amateur detective ━━ stiles stilinski¹

o; prologue

"WHAT DO YOU WANT, JULIETTE?"

     Juliette Fosters wanted many things. For starters, she wanted to get the hell out of Eichen House. A mental asylum with neurotic residents, most of which throw themselves off the spiral stairs and to their deaths, but that is reserved for Mondays.

To get back the sleep my eyes have been deprived of.  She could be attending the first day back from winter break as a freshman next week, yet instead, she'll be stuck in Eichen, doing her school work with a tutor. She was, however, grateful to be given the privilege of having a tutor. Granted, the tutor was her group therapist psychologist, and Jules ended up teaching her more than the other way around, but she was grateful nonetheless. "Juliette? Are you listening?"

"What do you think I want?" She asked, voice raspy, rolling her neck to bring herself to look at Marin.

Marin picked up her pen and scribbled something on her yellow note pad. "Juliette..."

   Biting her tongue, she sunk in her seat. "We both know I don't belong here." She clasped her hands together, looking for warmth in the friction of rubbing her hands against each other. When she sensed what she said wasn't entirely accurate, she added; "I did my time. I don't belong here anymore. What I did was a mistake, I get it, I do. But I just want to get out now."

"Then I have some good news for you." Marin said joyously, a slight grin on her lips. "This is your last week, Juliette, you're going back home."

Leaning back against the wooden chair, she examined Marin, wondering if this is one of Eichen's cruel mental tests to analyse her reaction at the revelation of her leaving. "I thought my dad signed me up for a six month program?" She questioned. "It's only August."

"Sounds like you don't want to leave." Marin joked, receiving an unimpressed look from the girl. "You've improved the past two months, you've shown no signs of being a danger to anyone or to yourself, and you've only asked to leave three times since your admission, which is lower than the average request rates from patients during their first four months." She finished off.

Not entirely true. Here's where she's wrong; Juliette has only verbally asked to leave three times, because her undetected attempts of escapes all failed. She had actually tried to laboriously escape an enumerate amount of times, but found the defects in her schemes early on, which led her to go sprinting back as if she hasn't set out to escape. The last time she aimed to break free, she was significantly close to succeeding, but was eventually caught by Brunski, who dropped a barbaric comment that she should've jumped to her death instead. Which was another thing to add in Juliette's list of wants; to be rid of Brunski.

    "We both know he should've signed you up for no more than two months, anyway." She added discreetly. Of course I know that, Juliette bit her tongue to stop herself from talking ill on her father. He practically treated it like sending me off to summer camp.

"I'm really leaving?" Jules respired, almost in denial of the news.

With a simper, she handed the fifteen year-old the order her father filed for her release. "I believe Emily's waiting outside."

Juliette's smile widened at the mention of seeing her sister again. Marin then proceeded to ask her a list of pertinent questions, as a wrap up of her progress during her time at the mental health institute. Leaving Eichen House meant an end of the fractious sound of scratching coming from the room above hers. An end to a series of suicides of people she's been with in group therapy or another one of her mental health exercise classes. But most of all; it meant the continuation of her real life, the one she left when she got into Eichen.

    That was her first mistake. Thinking she could switch to Beacon Hills High School as a new student, and it would be like unpausing her real life. What she didn't think through was how everyone knew where she disappeared to.