▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▏⛧▕▁▁▁▁▁▁▁
𝐌 𝐀 𝐃 𝐍 𝐄 𝐒 𝐒 ₊˚.༄𖥸 ── 𝚂𝙲
𝗩𝗢𝗟𝗨𝗠𝗘 𝗜𝗜 ──── ❪𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘗𝘖𝘓𝘈𝘙𝘖𝘐𝘋𝘚!❫
𝖳𝖧𝖤 𝗗𝗥𝗨𝗡𝗞 𝗦𝗟𝗨𝗧 ─── ❪ 📼🎧! ❫
𝖲𝖤𝖠𝖲𝖮𝖭 𝖳𝖶𝖮, 𝗘𝗣𝗜𝗦𝗢𝗗𝗘 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗘𝗘
𝟤𝟫. ╱ ✷ ❝ our 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 have
𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 into an episode of
𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘁𝘆 𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗿𝘀 ❞
"𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗗𝗢 think they would say if they knew I was in here?" Scott mumbled against Riley's shoulder as the two of them laid in her bed, the blonde with her back to his chest.
"They wouldn't be too happy about it, that's for sure. I don't care at this point." She sighed, moving her head so that she could look at him, "Weren't you supposed to be with Monty and Bryce Last night?"
Scott shrugged, "You said you needed me, so I canceled. Monty covered for me, but I'm supposed to meet them at the field this morning."
"Well, you better get to stepping." Riley tells him as she gets out of her bed, picking his shirt up from the floor and throwing it towards him.
"There are far more important things for me to be doing before meeting up with them." Scott moved to sit on the end of the bed, pulling his shirt over his head.
"Which is what?" Riley walked over to stand between his legs, arms snaking around his neck.
"Letting me drive you to school."
Riley looks into his blue eyes, and rolls them. "Fine. But go home and shower first. You smell like sex."
He smirked, "I wonder why."
"Go!"
"I'm going! I'm going!" He laughs, walking towards her. "I'll be back in thirty minutes to get you.
"Okay." She meets him halfway, landing a kiss on his lips before he made his way over to the window and climbed out on the roof.
Moments later, her bedroom door swings open to Clay standing there with his head bleeding.
"Why the hell did I just see Scott Reed climbing out of your bedroom window?" Clay points towards the door, "Be happy that I was the one who saw him, and not mom and dad."
"He was here to borrow my English home-,"
Clay cuts her off, "Don't lie to me, Riley. We don't keep secrets from each other."
"Okay, fine." Riley sighed before pulling him into her room and closing the door behind him, I met Scott Freshman year when he moved here. Jeff and Leah forced me to go on a double date with him, we hit it off and we've been together ever since."
"Before or after the overdose?" He asked.
"After."
"Why hid it for so long?" He asked her.
Riley sat there for a moment, "At first, I just wanted to make sure a relationship was worth having after my overdose. And we were going to tell people, but then Jeff, Hannah and the tapes happened. And now this whole trial bullshit is happening, I don't know."
"Does anyone know the two of you are together?"
"Monty and Zach know, but that's only because we had to find some way to see each other without it being suspicious." She tells him, "And Hannah, she figured it out on her own."
"Does he make you happy? Like, are you genuinely happy when you're with him?"
"Yeah, he makes me so fucking happy."
"Then you have my approval." Clay tells her. There's a brief moment of silence before Clay lets out a loud sigh and sits down on her bed. "Skye's in the hospital."
Riley eyes go wide, "What? Why?"
"I tried to have sex with her and I....couldn't get it up." Clay ignores the look of disgust on his cousin's face, "I went to her house and they were putting her into the back of an ambulance."
Riley scanned her cousin's face, "What happened to your forehead this time?"
"Oh, someone ran me off my fucking bike this morning."
"How did our lives get so fucked up and complicated?" She lets out a sigh, sitting next to him and laying her head on his shoulder.
"Hannah Baker walked into our lives." Clay muttered, turning his head to kiss the crown of her head, "I'm going to see Skye in the hospital and you get ready for school. I'll meet you there."
