Rose's Journal

Chapter 6: The Second Search (Willex Perspective)

Willie and Alex poofed into the office, hand in hand. "Are you sure you're up for this?" said Willie to Alex, "I mean, this is some heavy stuff: figuring out if your former friend is your murderer." Willie was genuinely nervous for Alex. He knew how bad Alex's anxiety could get.

"Yeah, I mean sure I'm nervous, but having you by my side makes it less scary," Alex said, squeezing Willie's hand tighter. Willie just stood there for a minute, smiling and staring at Alex. He loved him so much but hadn't told him that yet.

Alex began to look through the filing cabinets as Willie checked the computer: Flynn only entrusted him with checking the computers after she realized how much skill the other three were lacking. They both kept glancing at each other occasionally, just to check in. A few times, their eyes met on these glances, and they smiled at one another.

"Alex?" Willie said a few minutes into their search, sounding nervous.

"Yeah?" Alex said, concerned about what would come next.

"What if... no it's stupid"

"Your concerns could never be stupid to me."

This made Willie smile. However, was he really going to say what he was concerned about? He barely wanted to even think about it, and the last thing he wanted to do was be the cause of more pain for Alex. He mustered up a fake reply: "What if.. we check other email websites to see if he has other email accounts on those?"

"That sounds like a great idea!" Alex said. Alex had no idea what Willie meant, and Willie knew this, but Willie couldn't help but smile because of the support his boyfriend gave him.

Willie began searching through other email databases, not because he genuinely thought he would find something there, but because he told Alex that's what he wanted to do to cover for what he really wanted to ask. He looked through most of them, not finding anything, so he took a break to check up on Alex.

"Did you find anything yet?"

"No," Alex said, sounding disappointed. "But that reminds me, I need to look at the recording contract Bobby has hanging up," Alex realized, remembering what Julie's mom's journal had said.

He took it down from the wall, and he began to analyze it. Willie saw the little furrow that formed in his eyebrows when he was concentrating. Just when he thought Alex couldn't get any cuter, here he was. Willie decided to go stand next to him and read it with him.

"He signed it as Trevor, which means he was already not going by Bobby for things like this before we died," Alex said, "Why would he need to go by a different name unless he didn't want to be connected to us or something else in his past?"

"Yeah, that's pretty suspicious to me," Willie said as he put his arm around Alex.

Alex became flustered, "Well... and... uh... the font is pretty... suspicious too," Alex said, unable to put a cohesive thought together with Willie's arm wrapped around him.

Suddenly, they heard a crash. They remained quiet for a second, "What was that?" they heard Carrie say from the living room.

"I better go see what's going on with Carrie, make sure everything's going okay," said Alex. He kissed Willie on the cheek before he poofed away. Willie uncontrollably smiled.

Willie went back to the computer to keep looking through the email databases. When he opened the one for Hotmail. He looked to see an account logged in: .

"Interesting," Willie thought aloud.

He went into the email and began to search the trash for anything under October 25, 2019. Surely enough there was an email from that day, from the same address that sent the suspicious email on Bobby's other email address. The email had an attachment, so Willie opened it.

It was a picture. A picture that would change everything. But did Willie want everything to change?

Alex poofed back into the room. Willie quickly closed the picture. "Everything's fine with the other boys and Carrie," Alex said. "Flynn convinced her that it was nothing. But it looks like the noise might've interrupted something between them," Alex grinned.

"Carrie and Flynn, huh?" Willie said, faking a chuckle.

"Yeah strange, right?" Alex said, "Did you find anything else?"

Willie paused. He knew he should show him what he found, but he also knew he couldn't. Maybe it was because he wanted to protect Alex from that information, or maybe, deep down, he wanted to protect himself from the image. "No, unfortunately," Willie said in reply, "I'll keep looking though."

Alex and Willie spent the rest of the time barely talking. The guilt was beginning to eat at Willie to the point where he could barely look at Alex without feeling that regret and anger towards himself. Yet he still wasn't ready to show Alex the picture.