Manipulation High

Chapter 65: a long ride

If I counted correctly, Chapter 69 will be the one I upload the day the first couple chapters of Antiheroes goes up.
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George POV.

Visiting a Native Indian burial ground was not my idea of fun, especially since a lot of the horror movies I had watched had plots that revolved around these places. Pet Cemetery, Amityville Horror, and The Shining just to name a few didn’t make me any more eager to go there.

It seems that the same thing could be said for a lot of the other students, especially a group of students who had decided to tell spooky stories last night after dinner. Still, the camp counsellor insisted that we’d learn a good part about their history and how they treated the dead if we had a picnic there as a lovely way to spend our Wednesday.

So now we had all been loaded onto the two school buses and were headed on an hour drive to go and visit some dead Indians. The majority of the people were clearly on edge, even the bus driver (who wasn’t even going into the burial ground itself) looked nervous. Clay was seemingly one of those people, bouncing his leg anxiously as he bit his lip.

“Are you feeling okay Clay?” I decided to ask him after examining his expression for a couple of minutes. “You seem kind of tense.”
“Just don’t like the idea of cemeteries, is all,” he answered with a shrug, looking past my head and out of the window of the bus.

“Aww,” I cooed playfully. “Is big, strong, handsome Clay scared of the dead people at the graveyard? Poor baby.” A chuckle left my lips at the babying impression but I covered my mouth as soon as it happened before averting my gaze.

The impression had the blond chuckling too, but he seemed more cautious than I did. He uttered something quietly which I wasn’t able to hear but I brushed it off, instead just falling back into silence as we watched the scenery fly past our view out of the window and listened to the quiet conversations all around us.

The camp councillor was in our bus, walking up and down the aisle between students and stopping to talk to them, asking them what they thought of camp so far. From the expressions of most of the students they hated it, although they did manage to bite their tongues and tell him that it was alright, and seeing them do that made me chuckle.

He eventually stopped in front of myself and Clay, smiling at both of us widely. “Good morning boys,” he greeted, even though it was already almost noon. “How are you two feeling today?” The man questioned, and the two of us responded with a meaningless ‘good’.

Neither of us were in the mood for talking at the moment and it showed, not that the man seemed to notice or care. He just continued trying to talk to us, and with Mrs Rogers shooting daggers at us with her eyes from the front of the bus we knew that we would have to engage in the conversation.

“Do you mind me asking about why we are going to an ancient burial ground?” I questioned, knowing that I had to say something.
“Because death is a major part of a lot of different countries and cultures,” he explained to myself and Clay. “Plus it is history. That is the entire point of this camp.”

We expected him to move to talk to another pair of students somewhere else on the bus but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. He continued going on, already beginning to explain some of the ways of life of the Native American cultures which got me and Clay reluctantly listening.

Sapnap POV.

“So I can’t tell if Clay and George are friends, or if they want to kill each other.” Wilbur stated as we examined the pair from a few rows back.
“In all honesty I have been wondering that too,” Techno agreed, having been leaning on an angle with his back against the window so he could see all three of us at once. "Although, I think George is the more murderous of the two. I can just tell that sort of thing."

The pair were currently sitting next to each other (which didn’t really prove anything as we had to sit beside our partners), however they were sitting incredibly close to each other. They were so close in fact that their shoulders were brushing against each other. Both of them were in a conversation with that Aaron dude, but neither seemed that eager to be there.

“I think that they are just using each other as a lifeboat.” I said after another glance at each other. “I mean the councillor seems nice but he likes to talk a lot. Maybe this is them trying to survive another one of his rambles about Native American history.”

“Phil says that he’s lived somewhere by the campsite for years,” Wilbur informed us. “Apparently back when he went to school here his class came and it was this guy's parents who were in charge of them.”

“Did they do classes on Native American History back in the stone ages?” I asked jokingly, and Wilbur let out a small chuckle at that.
“Apparently they did.” He responded, before glancing over to his brother who simply rolled his eyes in response.

“What did Clay even do exactly? I am pretty sure that George just ditched school for almost a week and now we’re in camp, and George wants Clay dead.” Techno spoke, trying to sum up the events of what had happened over the past week and a bit. “Unless I have missed something.”

“Nope, that is about everything that happened.” Karl stated with a nod. “But Sapnap told me it was because Clay supported something that was bad… he was quite vague with it.” I noticed the group glance over at me but I just shrugged.
“You’ll have to ask George, it’s not my place to tell.”

They seemed to all accept this as an answer, deciding that I had a point and they should ask George. Honestly I couldn’t care what they did, all I knew was that I couldn’t come up with a better excuse than the one I already came up with. Well at least that was the best excuse I could give if I didn’t want to tell them what was actually going on.

While the rest of the group fell back into conversation I just began watching the pair who were still in an awkward discussion about who knows what with the councillor. That was until the bus jolted to a stop, signalling we were stopping. Out on our left we saw the gates to the burial grounds.
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1170 words

Aww they're (boy)friends again. Or does George still hate him? It is difficult to tell at this point.

What do you guys think