UNEXPECTED

Chapter 14

It seemed that things had quieted down around Crestmont once the trial came to an end. Bryce Walker had lost, and was sentenced to 50 years to life with no chance of parole on a count of the multiple sexual assults. After hearing the jury find Bryce guilty, it all felt so surreal for everyone there, as if the whole trial was just some big, fantastic dream or something. The day the trial came to a close and Bryce was found guilty for sexual assult, Hannah and Jessica were practically inseperable. The two stuck close together that day, and Clay and stuck around the two girls as well. He knew that Hannah was comforted by him being there with them as she would give him an appreciative smile every so often as the three sat together at a table in the small café known as Monet's.

A couple days after the trial, in that same small café, Jessica, Hannah, and Alex all agreed as the trio decided to welcome a fourth member into their FML Group of three. "FML?" Hannah asked after taking a small sip of her hot chocolate as she placed her hand at the center of the table. Jessica and Alex smiled as they placed their own hands over their friend's. "FML." The two said in response. The three FML Group members smiled at each other before turning their attention to Clay to see a confused look on his face. When he saw the three teens looking at him, his confusion didn't subside. "You gonna put your hand in or what, Jensen?" Jessica asked in a teasing tone. Clay smiled nervously, still not quite sure what was going on as he hesitantly sat up in his seat, slowly moving his free hand to place over the other three. Once his hand was in the pile, he glanced up at his three friends. "Now say FML." Alex said, giving off an amused smile. "What?" Clay asked, still obviously confused. "FML. Say it." Jessica stated simply. "Why? What does that even mean?" Clay asked. "I'll explain it to you later, Helmet." Hannah told him with a bright smile on her face. Clay glanced back and forth between Hannah, Jessica, and Alex before sighing and giving in. "FML." He said, not sounding too sure about it. "Now your part of the group!" Jessica said as the four friends then moved their hands away from the center of the table. "Group? What group?" Clay asked as he leaned back in his chair again. "Yeah. Our FML Group. Back when we first met, Jess, Alex, and I came here together all the time." Hannah said before explaining the FML group to Clay and what the three-lettered phrase meant.

After that day, and after Hannah, Jessica, and Alex had recruited Clay into their FML Group, the four teens started hanging out at Monet's a lot together. The two girls would always get hot chocolate, Clay would get coffee, and Alex would continue to pursue his desire to try every single thing on the menu. As the group of four hung out together, the closer they got to each other. While Hannah and Jessica were becoming close friends again, Clay spent their hang out times getting to know Alex Standall a bit more and becoming really good friends with him. At one point, Clay even remembered that Alex's dad was a cop, so he decided to tell Alex about the strange unanimous notes he was getting. But Clay had made Alex promise to keep it between the two and not tell anyone else about it.

From the moment it started, Clay still got a strange feeling like someone was watching or following him. Even at school, he felt like someone was following him. He used to brush it off, thinking it to be nothing. But now, a few weeks later, he wasn't so sure that it was nothing. He felt the same way about the unanimous notes he continued to get, too. He figured if they were just a prank, they would have stopped by now. But that clearly isn't the case as he continues to find them in his locker and addressed to him in the mail. Clay still hid them from his parents, and still hid his uneasiness as no one but him - and now Alex - knew about them. Every now and then, his friends would get the feeling that something was up with him as they would ask if he was ok when they noticed him looking around weirdly or suspiciously. Clay would always end up brushing the question off, though, claiming that he was perfectly fine.

After a few days, it was finally summer break, and school was out for the next two months. Hannah and Clay had planned to hang out with each other, as well as their friends, over the summer. But doing that would have to wait a week as Hannah and her parents were leaving to visit her grandparents, and they wouldn't be back home for seven days. Being as Clay would usually visit his grandparents over the whole summer and not see his friends for long periods of time, he was fairly sure that the week would go by pretty quickly. Especially since he still had Jessicsa, Alex, Tony, and Skye to hang out with. As the days went by, Clay would alternate between friend groups. He would hang out with Alex and Jessica one day, then hang out with Skye and Tony the next day, and he would go back and forth to hang out with each set of friends every other day.

One night, Clay had been hanging out with Alex and Jessica. The three friends had hung out together around town all day and decided to stop at Monet's before going their seperate ways. Once again, Jessica had ordered a hot chocolate, Clay got a coffee, and Alex ordered some random drink off the menu that he had yet to try. The three friends had easily spent a couple hours talking about anything and everything that they found interesting, whether it was the most random thing they could think of or not. The three teens had eventually lost track of time, and they ended up getting kicked out of the small café, because it was late and the workers wanted to go home for the night.

After aimlessly walking around and continuing their discussion for a while longer, the three friends said their goodbyes and went their seperate ways to head home for the night with Alex offering to walk Jessica home. Clay stayed in his place for a little as he watched the forms of Jessica and Alex walk away from him untill they were out of his line of sight. Once they could no longer be seen, Clay turned and mounted his bike before riding off into the distance. Instead of going home, Clay decided to ride around town for a bit to think about some things and clear his head. As he rode around town, Clay eventually came to the cliff. He stopped and dismounted his bike as he stared out over the edge and remembered what had happened a while back when he had reached his breaking point after finding out that Bryce Walker had got his girlfriend pregnant. Clay just stared out over the cliff's edge as the hard-to-forget memory of Tony hugging him tightly and comforting him as he broke down played out in in his mind. That was a low moment for Clay as he had finally come to terms with the fact that Bryce had indeed raped Hannah, because even though he got the recording of Bryce before, Clay had been in denial as it never really seemed real to him until the night his girlfriend told him she was pregnant, and they hadn't even done it together yet.

As Clay was distracted by his own thoughts and memories, he wasn't aware that he was no longer alone on the cliff, and he didn't hear the unknown person come up behind him. Clay was pulled out of his thoughts, however, when he suddenly felt excruciating pain in his back. But the sudden pain never lessened. As Clay spun around to see who the attacker was, he was met with a blurry figure as he was too distracted by feeling even more pain, but in his stomach this time. It almost felt like something kept entering and leaving his body in numerous places repeatedly, and it didn't seem like the attacker would stop anytime soon. When Clay managed to look up after falling to the ground from all the pain he was being put through, he saw that the attacker was wearing a hood over his head. The added darkness of the night made it even harder to see, so Clay couldn't make out who the person was. But he could tell the person was angry about something. As the painfulness continued, Clay tried his best to fight his attacker off, but his attempts at self defense seemed to be useless as the pain continued, and he started feeling light headed.

In the end, Clay still didn't know who his attacker was. He was light headed, he registered a warm, thickish wetness coating his clothes, and everything around him was quickly becoming blurry. Clay gave one final attempt to protect himself from the person, but it didn't work as he soon began to lose consciousness, and everything around him became darker than it already was until it was all just blackness as Clay slowly became unconscious.