A/N: Here we go
Monday. 3:45 pm.
Only for Lauren.
Lucy's self made mantra resounded within her mind over and over again as she attached duct tape to the camera, the Peeping Tom in this risky endeavor, with latex gloved hands. Louis grunted and whined as Lucy's white Converse put pressure on his small shoulders. While Zayn was busy picking the lock with his own special lock pick kit, Lucy was standing on Louis's shoulders, attempting to reduce the amount of video footage necessary for them to delete once they actually made their way into the camera room.
However, whilst Zayn and Louis were doing this out of a motive to help out both Lauren and Camila, Lucy kept reciting those three words within her thoughts.
Only for Lauren.
Camila could end up imprisoned or dead for all she cared. If anything, Camila out of the way somehow may be best for Lucy, if Camila was somehow found guilty as the price for Lauren's innocence. Things had been so good between Lucy and Lauren before Camila Cabello had stumbled into that English classroom and Lauren's life. That past summer, they had spent a lot of time together. Lucy had taken Lauren to the top of the Alpine Mountains, where she grew her stash of organic weed. They had built bonfires at the beach and listened to cool tunes while the tides roared and the sun tucked itself into bed.
Lucy thought she understood how much Alicia had broken Lauren's heart. She, after all, had spent an entire summer trying to put the pieces together again, hoping and praying that maybe, just maybe she had done enough to be enough for Lauren. Was it selfish, the fact that she mainly tried to repair Lauren's heart just for the purpose of healing her own as well? Lucy didn't personally know the answer to that question, one she had been asking herself since the beginning of that summer. All she could do now was choose to follow whatever her gut and her heart told her was right.
"Did you put all the tape up?" Zayn asked from his spot at the door. He had a few bobby pins in his mouth, paperclips in his pockets, and was using a device of his own creation to fiddle with the door's lock.
"Just about," Lucy responded. She squinted her eyes as she attached the final piece of duct tape to the already coated camera, just for good measure.
"Hurry up already! My shoulders are starting to ache.." Louis whined.
Rolling her eyes somewhat indignantly, Lucy hopped off Louis's shoulders, landing solidly on her feet, wobbling only slightly. Louis sighed in relief, and Lucy was just glad to no longer be in the target range of Louis's bitching.
Just in time, there was a click, and Zayn's gloved hand triumphantly pushed the door open. With a Cheshire Cat grin stretched wide on his face, he allowed Louis and Lucy in before entering the room himself, making sure to close the door behind them.
The room was dark. Only the lights from the screens illuminated the cluttered room. The screens, showing who and what were by the cameras were attached to the wall on the right, the nearby desks filled with closed laptops, day old chai lattes, and muffin crumbs and wrappers.
"Lucy, do you want to delete the footage, or do you want me to do it?" Zayn asked.
"Aren't you slower at it, though? We need to do this quickly. We cannot afford to get caught doing this."
"Don't worry, we won't get caught. We're okay. We still got time."
"Ha. Sure. No we don't," Lucy responded bluntly. "Move and let me get to work on this."
The boys stepped aside, and Lucy sat at the main computer monitor and began navigating her way through the computer system.
"Look for the old tapes and old videos", she ordered, and the boys scrambled to the other corners of the room to start looking.
A few minutes pass silently, with the occasional clutter of moved objects being the only sound that resonated throughout the room. Within the span of three minutes, Lucy had successfully deleted any past footage of their endeavor to break into the camera control room. Now she just sat, thinking to herself, as Zayn and Louis carefully made their way through the boxes and piles of tapes and CD ROMs, all jam-packed with video footage.
"Lucy."
"Yeah, Z?"
"What's the date and time of the shooting? Do you have the date that Ally provided you with?"
Lucy paused, reached into her jacket pocket, and pulled out a small piece of looseleaf paper. On that paper was the date and time that authorities believed was the approximate time that Ally was shot. Ally had scrawled the date and time on a sheet of paper and had given it to Lucy for later use. Louis went over to Lucy, taking the paper she offered them, and asked, "You finished?"
Lucy nodded. "All of it. Completely deleted. It'll take them a lot of time and effort to get it back, if they even can. Life is too short to spend so much time trying to get the past back."
"Okay...at least the footage is deleted. Are you okay? Something seems up with you."
Louis had noticed the look on Lucy's face. Her lips had been pursed tightly, eyes narrowed, slightly glazed over due to the intense focus she had within her thoughts. Louis could tell that Lucy's mind wasn't entirely planted in their situation, or the task they had come to do.
Louis was right.
Lucy's mind wasn't grounded with the video footage or the camera room or the possibility of being caught. Her mind wasn't in the present moment, no matter how she tried to convince the boys otherwise.
Lucy's mind was with Lauren.
For now, Louis decided to give Lucy some alone time. "Thanks for the paper."
"No problem," Lucy curtly responded.
A few minutes passed, with a butter thick tension surrounding the three students, until a voice just barely managed to crash through the staled air.
"I found them!" Louis whisper-shouted, holding some envelopes. Each contained one or two CD ROMs of video.
"Took you long enough," Lucy snapped, before creaking the door open. She checked to see if the coast was clear before taking her leave. Zayn and Louis only heard a few words from her before the door closed behind them.
"Make sure those get to Ally."
The door thudded shut. Louis turned to Zayn. "D'you know what's going on with her?"
