𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐒. ᵒᵘᵗᵉʳ ᵇᵃⁿᵏˢ ¹

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 41.

━ 𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻.

    𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑 seat in the van, the vehicle was filled with nothing but tension, tension that seeped through every single one of us. Jj's words replayed over and over in my head while we drove away and the image of John B's face was stuck before my eyes, his eyebrows narrowed and expression confused. As well as Kiara and Pope, their faces resting in the back of my mind, unaware of just about everything that was happening.

    I was in deep. Jj and I had crossed the line, and the rubber band that held our facade together, was moments from breaking. I had gone too far, pushed the wrong buttons, and nearly everything spilled out, in front of everyone, because of me. I could already see it happening— the Pogues were going to find out about my parents and neglect me for lying. Tears had started to bubble at my eyes when I thought about John B's possible reaction in the car, on the way home, but I had wiped them away quickly, so no one would notice.

    The whole way back, I had been trying to figure out excuses. I had tried to muster up believable lies in my head, in which I would start spilling once the questions rolled in. By the time we'd passed through town, I had successfully thought of almost every single possible question that was bound to be thrown at me, and came up with a decent lie for each, but stopped myself. I had already lied enough. And thinking about my friends, thinking about how fucked up things would get if I continued to fib, it didn't seem right.

    My mind was a mess. My hands had been trembling the whole ride. And it didn't help that we had nearly died not even an hour prior, on the side of the road, by a drug dealer with a gun. My heart was still racing uncontrollably, and I couldn't figure out if it was from the image of the gun pointed at our heads, or the fact that everything was bound to be spilled out to my best friends.

    For sixteen years, I'd lived in the same apartment, close to never went out of the house, hadn't met any of my relatives, and was ignored by my parents. I was never allowed to make friends. So now— now that I had five best friends, that genuinely cared about me for the first time in my life, I did not want to lose them. From the moment we got close, I thought about what they would think if they found out I'd been lying to them about my identity. It hurt to think about them dropping me. I was already neglected by my parents, I didn't need my best friends to stop caring about me, on top of that.

    The whole ride, no one had spoken. But they were all thinking the same thing, Jj and I were hiding something. The tension in the air had been affecting every one of us. I had noticed John B holding the steering wheel with an unusually tight grip. Kiara wasn't humming a tune in the back, like she normally does to fill the silence. Jj wasn't smoking something. Pope wasn't complaining, about anything.

    Now, with my mind wandering, I barely noticed that we were pulling up on the lawn of the Chateau. My stomach immediately sank.

    "What the fuck, John B," I whipped my head to the side to look at him, "I told you to drive me home." I sat right up in my seat. I was the first to break the silence after the excruciatingly quiet car ride.

    "Later," he mumbled through slightly closed lips. "We need to talk," he barely glanced back to everyone, "All of us."

    "No." I crossed my arms over the seatbelt as the van stopped, "I'm going home."

    "Charlie," Kiara said, from the back seat.

    I practically kicked open my door. As I stepped away with furious strides, the van doors were being slid open.

    "Come on, Charlie," Pope called.

    As I marched over for my red bike leaning against the wall of the back porch, where I had left it last, I could hear them following me.