Shadows

Chapter 23

It's ten to five at night, and I'm currently twenty steps away from trail ten. Taking a step by step, not knowing what will happen next. The crunchiness of the leaves underneath me along with the fear of the unknown were making my anxiousness rise - which is strange.

If you know me, you'd know that I love walking anywhere where there're dry leaves on the ground. The sound that they make under my feet calms me down a lot, but today it's doing the opposite.

Maybe it's because I have no clue how things will turn out. For all I know, I could be the next dead body that gets found by the lake, right? If there's one thing I know, it'll be that once this person gets their hand on this journal, I'll be as good as dead.

That's why I need to play smart, I need to get out of here alive to come up with a plan that will help me figure out who this person is and expose them.

Each step I take makes my anxiousness skyrocket. I can feel eyes on me, but I don't know where they are. There's someone out there.

Hearing the steps of someone behind me makes me freeze with fear, yet I don't look back in fear of what I'll find. My fear instantly increases when I feel a hand on my shoulder making me involuntarily turn around and punch the person, to whom the hand belonged, straight in the face.

The person, a very familiar boy, groans in pain. "I think you might have broken my nose. What did you do that for?" Liam snaps in a tone that I've never heard him use before. 

"Liam? Oh, my god, I'm so sorry," I whisper while looking around me to try and see if there's someone else out there. "What are you doing here? It's past curfew."

"I could ask you the same," he says sarcastically clutching his nose, his voice coming out so loud that it echoes through the woods.

I shush him quickly before dragging him behind a tree to give myself a false sense of safety. "Lower your voice," I say harshly, regretting it as soon as the words come out of my mouth.

"What are you doing? and why are you looking around you like a crazy person?"

"Look, I'll explain later. Can you please go?" I whisper.

"Not before you tell me why you look so pale and what's going on," he insists making me roll my eyes at him.

Ping.

With my heart racing, I angle myself away from his prying eyes before reading the message, which is unsurprisingly from S.

Tick tock, the time is ticking, yet you're nowhere to be seen.

Three more minutes and your friend's laundry will be aired for everyone to see.

xoxo

-S

"Hey! You zoned out on me. What did the text say?" he asks while snapping his fingers in front of my face.

"What did we say about privacy before?" I ask him rhetorically. "I really have to go now. I promise that I'll tell you everything tomorrow, but just go." I urge while pushing him to go in the opposite direction.

I guess he sensed that he wasn't going to get anything out of me because he wordlessly turned around and walked away. He might've gotten mad at me, he might not even want to be my friend anymore, but I had to do this. I have to make sure that Lena's worse nightmare doesn't come out.

After making sure that he truly walked away, I hurriedly walked towards trail ten's direction once again.

We can still change our mind. We have ten more steps to change our mind and walk away. S will know that we have another copy, and they won't let us walk away unharmed.