Facade [h.s]

twenty-eight

I stared at the opposite wall of my bedroom.

After getting that chilling text from Indigo, Harry and I had decided to go back to his flat, but I'd changed my mind before we could get there.

I knew that that text had just changed everything, just tipped over the careful equilibrium Harry had talked about. It was the drop that made the glass overflow, with the only difference that its result had to be more disastrous than a puddle of wet water on the ground.

It was only in that moment that I'd realised the dangerous situation I was putting Harry in. Joel knew I knew, and we still hadn't talked about it - and I perfectly knew that he would've wanted to do that. That meant, Joel wanted me. I'd been hiding away with Harry for all that time, but I hadn't understood what it truly implied for him until that moment. What if Joel had managed to find me somehow? He would've found out where Harry was, too, and I knew he definitely didn't like him.

He'd already tried to hurt him before everything else had happened, so I didn't even dare to think what he could've done to him in that situation. The thing was, a body had been found, and despite his deep dislike of him, Joel knew that Harry had nothing to do with it - which meant that Harry wasn't a priority to him in that moment. I didn't have anything to do with it as well, but I was his best friend and I'd just found out about everything, so it wasn't unlikely for Joel to want to reach out to me to make sure I wouldn't have said anything. Which meant, I was putting Harry in danger.

Indigo was right, he didn't have anything to do with that mess. Neither did I, but at the same time I did, because it was my group of friends. But it wasn't his. By hiding away with him, I was protecting myself, but putting him in a dangerous situation. It wasn't okay for me to do that. For that reason, I'd decided to go back to my apartment.

Now I was sitting on my bed, staring at the opposite wall. Two days had gone by since I'd received that terrifying message from Indigo, in which I'd only talked to Harry on the phone. More specifically, via text messages, that weren't nearly enough to fill the void the lack of his presence had created.

I'd spent the last few days in my bedroom, leaving it only when strictly necessary, expecting the police to come knocking at my door asking questions about the body, even though I knew it would've never happened. I hadn't been there that night, so there was no way anyone would've thought I knew anything about it. I wondered if the same thing was true for Harry too. I didn't even dare to think about the others. They'd been there. Maybe they already knew.

The thought of the police being already after Joel scared me to no end. Who even knew what he would've done if he'd discovered that they were on his case! I didn't know if I should've hoped for them not to find anything against him, or that they would've gotten him quickly and threw him somewhere he wouldn't have been able to hurt anyone anymore.

I wondered what indigo thought about the whole thing. I still hadn't had the chance to talk to her, but I wished I would've. I needed to hear a different opinion than Harry's, the one of someone who truly was there, who truly knew what had happened. She was the only one that could tell how bad it truly was. Without her, I could've just spent the whole week supposing, but I would've never found out the truth.

I wondered what she was doing. I hadn't heard from her in a few days - ever since she'd sent me that text. I knew that she was alright because I'd seen her at uni, but we'd never got the chance to really talk about anything, considering that Joel always seemed to be there. He still hadn't tried to talk to me surprisingly, but that didn't mean he would've let me talk to others instead. Callie too was around a bit more often than she should've been, acting like her usual distracted self and pretending she was just a normal girl that didn't know anything.