Symbiotic

Chapter Five

As Eve led Roxie up to her front door, she stopped her on the porch.

“Now I’m just forewarning you. My parents can be… a little difficult.”

“’Difficult’ how?”

“Well first thing’s first; you’re definitely going to be trapped here until at least dinner. So if you didn’t plan ahead for that, you might want to message your Mom and tell her.”

“Cool, free food. I’m failing to see the ‘difficult’ in this scenario.”

“Oh trust me, it won’t take long.” With those encouraging words, Eve unlocked the door and ushered her inside.

The second they crossed the threshold, Eve called out. “Mom, we’re home!” The sounds coming from the kitchen ceased, and moments later Mrs Verbeck appeared in the doorway.

“Evie, welcome home darling!” On this day, she apparently chose to respect her daughter’s desire to not be touched. Turning to Roxie, she paused for a split second before offering her a smile.

“And you must be this new friend I’ve heard so much about! It’s so nice to meet you, dear.”

“Hey, Mrs Verbeck. Heard a lot about you too; all good things. I’m Roxanne.” She held her hand out.

“Oh it’s Louise to you, Roxanne. No need for formalities.” Despite the warmth in her voice, she made no move to shake Roxie’s hand; indeed, she seemed to have no idea how to handle the situation. Deciding to pretend the awkward interaction hadn’t happened, Roxie dropped her arm back to her side.

Eve stepped in, guiding Roxie back towards the stairs. “Well, I just thought I’d give you two a chance to meet. Sorry Mom, but we actually have quite a lot of work to do on this project – see you at dinner?”

“Oh but of course! I almost forgot that’s why she was coming over. You two go, get some work done. Dinner’s at six tonight if Roxanne would like to join us,” she smiled knowingly at Roxie as she said this. Eve thanked her mother again, and led Roxie up to her bedroom with a firm hand. She pulled open the door, and stood aside to let Roxie enter first.

“Behold, for few eyes have laid sight upon the sacred chamber you now enter.”

Roxie couldn’t believe her eyes. The room was total chaos.

“How do you live in this?”

“Yeah, sorry. It’s a bit messy.”

“A bit? Why do you have this much stuff? Why is most of it on the floor?”

“I am not an organised person, Roxie. I know I’ve had you fooled with all this crime stuff, but that’s not my normal state of being.”

Roxie put her hands to her face in total shock.

“Oh my god. I’m cleaning this place up.”

Eve scoffed. “Go ahead. It’ll take me a couple minutes to boot up this old laptop anyway.” She barely had time to get the words out before Roxie was running around the room and picking things up off the floor. She stacked all of the blank paper into a neat pile, placing it on the corner of Eve’s desk, and bundled the majority of her art supplies together. Stopping to think for a moment, she left the room and went downstairs.

Once she was in the foyer, she carefully picked her way to the kitchen by following the sounds made by Eve’s mother. When she reached it, she spoke.

“Um, Louise? Sorry.”

Mrs Verbeck looked up from cutting vegetables. “Oh! Is there something I can help you with, dear?”

Roxie scratched the back of her head. “Yeah, kinda. You wouldn’t happen to have a couple of spare jars lying around, would you?”

Mrs Verbeck gestured to a bucket full of various recycling items. “Actually, there should be a few in there. I rinse everything that goes into that bucket, so don’t worry. It should all be clean.”

Roxie thanked her, and picked through the bucket until she had found several jars that suited her needs nicely. Running back upstairs, she carried out her plans.

When Eve looked up a minute or so later, she needed a moment to take everything in. While the word ‘spotless’ definitely didn’t come to mind, it was much cleaner than it had been before. What caught her attention in particular was the line of jars that now sat along her windowsill, each of them with a piece of coloured paper glued to the glass. Roxie was standing in the middle of the room with a proud smile.

“Whoa. You managed all this in five minutes?”

“I was very motivated.”

“You gotta tell me what the deal is with the jars.”

“Oh yeah. I thought it would be a good idea to sort all your art… implements this way. Paintbrushes in one, pencils in another, etc. Might help you find things.”

Eve chuckled, eyes wide. “That’s… actually not a bad idea. Thanks.” She turned to the laptop, pulling up a browser.

“Anyway, the computer’s on. So get your ass over here.”

