step into the sun ☼ deh

iv

chapter four
old news/poetry
mia pov

trigger warnings: mentions of suicide

Susan walked up to me, the next morning at school, with a distressed look on her face.

"Choir rehearsal was awful last night..." Susan complained.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Well, it was incredibly awkward between Alex and I, to start off... And his friend made a bunch of comments afterwards. Not to mention, we have to do a lift," Susan rambled.

"I'm sorry, Susan... I'm sure that it'll be less awkward... I mean, you are a performer, right? I think it'll be best just to ignore the awkwardness and pretend that you're not dancing with Alex," I suggested. I honestly felt pretty bad for Susan. I could barely imagine the awkwardness. Luckily, I dodged a bullet by quitting show choir. I most likely wouldn't have to dance with Aidan because of this, and it wouldn't be awkward (or I wouldn't think of it as being awkward).

"By the way, Mia, there were some comments on my post, but none of them gave too much information..." Chris said.

"Wait, information about what?" Susan asked.

"I did some research about the whole Connor thing..." Susan was visibly confused, "The Apple Orchard kid?" I clarified. Susan nodded.

"Why did you do research on the Apple Orchard kid?" Susan asked.

"Because he was my dad's best friend, and I don't think we would appreciate me asking him personal questions like that..." I said, "Chris, what did you find?" I asked.

Chris grabbed his phone out of his pocket, and opened up his blog. I checked the comments under his post.

ben53762: I've driven by the orchard a couple of times, but I don't know the whole story or the deal with the website.

bathb0mb.qu33n.: I asked my dad about it. He said that he was involved with it, at one point, but he doesn't know what happened to it, after "an incident that made them rethink a couple of things"

carsonspetz: judging my bathb0mb.qu33n.'s post it might've been taken down? I can't find anything either. i have no idea what "the indicent" could've been. I'll keep looking...

"Well, I mean... that's something right?" I asked, "I mean, now we know that the website was taken down, because of an incident,' I said.

"Well, we don't exactly know if it was taken down, but I"m starting to think it was..." Chris said.

"Well, if you delete something from the internet, it doesn't go away forever, right? There has to be a way to retrieve that website..." Susan inputted.

"And the incident thing is confusing me... It was a perfectly good organization," I replied.

"I don't know how you would be able to retrieve it... This stuff has been kind of hard to find already, due to its age... The official website might be even harder to find, since its old and deleted..." Chris said.

"That's true... Do you have any other nerdy internet friends that might know? Maybe a teacher or something?" I asked.

"I don't know... I might ask one of the computers teachers or something, later today," Chris said, putting his phone back in his pocket.

"I'm seeing my aunt tomorrow... Do you guys want me to ask her about it?" Susan asked.

"I mean... if it's not too much. If something really did happen, then I don't want to make you, or your aunt uncomfortable," I said.