her before.”

Grace nods a few times, and then nudges her hand towards Hannah’s fingers, where Hannah takes the hint, and squeezes once before letting go.

“But… you still believe me, right?”

Hannah sighs, and bites at her lip, momentarily.

“I believe both of you, if that makes sense. Like, I fully believe that you weren’t playing any games, during that weird summer, but were just having a bit of an ‘argh’ moment about your sexuality. But I also fully believe that Mamrie thought that you were lying, and now thinks she is doing this to try and protect me. Both of you have just cause to be pissed at the other, I think.”

Grace absorbs all this in silence, and then nods once, accepting Hannah’s position.

“Okay…Mamrie is pretty ferocious when it comes to protecting her own, I guess.”

It isn’t quite a compliment, but it is the first thing Grace has said that sounds close, after this whole mess started, and Hannah decides to mark it down as a forward step.

“So, are you still okay with the plan? The whole out and proud thing? Make sure the gossip has run around school at least twice before the day is over?”

Grace smiles, and wrinkles up her nose, looking at Hannah’s mouth with considering eyes.

“Yeah- although this is probably the one area in which Mamrie is on our side; she will have told the entire cheer team by now, just to get a head start on the poison.”