Zayn shook his head, just as unsure as Louis was about their friend. Already, the gears in his head were turning.
What the fuck was wrong with Lucy?
Meanwhile, outside the camera room, Lucy sniffled her nose. Even she didn't know what shit she had gotten herself into now. All she knew was that in June she had lost herself in the clearwater pond of Lauren's eyes, and now she was drowning in the shallow water she couldn't swim her way out of. Her mind was a scratched turntable record, thoughts too deeply engraved within her brain, forming an endless loop, a musical way to say the word obsession.
Only for Lauren.
-
Monday. 3:45 pm.
"So here's what we're going to do." Liam told Lauren as they strode over to the front of the school gym. "There are five entrances to the gym, and four of those go into the actual gym."
"And the fifth one?"
"A back entrance; opens up to a hallway that leads right to the locker room. That and the bathrooms, if a break is needed for some unusual reason."
"I don't think so. I just want to get whatever evidence we can get, and then get the fuck out as soon as possible. What's your plan, Payno?"
"Well, firstly, I'll go in and check if anyone is there. I'm a soccer player. They can't say I'm being in there for sketchy causes. Then if the coast is clear, I'll message you. "
"Okay."
"I know it takes less time if you go in with me, but if someone else is there, things are going to go to pure shit. Having a maybe jock killer seen in the locker room when others are around? Bad idea."
"You have a point. Go ahead." The Cuban made a vague hand gesture towards the door for Liam, and the school soccer star allowed himself in. Lauren then found the nearest bench and sat down, wondering if she could doze off for a few minutes before Liam gave her the all clear. But no, Lauren' drowsy eyes couldn't even catch a wink of sleep before Liam's special ringtone went off on her phone. It was a recording of Liam covering DJ Esco's "Too Much Sauce" that Lauren had caught Liam singing one time when they shared a carpool to school last year.
She unlocked her phone, read the message, sighed, and brick-lifted herself up, trudging down to the hallway and into the locker room.
Liam was grinning happily in front of what looked like Austin's locker.
"Good news," he announced. He turned to the locker right behind him and opened it effortlessly. There was no lock, and Lauren watched as Liam swung the door to reveal a jar of protein powder, some Playboy magazines, and a school folder stuffed messily with all sorts of papers. "Laur, the doors are unlocked."
The soccer jock tossed a pair of late gloves to Lauren. He had put his not long before he had texted the all clear. While Lauren put on her gloves, Liam opened up the duffel bag that he had brought from his own gym locker.
"What should I put in the bag?" he whispered to Lauren, who quirked an eyebrow.
"That's an obvious answer. Take everything. Anything and everything can make difference at this point."
"Okay. Mind checking Brad's locker while I pack this shit in?"
"Where is it?"
"Over there," Liam pointed to a dented locker, so damaged that even if a lock was there, it would have been rendered useless. On the locker, paint was peeling, and it was covered with reddish brown stains. Small enough to be overlooked by passerby, but easy enough to be noticed by those who stopped and actually observed the locker. Eyes squinting slightly due to focus, Lauren looked closely at the locker stains.
"Blood."
"Blood?"
"Yea. They look kinda recent, too, since the smears don't look too faded. If his body had been found here, I'd bet they were from the murder scene. But no. He wasn't found here. Would have made things a lot easier, though, if he had."
"Open the locker. Anything in there?"
"More papers. Fuck!"
Liam's composure remained unshaken as Lauren's fist collided with another locker, the one next to Brad's. Her behavior wasn't excusable, but it didn't surprise him.
"Lauren," he said slowly, putting the duffel bag down and walking to her with another pair of latex gloves. "You need to calm the fuck down. Punching shit isn't going to help anything at this point. I'm not condoning destruction as a form of cheap therapy, but do it in a place where your fingerprints won't end up all over possible sites of evidence. Let me look at your hand."
The glove was torn, shredded in the knuckle areas, and small specks of blood was easily seen on the knuckle of one of the fingers. Liam pocketed the torn glove, handed her a new one, and helped her put it on.
"I know it sounds shitty now, but it's gonna be okay."
"That's awfully cliché."
"Says the poet accused of murder. This whole story transcends clichés."
"True. But I'm trying not to maintain hope at the moment. Hope is like betting all your money that you can drop a penny off the Empire State Building and hit a ginger haired, green eyed woman on the head with it. The odds are near impossible but you still put all these stakes on the chance of a miracle happening. Saying it's going to be okay just jinxes it."
"Okay. If you say so, Poe. Come on, let's take all this back to Ally. We've got everything. Yogurtland, my treat?"
"Yeah. Yogurtland sounds nice."
-
A/N: HIATUS ARE OVER WOOP WOOP
So what I'm trying to do here is put Monday within four perspectives, as everyone is trying to get more information. The pieces of the puzzle are being uncovered, but they aren't put together yet. Or are they?
Well, that's up to the interpretation of you, my dear readers.
Please comment, vote and share this story (: If you do I'll really appreciate it.
Part Two of Chapter Six is coming soon - working on the last bits of the fourth perspective - but it'll take less time than it took to update this, I promise.
Be kind to yourselves and others today. You are more than worthy. You deserve love and happiness - you deserve the world. Don't let others tell you otherwise.
Stay safe, and stay lit, everyone (;
Love you all
- Selene (ahhhh it's good to be back)