"Hey, Clay." Riley stops him before he could walk out of the door, "I love you."
Clay chuckled, smiling softly at her, "I love you, too."
｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈• ｡ﾟ
𝗥𝗜𝗟𝗘𝗬 𝗔𝗡𝗗 Jessica stared down at the shooting range paper, the words, ' 𝘽𝙀𝙏𝙏𝙀𝙍 𝙇𝙐𝘾𝙆 𝙉𝙀𝙓𝙏 𝙏𝙄𝙈𝙀 ' written in red marker.
"Holy shit, Alex." Jessica was the first one to speak up.
"Yeah."
"Great, our lives have turned into an episode of Pretty Little Liars." Riley rolled her eyes.
"Who is doing this?"
Alex and Riley look up as Scott walks past the table, pretending to shoot Alex as he walks by while winking in Riley's direction.
"Hey, can you tell who's handwriting?" Jessica holds the paper up.
"Jesus, put that down." Alex grabbed the paper, looking around to make sure no one saw it.
"Let me see it again." Riley pulls it towards her, "I swear, I've seen the handwriting before, I just can't put my finger on it."
"Sorry, I just...I'm really sorry, Alex." Jessica shakes her head.
"So, you're not alone in this." Alex tells her light skinned girl in front of him.
"Sorry I said that. That was really shitty. I'm just...," Jessica lets out a sigh, "This is just a lot."
"I get it. I know." Alex looked at her, "Wait, your hair is different."
"It's court hair." She tells him.
"I don't like it."
Jessica scoffed playfully, "Noted."
"I don't know." Riley smirked, looking away from the target where she had been studying the handwriting, "Kind of fits you."
"Shut up." Jessica laughed, shoving her. "What the hell happened to your face?"
Alex turned to look at who the two girls were looking at, Clay sitting next to him.
"Someone ran me off the road last night." Says Clay, "Someone in what looked like a black Range Rover."
"Bryce." Alex says in realization.
"You're not testifying." Jessica said, "And nothing is happening to Riley or Zach yet."
"Does he know that?" Clay asked.
"I don't think it matters." Alex says, showing the target paper to Clay, "Whoever this is, they're coming after all of us. This came in the mail for me yesterday."
Clay looked down at it," Jesus."
Riley let out a laugh, shaking her head. "This is nuts."
"We have to fucking stop him."
"How?" Questioned Alex, "I'm a cripple and you'll get grounded for life if you even speak to him, either of you."
"Yea, we promised my mom we'd stay away from him." Clay replied, "But if he's coming after me, and possibly Riley, then what can I do?"
"Are we even sure it's him?" Alex asked, looking towards the table where Bryce sat with Monty, Zach and Scott now joining the three, "What if it's Zach?"
Riley shakes her head, "Zach wouldn't do that. Besides, that's not his handwriting. I should know with the amount of times I've copied his bio homework. And though I hate to admit that I know, that isn't Bryce's handwriting either, and it's not Scott's."
"That's crazy." Jessica agrees with Riley, "Zach's been helping with everything."
"Then why's he still hanging around Bryce?" Alex questioned.
"It's Bryce, or someone protecting him." Clay says, "He doesn't want the truth to come out."
Jessica looked at the two boys as they both looked at her, "Why are you guys looking at me?"
"Um...mostly 'cause you're sitting across the table from us." Alex said.
"You can tell them what happened to you in Court." Clay ignored the look Riley sent the two.
"Hannah's lawyer told me I'm just supposed to talk about the hot and not list, and how it ended our friendship."
"But you know that's not true or it's not all that's true." Clay tells the Davis girl, "And they know it."
"But that's not part of the case."
"If you say it, it'll make it part of the case." Clay tells her.
"So, I just say it?" Jessica looked at the boy in disbelief.
