Everyone can believe in the idea of being innocent until proven guilty but when someone holds the evidence to prove your guilt, how long can you continue to run from your inevitable fate?
After moving to America in an attempt to escape her troubled...
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Chapter 36:
International Calls
Wake up, go to school, come home, eat and sleep. That's what my life has become.
For most people this sounds normal because this is the basic routine that pretty much every human being follows. However, when I break each one down and put some details with it, it's very easy to see how different this is to the life I was living a few weeks ago.
Wake up. I make my way to school, switching between driving myself and getting the bus. Unfortunately, if I have to get the bus, that involves sitting on my own, talking to no one around me. Sophie sits in our usual seat, her bag covering the space that Was once mine and this time she wasn't moving it.
Go to school. This meant walking the packed hallways alone. Everyday, I watch group after group of friends walking together laughing, gossiping, smothering each other in joy. I was lucky in the sense that Zac would join me, wrapping me in the bubble wrap that is his arms, so that he can protect me from the misery which consumes my mind. Nevertheless, nothing can ever prepare me for when I watch the group walk by me, the six of them not even stopping to recognise me, as if I don't exist to them ever more. Especially when Amelia walks alongside them.
Come home. The bittersweet part of my day, being surrounded by my family brings waves of relief that crash down on me. Reminding me that I mean something to someone and that I matter. But that doesn't stop the silence from the lack of phone notifications other than the hype of the school feed. The vibrating of messages in the group chat, against every surface I would place my phone on, has been replaced with a deadly quietness. That's not to say that I don't receive individual messages from the likes of Sophie, Zara or Steven but unfortunately as Amelia joined the group chat, I was consequently removed.
It's hard to imagine losing everything that has previously made you the person you were in such a short space of time. Especially when it plays on the line of being fantasy or reality. For now, my inner circle has disappeared, everything that has made me Lola Haywell has gone. Deep down I know they all stand by me, creating a plot that will eventually lead back to the way everything was before but right now, this is rock bottom.
This has been my life for the past week and it's the loneliest I've ever been.
"You okay sweetheart?" Zac asks, breaking me from trance like state.
I turn back to face him, realising that I've been staring at the group sitting at the table. Zac and I sat in the far right corner of the cafeteria, keeping ourselves to ourselves. It didn't stop the following eyes, filled with confusion, as they watched us distance ourselves from the group. Yet it was nothing compared to the confusion when Amelia first sat with them on Monday.
She brought some of her clones to the table with her but they sat on the outsides of the table, clearly not worthy enough of sitting close to her yet. Chloe is amongst some of the new members at the table. Some days she looks fully involved in conversation, other days she stares into the distance, her short black hair covering her face, occasionally looking over at me; guilt ridden.
