Sandlot chicks // Benny Rodriguez // Jordan Phillips// Yeah-yeah McLennan

Part 16 - Fake it till you make it

Bella. 

Pretending not to investigate was harder than we had expected it to be, mostly bcause no one believed for a second that we had actually given up. They were right of course but we couldn't let them know that. "Go away Scotty." I called to my brother, I could hear his breathing by the door. He didn't move, "I can hear you! I know you're there. We're not doing anything, would you relax?" 

"Why did you lock the door then?" He asked through the keyhole. 

"Because we're having a private discussion!" Teeny replied rolling her eyes. 

"About what?" He asked again after some whispering outside the door.

"Periods and bra sizes." Gabby lied making us all force back laughs. 

There was a collective groan outside the door, I knew it hadn't just been my brother, "we didn't want to know in that much detail!" I heard Benny complain. 

"We warned you it was private didn't we?" I pointed out, "now get lost!"

"Yeah right!" Ham muttered, "we know what you're all up to, if we leave you'll just leave the house and we won't even know where you went! We aren't that stupid Bella." 

"Fine!" I exclaimed annoyed, "wait outside. Be my guest." I looked at my friends pointing to the window. We wall walked over looking outside to see if they'd appointed some kind of guard. But my window was quite high up, so no one would be expecting us to leave that way. I opened it as quietly as I could and stepped out onto the window sill. The flat roof was only about a meter up, with some help from Gabby and Teeny I'd be up there in no time. 

I shot them a thumbs up before climbing inside and gathering all of the investigative material into a bag, luckily for us everything we had done was in our notebooks with out cameras so even if they wanted to the boys couldn't have investigated without all of our info. We plugged my record player into about fifty extension cords before putting it down in front of the window. 

I grabbed a picnic blanket and some of the snacks I kept hidden at the back of my cupboard, the girls hoisted me up from underneath and I scrambled up onto the roof. I lay down on the edge reaching my hands over to where Gabby was standing on the window sill. She passed up the bag of materials, the food, record player, blnket and records up to me. Once we were done with that I pulled her up onto the roof with me. 

Gabby lay down next to me reaching down to Teeny who was the last to come up, we pulled her up as she pushed against the wall with her feet for leverage. When all three of us were finally on the roof we set everything up for ourselves. 

"Before we do anything more I think we need to collect the facts and gather some kind of case for this, because so far everything has been total coidncidence." I started. 

Teeny nodded, "you're right we need to get everything in order or this just isn't going to work, we'll get too confused."

"We can make a timeline." I suggested as Gabby pulled out her pen and the holy grail of a notebook she had. It had the entire process of how we got here doccumented. 

"Good idea." Gabby replied flipping to the next empty page, "so obviously the first thing that happened was Helena dying, what was the date of that?"

"The sixth of June I think." Teeny replied pulling off the wrapper on her popsicle. 

Gabby flipped back to the first page of her notebook where the newspaper cutout was from the magazine that had gotten the two of them started. On Friday the 5th of June Helena Bartley was stabbed in a club called Club Stellar, witnesses and close friend of the victim Wendy Peffercorn stated, "we heard a scream from the dance floor and went to see what happened and then we saw Helena lying there blood pooling out of her! It was horrible!"

She scribbled down the relevant information before we moved onto the next point. I grabbed my own notebook from the bag and drew the timeline, it would be useful if I had one for myself. "So the next thing would be Teeny's statements from her freaky little rampage." Gabby added shooting her a pointed look. 

"What did they say to you?" I asked tapping my pen against my lip. 

"Um mostly the same things they did the police, but this one guy Harrison said he heard her fighting on the phone with someone earlier." Teeny told us. 

"Oh and didn't Wendy say that Helena had an older boyfriend to that policeman, apparently she was very secretive about him." I added jotting it all down. Gabby nodded, "I remember that. I think she also told him Helena would randomly leave the group throughout the evening but refused to tell them where she went."

I grabbed my camera flipping through the photos of the evidence reports I had taken pictures of. "It says here they found a size 47 men shoes footprints in the blood." I added, "and there were no fingerprints on the knife either, so the person must have worn a glove."

"And then of course the thing where you and Benny snuck into club Stellar." I added. "The hand went missing and you met Julian and Max for the first time."

"And then you saw them at the mall and you followed them home and we found out about the bracelet. " Teeny continued, "before they tried to burn you to the ground."

"Like I could forget about that." Gabby muttered sourly. "Is that everything?" 

I nodded, "yeah, I think so."

Before we could keep talking I heard crashing underneath us, "where did they go"?" It was my brother and his friends. 

Apparently they had taken or silence for us sneaking out. "I can't believe we lost them!"

"How did they even sneak past us?" 

"This is so typical Gabby." Yeah-yeah complained as they got on their bikes, "we should check Teeny and my houses first."

We were all shaking with laughter once we saw them leave the gates and start racing down the street. I had no idea how long we were going to be able to keep this up for. Especially since they had called bull in the first second of this, but for now we were doing okay.