Birds || Fuenciado

Chapter 5: Gold Medal Ribbon

"Graffiti?"

"Yeah, apparently," I say resignedly as I polish some freshly washed coffee mugs and stack them on the shelf upside down, ready for retrieval on the next customer. Kellin gapes for a moment, frozen, tray of baked goods in hands. After a moment he shakes his head.

"That's so fucked up."

"I don't know what to do," I despair, stacking the last mug and then going over to the display cabinet to help Kellin arrange the fresh sweets on the shelves. "I mean, I can't take away mean people."

"It'll be enough for him to know you're there for him," Kellin assures me. "I know he knows it already, but when you're having rough times from someone you need reminding. You emailed the school, right?"

"I did. I half want to email them again, but...I don't want to somehow make things worse. I don't want to provoke more aggro."

"Just talk to him first. Get the whole story, and then come to a conclusion together."

I sigh as we position he final tart on the bottom shelf, and then close the lid of the cabinet on top. "Yeah."

The queue of customers has finally been reduced to zero and there is a temporary lull in the cafe population as the patrons settle in with their coffees and teas and cakes and sandwiches, and I take the opportunity to answer my phone as it goes off once more; Jaime. He's been texting me since I started my shift, and quite honestly, his conversation has been keeping me from being completely destitute today. My shift has been horrible, quite frankly, so far - Alan was out front this morning when I came in and forced me to hand over my hat, and I've been working for three hours now with plain, exposed, obvious patches of hairless skin all over my head. Continuously, I've been touching my head to try and disguise the bald patches, which isn't helping where I still have tiny pinprick bruises from the injections.

And of course, I still have the problem of Mike hanging over my head and bugging me, pushing down on my soul and filling me with unease. My instinct is to track down the person hurting my baby brother and kick their ass into next week, but that's not logical; so I must resort to seething quietly whilst trying to think up an effective solution. And I can't think of one.

Jaime:

So you think it really was a suicide?

Me:

Yeah, for sure. A tragic one, but I think the conspiracy theories mainly come from the private detective. He saw an opportunity, I assume, and made a story where there was none...

Jaime:

You know, you're almost definitely right but I'm such a sucker for conspiracy theories XD Do you think his wife had anything to do with it?

Me:

Mayyybe...I'm not a huge fan of Courtney tbh, idk why I just don't get a good vibe from her. I wouldn't put it past her to go along with a setup like that...but I don't think she orchestrated the conspiracy, since they had a kid and all and she was pretty young at the time

Jaime:

That's a good point actually. Yeah, I've never had a good vibe from Courtney, she seems a bit contrived to me.

Jaime:

I know about 90% of the dumbass tabloid theories are utter bullshit but even so every time I see a new CT I'm like WHOOAAA XD