"Jess, I-," Clay sighs, "Listen, I know it's not easy, okay? Like, in no fucking universe do I think that...but if you tell the truth when they ask about your friendship, if you tell them the real reason you stopped talking Hannah, then the truth is out. And this ship stops. And Bryce gets what's coming to him."
Jessica shook her head, "I gotta get to first."
"Jess-,"
"You know," Jessica stood up, "The truth doesn't always make things right. You should know that better than anyone."
"Look, I need to remember what happened." Alex looked at Clay as Jessica left, "I need the tapes. You have to stop protecting me."
"Skye's in the hospital." Was Clay's answer.
"What? What happened?" Questioned Alex.
"I stopped protecting her."
"Okay, fine. Then do this for me." Alex tells him, "Get me a ride to court today."
"Alex-,"
"Clay."
"Guess that means I'm going to." Riley sighed, standing up.
"Where are you going?" Clay asks her.
"I'll meet you guys outside." She says, walking towards the table where Zach sat with the rest of the baseball and football players. "Hey, I need you to cover for me in Bio."
Zach looks up at her with a questioning face, but nods his head anyway, "Okay."
"Thank you."
｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈• ｡ﾟ
"𝗧𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗞𝗦 𝗙𝗢𝗥 the ride, Tony." Clay held his hand out to help Riley get out of the back of the red Mustang.
"Oh, I'm coming with you guys." Tony tells him.
"But you're on the witness list." Clay tells him, "They'll check it."
"No, I got my brother's ID." Tony says, causing Riley to send him a smirk, "I haven't slept in two nights. I just wanna know what I'm looking at in there."
"You and me both." Riley mumbled under her breath.
"What if you're on the list?" Tony asked Alex.
"I'll just wave my cane and cry." Alex says, "It works everywhere."
"I think there's a handicapped entrance." Tony says as Alex starts to walk up the stairs of the courthouse.
"I don't think you're supposed to say 'handicapped'." Clay says.
Tony rushes to Alex, "Take my arm."
｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈• ｡ﾟ
"𝗜 𝗙𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 those friends." Jessica spoke, the 'hot or not' list in her hands, "That list just messed up everything."
Dennis, Olivia's lawyer, took the paper from her hands, "And was the list typical of your experience at Liberty?"
"Yes." Jessica answered, "Hannah was already labeled a slut. The list just made everything worse. The truth doesn't matter. That's just what they do to girls at our school. I mean...I found these just this morning in my math class."
"Objection!" Sonya, the lawyer representing the school, stood up. "These photos were not admitted into evidence-,"
Jessica held up the photo's, making Riley gasp quietly in shock, "They took one photo and it defines you. And then it becomes your job to prove everyone wrong. This is what they did to Hannah, and now they're doing it to me!" Jessica exclaimed, "We didn't have a pack of bodyguards following us around! We didn't have people to protect us like Riley Jensen did."
Riley looks down at her lap with a frown on her face and Clay reaches over to intertwine his hand with hers in comfort.
She thought about the time in the courtyard where Jeff and Monty had pushed the Freshman off of her after he casually walked up to her and grabbed her chest - a dare made by his Freshman friends.
And it didn't help to prove that Jessica was right, because the second he walked over to her, Monty, Justin, Jeff and Scott - hell even Bryce - were standing up to defend her.
Then, Jeff took it upon himself to track down the person who had written her name down on the list, pushing him up against the lockers in the hallway, threatening him to never look in Riley's direction ever again.
"Order! Order!"
｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈• ｡ﾟ
"𝗠𝗦. 𝗗𝗔𝗩𝗜𝗦, did you report these photos?" Sonya asked, walking towards the stand where Jessica still sat.
"No."
"So, you're telling me that you expect the school to take action to protect you, but you don't tell them when an incident they're supposed to protect you from ever occurs?" Questioned Sonya.
"If I felt I could trust the school, maybe I would have." Jessica says, "Maybe Riley would have. Maybe Hannah would have. Oh, that's right. She did, and look what happened."
"Move to strike as non-responsive."
"The jury will disregard the witness's last answer." The judge spoke.
