First Impression II: At Second Glance

Chapter Seven - Rumour Has It

Chapter Seven – Rumour has it

MYSTERY ABOARD THE CRUISE!

THE CASE OF THE MISSING VICKY LEMARCHANT CONTINUES…

… The police interview the crew of Queen Anne luxury cruise in the latest update of the Vicky Lemarchant case… might have fallen off the cruise into the sea… reasons unclear but police have not ruled out foul play… The Lemarchant family is requesting anyone who has any information regarding Victoria’s whereabouts to come forward.

I scanned the magazine briefly. Nothing new.

It had been a week since Victoria went missing. Mrs Maria had fallen ill and so she had returned home to rest while Victoria’s parents stayed in Port Amsouth.

I sighed. There had been no leads. But we had to have hope. It was –

I bumped into someone and dropped my magazine.

“Sorry,” I mumbled distractedly and bent down to pick it up.

It was already in someone else’s hands.

“I didn’t know you liked tabloids, Eleanore,” Edward drawled, holding it out.

I glanced at the very colourful front page of the magazine. It featured several articles besides the one on Victoria. Good Princess Gone Bad. You Dirty Rats! The aXe Factor?

My eyebrow lifted. That was the kind of stuff they wrote? How had I not noticed them when I bought the magazine?

“Oh,” I said. “I wanted the article on the Victoria Lemarchant case. It was quite detailed.”

Edward grinned. “Really? Only that? I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with reading them, you know.”

I snorted, snatched the magazine from him and continued to walk down the hall. “Yeah, they’re so informative that you probably read them too, right? To keep on top of all the gossip”

“How did you know?” he widened his eyes. “Shh, don’t tell anyone, okay?”

I laughed a little, the worry for Victoria temporarily pushed to the back of my mind.

“Speaking of gossip,” Edward continued, hands in his pockets as he walked beside me. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the rumour regarding the devastating state of my emotional well-being, would you?”

Oops. Well, you see, after appeasing Edmund’s, Adrian’s and Avery’s fan girls, Edward’s fans were next. And they were pretty persistent. They already knew quite a lot of things about him, far more than I did so I – okay not exactly proud of what I did next – just packaged an ordinary occurrence in a snappy and misleading headline and hand them off to readers to infer in whatever way they wished too.

It was my turn to widen my eyes dramatically. “Whatever do you mean?”

Audrey had been steadfastly pursuing Edward since the summer trip. But according to a trusted source, he had not been very successful in letting her down gently and firmly. In his defence, Audrey had been twice as determined. Having really absolutely nothing new to satisfy his fan girls, I simply remarked that Edward had a rather devastating love. It could mean a variety of things but the fan girls chose to interpret it as Edward having an unrequited, doomed, star-crossed love. So for the past week or so, the school had been talking about it non-stop.

Edward narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you very very sure?”

I hastily glanced around for an escape. Ah hah, Edmund was just round the corner.