The Bystander ✔

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

As far as sisters go, Hailey wasn't that bad. At least Eva thought so before her sister had come running into her room at nine at night asking her to help glue things onto her poster. Eva should have probably said no and told her sister to do it all herself but the desperate look on her face was too much to turn down.

So now, Eva was stuck sitting on the floor cutting out paragraphs of text and sticking it onto a giant fluorescent yellow piece of paper. Eva winced at the colour.

"Are you sure fluorescent isn't a little too daring?" Eva asked.

"Everyone uses fluorescent," Hailey muttered. "I told you this already."

"I know but it just seems to take away from all your amazing work," Eva said with little conviction and picked up a little piece of paper packed with words. "Did you copy and paste this?"

Hailey immediately looked offended. "Of course I didn't! All of that is in my own words."

"Because you would obviously know what protracted litigation means," Eva said and Hailey snatched the piece of paper out of her hands and read it over.

Hailey glared at her sister and put the paper down. "I know what it means. Just glue it."

Eva rolled her eyes but did as asked and stuck the paper haphazardly down with glue onto the painfully bright yellow paper beneath. If the light glints off that during her presentation, then Eva was sure half of Hailey's class was going to go blind. Eva picked up the scrap pieces of paper and leaned across the carpet to put them in the garbage next to Hailey's desk.

"I thought you started this nearly a week ago," Eva commented. "So how come you're rushing to get it done now...at nine?"

"I have bad time management skills," Hailey said while intently gluing down the bottom of Italy. "At least that's what my history teacher says."

Eva shrugged. "Not everyone's good with time."

The two sisters intently worked for nearly forty minutes until the yellow paper was covered in text and pictures. Hailey grabbed an old black marker which immediately made the room smell when she took the lid off and carefully wrote the title out at the top. When she was finally done, Eva sighed in relief when the lid was put back on and the marker was thrown out of the way.

"Done!" Hailey smiled and lifted the poster up to view it more carefully.

"Fantastic," Eva said and stood up from her position on the ground.

Her legs had nearly fallen asleep and her calves ached as she stood and stretched her arms over her head. After a few cracks from her back and once the distressful pain had lessened in her legs, Eva patted her sister's head on the way out, dodging the swat that came in response.

"Thanks," Hailey shouted when Eva was nearly at her bedroom door.

"No problem," she yawned, knowing that her sister wouldn't hear.

Eva went about getting ready for bed and when she came out of the bathroom, it was just after ten. She stopped in front of her laptop that sat on her bed and contemplated turning it on and looking at the website. It was quarter past ten now. There were two more posts. Eva had always read the posts each night although she was never sure why.

But now she didn't want to. She didn't even want to go anywhere near her laptop and she certainly didn't want to see the blue website that was only seeming to cause problems.

Eva hated thinking about the new information she knew. How was she supposed to listen to the rumours about Cathy, knowing who made them? How was she supposed to even face Cathy now? The thought of just skipping photography class was very strong in Eva's mind. She had no idea what she would say to Cathy, how she would react or if she could even keep it a secret. She knew who was making Cathy nervous and scared and sad. What kind of person would she be if she kept that information from her?