song of the chapter in the name of love by martin garrix and bebe rexha
I parked my car on the curb outside Rosa Meyers house. It was a pretty ordinary house with a neat garden. It was big but not mansion worthy. The front porch lights were on and you could only hear a slight thump of music when you were close enough to the house. My guess was Rosa would be keeping an eye on the noise in order to prevent any police showing up.
The door was unlocked when I got to it. Normally I would feel rude just walking on into someone else's house but when I opened the door everywhere was littered with people from school. A couple of people who noticed me seemed relatively surprised to see me there. I had gotten used to the low whispers that circulated after I entered somewhere. People had always really known me as Pandora's friend and now I was dead Pandora's friend.
My bag was swinging by my side and it felt unusually heavy on account of the letters I had stuffed inside of it. I had brought the letters addressed to Jack, Rosa, Marissa, Arun, Tanner and David. After meeting Rosa earlier in the week, Freddie and I had gone to my house to find my mother had left again, giving us an empty house to open the letters and write down what we knew. Every time I saw the sheets Freddie was creating there was some other note on it that he felt relevant.
Arun's and Tanner's didn't really feel relevant. I found out that Tanner and Pandora had had some sort of fling before he had moved on to Rosa and that it was Pandora who encouraged Arun to go for Rosa. It sort of made sense that Rosa blaming Pandora for the problems in a way. Pandora was jealous and pushed Arun to Rosa. Rosa got to know both and decided she couldn't pick between the two. But at the same time, I wasn't really sure why Rosa got away with stringing them both along. She would give one her attention one night while the other watched in anger and the same thing would happen the next week but with the other one. It was confusing and I wasn't sure how she got the energy to keep it up.
Tanner and Arun were evidently two grade A morons considering they let the same girl come between them and string them along while the other watched.
Morons don't murder but I guess I've been wrong before.
I looked about for Freddie but didn't see him anywhere. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a drink, figuring I could do with some liquid confidence.
"Didn't expect to see you here," A voice said from beside the fridge. It was Jack Evans.
My breath hitched when I realised who it was. Jack was top of my suspect list. He used to be this pretty sweet looking boy but in the last year or so he had matured into this somewhat sinister looking man. It was disturbing and made me question what exactly was going on for him to change so drastically.
"Rosa invited me," I said at a loss for what I was supposed to be saying.
"And you came?" he asked again, his icy eyes widening in surprise, "didn't Pandora used to hate Rosa?"
"It was a mutual thing," I murmured as I tried to walk around him but he followed me, seemingly keen on continuing the conversation.
"Still, isn't it kind of weird for you to suddenly be so friendly with Rosa when I'm sure all you did was listen to your best friend bitch about her?"
"I don't see how that's any of your business, Jack," I replied just as coolly as I walked into the living room. There was no longer as many people in here I had heard people talking about Rosa's basement party room.
"I was Pandora's friend too you know," he replied, "I know exactly what you know. I thought I could trust her."
I turned to look at Jack and in that second everything in my body was full of rage.
"Care to share what you know?" I asked, eyes narrowing upon him. He was shaking with his own kind of anger but it didn't seem to be comparable to mine. I was fuming and Jack was starting to shrink uncertainly before me.
"Let's not play this game, I don't like playing games," he replied, his voice shook at the end as though he was afraid of what I would say and who would hear it.
"That's funny because from what I can remember you treated Pandora like a game. Is that why you did what you did?"
Jack fumbled for a response. It was like watching a robot that was on the go slow and the script it had been given was no longer working. It didn't compute.
"I - I did what I did because I had to, you don't understand-"
I felt my anger starting to diminish and instead my veins were filling with fear. Jack was admitting what he had done and god knows what he would do now that I knew.
"You didn't have to kill her!" I shouted and Jack didn't reply. "You killed her."
Jack shook his head, "I'm sorry, honestly if I had of known it would have affected her like that, I would never have done it. I did love her just not in the same way as she loved me."
"What are you even talking about?" I spluttered out. Killing someone out of love? How could he stand in front of me with his slicked back hair and tell me that what he had done was out of love?
"I didn't want to play her like I did, but I had too."
Nothing was making sense. I felt like the robot in the conversation who had forgotten the script. I was hearing words that weren't what I was expecting. Jack wasn't admitting to having killed her. He was admitting to something, but not what I wanted to hear.
