Facade [h.s]

forty-one

A couple of days after Indigo, Harry and I found ourselves sitting in Harry's car, that was parked some houses away from Joel's.

I stared ahead, my heart beating quicker in my chest as I thought of what was about to happen, a clear signal that I definitely wasn't as confident about my idea working out as I'd been when I'd first come up with it.

Sure, finding those papers would've helped us a lot, but was it really a risk worth taking? We didn't even know how Joel would've reacted if he'd found someone inside his house, and that aspect concerned me more and more the more I thought about it. Being able to do something doesn't mean that something should actually be done, and it couldn't have been truer in that situation.

There were so many things that could go wrong, and while I wanted to voice my fears to the others, I knew it would do nothing good since they seemed to be just as nervous as I was.

A couple of days surely wasn't enough to prepare ourselves for what we were about to do, but we didn't have much of a choice at that point.

"Let's wait until nine and then we'll go in" Harry said, turning his head to look at Indigo and I, that were sitting in the backseat.

It could be considered childish of me, but I didn't feel like sitting next to him in his car because of our argument. After the last few days I was craving some distance from him, and I would take everything that was sent my way.

I didn't really know why. I didn't think I was necessarily still mad at him for what he'd done, but I was hurt. It hurt me to think about that, it hurt me to look at him and be reminded of that, and while I still trusted him fully for some reason I couldn't make out, I wasn't as willing to spend some time alone with him as before. That detail itself hurt me, because I really liked him, too. Those two feelings couldn't thrive together, and for one to be followed, the other had to be ignored, which made something break inside of me.

I'd never wanted to be so close and so far away from someone at the same time.

And while I knew it was exactly what Joel had hoped to achieve, I couldn't do anything to change it - until that evening, at least.

I checked the time on my phone, taking a deep breath when I read it. "It's nine" I said quietly, my voice a bit shaky, advising the others that the time had come.

Joel wouldn't come back for hours and the dinner had surely started by then, so it was the perfect moment. We would be out of the house way before he'd even consider coming back. It would be easy.

"Stay in the car, only get out if Joel comes" Harry warned Indigo, and then we both went out on our mission.

Thinking about it, getting into Joel's house was the easy part. He always kept a spare key well hidden into the side of the step that brought to the front door, that you wouldn't have noticed unless you knew it was there. Getting out was the much, much harder part.

We got inside and went to the studio upstairs, taking our time around the house to make sure there was nothing Indigo had missed, knowing that we still had some hours before Joel's return.

We started looking for the papers right away, and we found them exactly where Indigo had told us they were, hidden in the drawer next to the desk that faced the library that was next to the window. Harry put himself behind me, using the flashlight of his phone to illuminate what I was doing as I flicked through the pages, looking for any kind of useful information.

I was halfway through the stack of papers, trying to find something interesting, when I suddenly heard a sound coming from downstairs.

I immediately stopped in my tracks, looking up at Harry just to discover that he'd heard it as well, a worried look in his green eyes as he stared at me. He shut off the flashlight of his phone and brought his index up to his mouth, signalling me to be quiet.