"Ms. Davis, did you report the hot or not list?" Asked Sonya.
Jessica looks at Riley for a second before she looks back at Sonya, "No."
"Because, in fact, it wasn't the list that broke your friendship, was it?"
"It was."
"Do you know who put your name and Hannah's name on the list?" Sonya asked.
"Yes."
"Who."
"Alex Standall." Answered Jessica.
"And isn't it true that Alex Standall was your boyfriend and that Hannah was jealous of that?"
"No." Jessica shook her head, "We were all friends....at first. For a while if you saw one of us, you saw all three of us. Something, Riley would be with us but she...she had other friends she spent time with. Our relationship started heating up, but I tried to be sensitive to Hannah. But of course, he didn't wait. He didn't get what it would feel like for a girl. Actually, Hannah was pretty okay with it. Even though I chose a boy over my friendship with a girl. From that point, Alex and I kept things cool, but when Hannah found out that he made the list, it was too much for her."
"So, you blame the hot or not list, and the culture at Liberty, but isn't it true that it was Hannah's jealousy that ended your friendship?" Sonya asked.
"No. It was the list."
"After you broke up with Alex, did your friendship with Hannah resume?"
"No."
"Because you started dating Justin Foley, correct?"
"No."
"so , you didn't date Justin Foley?"
"No, I did-,"
"Hannah was jealous of you and Justin, just like she was jealous of you and Alex, wasn't she?"
"No, it's not true."
"How do you know?" Sonya asked, "Jessica, how did you know? Jessica, is it true that Hannah Baker was jealous, and vindictive, and that's why your relationship ended?"
"No." Jessica shook her head, nearly in tears.
"Well, the prosecution claims that it was the hot or not list, but it was simply Hannah's own jealousy, isn't that correct?" Interrogated Sonya, "There's no other reason, is there? Jessica, is there any other other reason that we haven't mentioned?"
"I wanna hit her." Riley hissed quietly.
"Down, kitty." Tony chuckled.
"I don't think hitting a lawyer with a police officer standing so close is the best idea." Clay mumbled back.
"No." Jessica blinked, letting her tears fall, "There's no other reason."
｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈• ｡ﾟ
"𝙃𝙊𝙒 𝙄𝙎 Jessica?"
Riley sighed, "Not good. The school's lawyer basically blamed everything on Jessica's relationship with Justin and Alex, and Hannah being jealous of it."
"Riley! Let's go!" Tony called out to her.
"I have to go, I'll see you tomorrow." She tells Scott before hanging up.
｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈• ｡ﾟ
"𝗔𝗥𝗘 𝗬𝗢𝗨 doing okay?" Riley had her phone pressed against her ear as she copied the notes that Zach had taken for Bio.
"I'm doing as good as I can be. I mean, I have no place to go, no money, no food and I'm talking to you on a payphone."
"I told you that I could send you more money. Just enough for you to get a hotel room and something to eat." The blonde ran her fingers through her damp hair.
"And I told you that I didn't want your money, Lee. You work hard for it. I have to go before the time runs out. I'll talk to you in about five to seven business days."
Riley sighed, "Fine. Just be careful, Justin."
There's a long pause on the other end, Justin glancing over to where Tony and Clay stood against Tony's car, having stopped when Justin asked if he could make a phone call with the payphone that was nearby.
"I always am."
｡ﾟ•┈୨♡୧┈• ｡ﾟ
"𝗜 𝗡𝗘𝗘𝗗 you to come with me, right now." Clay walks into Riley's bedroom, pulling her out of the door and across the hall to his own.
"What?" What the hell, Clay?!" She exclaimed as she was pushed into the room.
"Make a sound, we're all dead." Clay spoke, but he wasn't talking to her.
Riley spun around to find Justin sitting on the bed, "Oh, thank fucking god."
The boy stood up, holding his arms open for the blonde to rush into them.
Justin closed his eyes tightly as he held the girl in his arms.
"Justin." Riley pulled away, grabbing his face in her hands, "You really need a shower."