"I thought she told you," he said, his voice low as he looked about the room as though trying to suss out if anyone was listening to our conversation but the living room remained empty.
"Told me what?" I asked, using his own words.
"About what happened, that night," he said referring to some random day among thousands. I could only think about the day that she died.
"I want you to tell me," I replied, searching him with my gaze.
"I - I can't," he spluttered out. I thought I could see tears forming in the bottom of his eyes, "You won't understand."
In that moment I wasn't sure if I wanted to understand. I don't think I would be able to get my head around anything.
"Try me," I whispered back. The fear was clawing up my throat like it always seemed to be. I wanted to vomit.
"I didn't cheat on her, not really. We weren't - we weren't really official," he started, looking somewhat ashamed.
"That doesn't mean you get to go around sleeping with other girls," I replied, not sure where he was going with this. What was he thinking?
Jack shook his head profusely, "we never even kissed, Viv. I knew she liked me and I liked her but not like that."
Now it was me who was shaking their head, failing to understand. This was not what Pandora had led me to believe.
"Tell me," I instructed, wanting to understand. I desperately needed to understand otherwise i was going to be stuck with this for the rest of my life. The not knowing was what was killing me, that's why I was obsessed.
"I was seeing someone, but it wasn't Pandora," he continued. He was slow in his words as though he was trying to gage my reaction.
I stayed quiet, leaving it up to him to put the missing pieces of the puzzle in.
"I loved her like a friend, but I'm gay," he finished and then it clicked into place. That is why Pandora was so upset. She felt like he led her on to then find out that the boy you liked was seeing someone else. Only Pandora wouldn't have just seen it like that. Another girl would have been bad enough but to find out that he had never been attracted to her in the first place. That they flirting was all fake or in her head. That would have humiliated her. She would have felt like some sort of game to him and Pandora was the one who played the games, she never was the one suffering as a consequence.
"You're gay," I repeated, trying to get my thoughts in order.
He didn't say anything as he looked down at his feet. The vibe in the room was changing. Neither of us were angry anymore. I was confused and he was sad. He looked ashamed and I wasn't sure if that was because of the admission of his sexuality out loud or because of the way he had made Pandora feel.
"I thought she would have told someone, I thought she would have told you," he stated but refused to make eye contact.
"She never told me. Pandora liked secrets, it meant that she had something over you."
"She never used it as leverage," Jack said as he finally looked up, "She wouldn't speak to me so I couldn't be sure if she had ever told anyone."
Part of me wanted to feel bad for him. He was hiding who he was when his sexuality shouldn't be a problem. It was a part of him and was something he should embrace rather than hide. I didn't know his circumstances but I really did feel bad for him.
But the majority of me was still wary. He could still have killed her. He thought she told someone, who's to say he didn't get angry and do it.
"I was paranoid ever since she walked into the room that night, I thought everyone at school knew and was whispering about me behind my back. I started to change," he said and shook his head to himself, "I lost the only person I thought would ever accept me."
"Pandora left a letter for you," I said and his eyes shot up to me. "I haven't read it if that's what you're thinking."
"I wasn't-"
"Here," I said as I rummaged in my bag and pulled it out.
I turned to walk away from him before stopping, "for what it's worth. I won't tell anyone. But you shouldn't be ashamed of who you are or live in fear of someone finding out. The sooner you accept yourself then the sooner everyone else can too."
I knew the advice was weak. I couldn't even pretend to understand what it was like to hide who you were. It was easy to say words, harder to complete actions.
"Thanks," I heard him say. His voice was barely audible that before I left the room part of me thought I had imagined it. I closed the door tight behind me and took a couple of seconds to breathe. I didn't trust him. His admission or his apparent trust in me didn't mean I wasn't still suspicious of him. He still could have killed her and I had to remember that before I ended up following in her footsteps. I had only come here tonight in order to gain trust. Nobody was going to talk about Pandora openly if they didn't trust me. I wanted answers and if befriending possible psychopathic murderers was the only way to do it then that's what was what I was going to do.
I would be fine as long as I remember that this was all a game, and this time I was the one who held the right cards to come out the winner.
a/n
shorter chapter but now we know about jack.
is he still a possible suspect?
sorry it's been so long I've been really busy lately / suffering from a serious lack of motivation to update anything.
promise i'll try better to update !!
don't forget to vote and comment !!!
thanks,
rachel // longtimegone
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