❝ I genuinely thought the worst of this nightmare was over ❞
Halle Brewster told a lie, and the secrets kept growing. After slaying one stalker, another reared its nasty head, and Halle was starting to wonder if she'd ever be free from the friendshi...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The wound hadn't closed. Halle kept it open, festering, as she felt herself being dragged further down to the bottom. Where that bottom lay, she didn't know. All Halle knew was, the depth of her sadness was vast and, just when she thought, her foot would skim the bottom, her leg would slip and there would only be empty space there. In the couple of hours since Jason left, she had taken a turn for the worst and laid on her bed, staring up blankly at the ceiling as every so often a stray tear escaped down her cheek.
Her phone would ring regularly, but she'd decline. Mostly, she pressed the lock button and let it ring out silently, undisturbed, without even glancing at it. She knew it wasn't Jason, so why would she answer? Halle just wanted to haul up in her bedroom, in the dark, and wallow in her feelings. Her heart hadn't hurt this bad before.
The phone rang.
In a poor but snap decision, Halle's hand darted out and snatched her phone from off her bedside table. She held the speaker up to her mouth. "I don't care, leave me alone," she fumed, and abruptly ended the call. Halle threw her phone down to the bed and tried to cry out her tears until she was empty. That had to be done before tomorrow because she didn't want to cry unexpectedly when she undoubtedly stumbled across something that reminded her of Jason, or when her friends brought him up.
Again, the phone rang. Halle picked it up, and this time held it to her ear as she answered. "I said I don't—"
"The site's real, Hal," Spencer jumped in fast.
Halle bolted up, the water dropping from her cheek to her turmeric-coloured bedsheets. "What?"
"It's real."
Emily's laugh echoed out of the speaker of Spencer's laptop. Halle was now in the Hasting girls' bedroom, hovering over the desk where Spencer and Aria sat, and ignored how Hanna side-eyed Halle's blotchy red eyes. Despite her absence, Emily lit up on the screen; the purple border of Maya's website glowed around her, and Halle stood with bated breath.
"You're making me laugh!" said Emily, through her laughter. While in the comfort of her bedroom, Emily was being teased by her dead lover as she sat ice-cream. "I'm trying to eat," she added, her tilted coyly towards Maya, who was behind the camera. Her eyes sparkled through the screen, so full of warmth and love.
Aria wrung her hands, off-put by the privacy they were invading in on. "We should not be watch this," she said, as she turned her back.
"Stop it," continued Emily, the video still playing.
Spencer gave, "There are hundred of videos, and you don't know what they are until you open them." She tapped the escape-key and scrolled down, picking another to pop up in a new window.
