The End of Summer

Chapter 35- 'Your porn fantasies aren't really appropriate right now.'

“I knew. He took me to meet my new sister one day. Only saw her couple of times, something got in the way of him taking me anymore than that.” Bradley informed us, glaring at Alex as he said that last bit.

It wasn’t the most legitimate relationship from what I hear. He was married, even had a kid with this other woman.

“Your father was a paramedic…” Alex’s voice chimed in as he too was putting all the pieces together in his head. My eyes widened at this, not understanding how this woman could have basically handed us every bit of information we needed and yet we still had not put the pieces together until now.

Roger used to be a paramedic. He quit as soon as his wife died so he could look after Bradley. Miss Vines had told us when she was helping with Jaden’s leg that she knew what to do because her father, a paramedic, had taught her.

“Yeah, you guys are pretty slow. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a lot of lying I had to do. I told you the entire story and none of you bothered to put it together?” Miss Vines laughed as she looked between all of us “You were all so busy wrapped up in your own problems everything else just washed over your heads.”

She moved her flat hand over her head with a whistle, and Bradley laughed.

“You were there the entire time. You were telling us what to do.” I thought back to everything that had happened, how somehow Miss Vines had always been there steering us in the direction she wanted. The direction she and Melt Face wanted.

She grinned “All it took was some nicely placed suggestions by the scared little teacher and all of you were easier to manipulate that a love-struck teenager.”

She had told us to split up. Gavin had said it was a bad idea and yet it was Miss Vines who had suggested it. When Aubree came up on the laptop before Bradley killed her, she was the one who stopped us from looking for her.

“You didn’t try and help the Principal. You were helping him.” I gestured my head towards Bradley.

“You really believed I had used a laptop to hit him around the head?” She let out a laugh “What do you think those things are made of? Steel?”

It was undamaged when Archie and I found it in the Principal’s office, it was back on the desk like someone had picked it up and placed it there for us. Apparently, it had never moved from the spot on the desk. I thought back to when we heard the Principal die over the speakers, I thought back to her screaming and pleading for help.

I also thought back to Melt Face’s laugh as she did. He was laughing because he knew she was faking it.

“I mean little Kevin was wired up the entire time, but that was just an insurance policy so I could hear what happened once I snatched her and went ahead with the hangman game.” Bradley’s smug little grin could not be wiped off of his face. He wanted us to know every last detail; he wanted us to know how he had been one step ahead of us the entire time “I told you you’d be surprised if I honestly told you how long I had been listening to you guys.”

Archie shook his head, scrunching his face in confusion as he looked over at Miss Vines and Bradley. The siblings.

“I don’t get it. Why now? How? I mean how did you know this year of all years would be the one where teachers crashed the riot?” Archie’s questions were rightly asked.

Miss Vines ran her tongue across her bottom lip, taking a step forward as she leaned her torso over and placed her hands on her knees, like she was speaking to a child.

“Why do you think I got a job at this school?” She asked, her voice patronising as she spoke to Archie “It wasn’t a coincidence that I ended up at this school out of all schools. I wanted to be here. I waited, and when I knew that Alex would be released, I decided that this year was the last Riot this town ever saw.”