The rest of the day went by more uneventfully. I'd finished most of my homework during study hall that day, so I didn't have any obligations for the evening. I was unemployed. I had a job as a barista before, but... Ever since what happened, I haven't liked being far away from home very late. My parents tried to accomodate my trepidation and laziness by providing me with most of the things I would need money for. And I wasn't particularly avaricious, at any rate. All I really needed in my life other than the bottom level of Mazlow's Hierarchy was my laptop, a World of Warcraft subscription, and cigarettes. My parents happily covered the former two, and I acquired the latter by requesting more money for gasoline than I actually ever needed.
A part of me knew that this wasn't the way life was supposed to be- that for all intents and purposes my life as it was would not ever completely fulfill me. Doing raids on Molten Core and smoking Marlboros wasn't a recipe for a healthy, happy human being. But then, I was damaged, and I knew it. Not just from the rape, though that had done me in the worst, but just from spending my childhood so alienated from my peers. From being bullied and beaten down by girls like Sarah McMillan who more than likely had the same feelings I did. The difference between her and I had been, I reflected, that she was extraverted where I was introverted, been brought up to feel superior where I'd been brought up to feel oppressed, and had many friends to validate her where I had very few. I had Zoe and an opportunistic English Mastiff named Conan.
It wasn't like our hometown was a very safe place to seize the day, at any rate. When I was younger, it had been a more bucolic and wholesome place to live in, but an entrepreneur by the name of Benjamin "Bubba" Skeets had decided to spill over his seedy empire from the Tri-county area around Zodiac Beach to our county and beyond. There were strip clubs, bars, and casinos all over now, and for some reason the city councils just let him walk all over them. He became richer and richer at the expense of our town's dignity, and a very unsavory element was starting to slowly creep into our town. The crime rate was going up and homes and stores were getting robbed, pedophiles and perverts hung around our schools and public parks, people were getting... raped, and...
Zoe's parents were even more protective than mine, which made a sick sort of sense. I'd been horribly assaulted, but my parents still had me. Zoe, though... She'd had a little brother named Mikey. He would have been about twelve by now. Four years ago, he'd been pulled into a van and nobody had ever see him since. Pity Zoe. Her parents were incredibly protective of her, and over the last four years they'd started to go a little crazy. They used to be so nice, but nowadays they'd just glare at me.
When I woke up the morning after the police detective had decided to be a royal pain in my ass, I got dressed in the clothes that I'd selected to cover up my stupid, mysterious new breasts, ate generic brand Cap'n Crunch for breakfast, and drove to the school. When I got out of my car, I approached the entrance, only to see three men approaching me; one man in a suit, one of the school's Deans, and a police officer.
I stood there with my arms crossed, waiting to see what would happen next. I knew that they were going to stop me from entering the building. I wasn't going to let them have the pleasure of feeling like they intercepted me.
"Karyn Scott?"
I didn't say anything.
"Karyn," the man in the suit said, a balding blobby man in a brown jacket the color of organically farmed eggs, "I'm Winston Sharp, an attorney for the school district. We need to have a word with you."
I rolled my eyes. "Out here?"
The Dean nodded his head. "We can't allow you to enter the school. Because of the police investigation currently proceeding, you're on indefinite academic suspension until further notice. It's been decided by the school district that your presence under the circumstances would be too disruptive to the teaching process."
My jaw almost dropped. "You're fucking kidding me."
"He's not, I'm afraid," the blobby lawyer said, wincing at my use of profanity. "If you try to enter the school, it will be considered a hostile intrusion and you'll be placed under arrest."
I ran my hands through my long hair in frustation. "Un-fucking-believable. There aren't even any charges against me!"
"Well, the investigation hasn't been finished yet," the police officer, a black man with a mustache and a shaved head, said coldly. "There's one more thing. I have to serve you this."
He handed me a sheet of paper with a lot of writing on it. It looked to be a court document. My eyes skimmed over it before I looked back up at the officer. "Erica Henderson and Melissa O'Grady got a restraining order against me?!"
"Temporary, for now," the police officer said. "In the date written on the court order you'll have to attend a hearing to determine if it should be extended. Don't ask me about the circumstances. I don't know anything and couldn't say even if I did."
I gave a long, weary sigh. "Whatever. Fine. Are we done here? I'm allowed to go home?"
"Yes," the Dean said, "I suggest you do that."
I returned home, chain smoking all the way. The city government was making me into a pariah, Erica and Melissa had convinced people I was going to kill them, there were ridiculous charges against me, and I wasn't even allowed to go to school anymore. My academics were probably going to suffer for this. I supposed I really wasn't going to get the Colgate scholarship, after all. So much for buying my way out of this shithole of a town.
When I got home, the house was deserted. I decided to hop onto the computer and argue on the Blizzard message boards about whether this or that was overpowered and needed to be nerfed. Then I got bored with that and just fell asleep on the couch with Conan. Since it was the daytime, there wasn't anything on TV other than Maury and Jerry.
A call on my cellphone around noon woke me up. It was from an unidentified number. "Karyn here," I muttered into the phone.
The voice on the other end of the phone was masked electronically, the way you sometimes saw on online video games. It sounded kind of like Megatron's voice from the Transformers cartoon. "Karyn, I can't talk long. Tonight Melissa O'Grady and Erica Henderson are going to be murdered. The evidence is going to link you to it. You need to get out of town right now, or you'll be the one who actually did it."
"What? What do you mean?"
"I'm sorry this happened. This isn't fair to you at all," the voice said, hanging up.
I gave my phone a strange expression as the beep indicated the call had ended. I had absolutely no idea how to interpret that. A part of me wanted to think it was just some prank, but to cover up the voice like that seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Moreover, since it was still the school day, most of the people immature enough to want to pull off such a prank would be occupied until later. Moreover, the tone of the message hadn't seemed antagonistic. They'd even apologized to me.
I wandered around the house, pacing back and forth, trying to determine my course of action. Realistically, I didn't believe that there could possibly be any sort of conspiracy against me. What would the motive be? I was just some geek with a level 80 Warlock. But... somehow, I felt nervous. So far the silver lining regarding the fact that I was being investigated for Sarah's murder was that I hadn't actually done it. But if I were being framed... I probably would be behind bars in no time at all. And then I'd be spending the rest of my life getting raped.
I decided to grab my laptop and get the hell out of Dodge. I didn't know where I was going or how long I'd be gone, but for now, there wasn't any point in sticking around.