Roxie took a seat on the edge of Eve’s bed, looking over at the screen. Eve plugged Mr Latimer’s full name into several search engines, and before long she had pulled up a social media page.

She looked it over for a moment.

“Huh.”

“It looks… normal.”

“Too normal.”

“Go into his photos,” Roxie suggested.

“Uh, why?”

“Because everyone has their weird crap in their photos. It’s off the main page, so people tend to forget it during clean up. If he’s up to anything, that’s where we’ll find it.”

Eve clicked into the photos. They spent a couple of minutes scrolling through a lot of relatively boring images, before Roxie stopped her.

“What was that one? Go back to it. There! What the hell is that?”

Swallowing, Eve clicked on the image. It was Blair.

The girl was standing in front of an easel that had been precariously placed in front of a small stream. She appeared to be in the middle of painting several blue flowers that ran along the stream’s bank, and was smiling happily at the camera. The caption read ‘Spending time with one of my favourite students – the passion for art runs strong in this one’.

Eve looked back at Roxie. “That’s the quarry. Those blue flowers; I’ve only seen them growing there.”

“It gets worse, girl. Look at the date.” It had been posted a mere week before Blair’s disappearance.

“Oh s**t,” Eve exclaimed, leaning back in her seat. “There’s no way. First he was being creepy at school today, now this?”

“What do you mean, ‘being creepy at school’? What did he do?”

Eve huddled over on herself, as if she could warm the chill that ran down her arms and made her hairs stand on end. She gave Roxie a quick run-down of the events that had taken place. By the time she had finished, Roxie was noticeably still.

“Horrifying, right?” Eve knew her sarcasm was probably fooling Roxie about as well as it was fooling herself right now.

“Eve… That’s scary.”

“I know.”

“Do you? We have a lot of evidence that he literally murdered someone. If he did, it was probably some weird fixation on art, and it looks like he has the same creepy fascination with you. We gotta go to the police.”

“We don’t have enough evidence.”

“We have a photograph of him standing in the spot where the body was dumped, with the murder victim!”

“And that’s all we really have,” Eve pointed out. “That’s circumstantial at best. It doesn’t really prove anything, at the end of the day, especially if we can’t make the other evidence fit.”

“The Bible quote, you mean.”

Eve nodded. “His profile doesn’t say anything about his religion. So how do we know he’s read the Bible? How do we know he even owns one? If we’re seriously taking this to the police, we need to have that covered too.”

Roxie puffed up as if she was about to argue, then promptly deflated. “You’re right. We don’t have enough yet. So what now?”

Mrs Verbeck called up to them, and Eve jerked her head at the door.

“Now? Dinner with my parents, apparently. I apologise in advance.”

Roxie followed Eve into the dining room, and the girls took a tentative seat at the table. Mrs Verbeck was still bustling around, finishing the last touches off. A tall, kind looking man strode into the room. When he saw Roxie, he stopped short and addressed Eve.

“And who’s this? I can’t think of the last time you had anyone over who wasn’t Vanessa.”

“This is… Roxanne,” Eve explained, stumbling over the full name. “She’s the one I’m doing the project with.”

“Oh! Well it’s wonderful to meet you, Roxanne. Sorry I wasn’t here earlier; I work for development and zoning. Late hours.”

“Must be fun,” Roxie commented dryly. He laughed.

“I like this girl, Eve! Bring her over more often.”

“Now now,” Mrs Verbeck chided with a smile. “It’s hard enough having two people around with a sense of humour. Someone has to be boring around here.”

“And we all appreciate you for it, Mom.”

Eve’s parents finally took a seat, and they began eating. Conversation started to crop up sporadically between mouthfuls of food.

“So, what’s this project that you’re working on?”

Eve baulked at her father’s question.

“Oh, uh. It’s nothing interesting, really.”

“We’re working on an English project,” Roxie added. “Shakespeare.”

“I thought you liked Shakespeare, Evie.”

“I thought I liked Shakespeare too, until I realised how much time this project was going to take away from my art final.” Eve met Roxie’s eyes, and the latter gave her an apologetic look.

Mrs Verbeck sighed. “Did you say art final? Thank god. I can’t tell you how glad I’ll be when that class is over.”

This rubbed Roxie the wrong way. “Why? What’s wrong with art classes?”

“It’s more about art in general. I wouldn’t mind so much if Eve was only drawing – but that paint gets everywhere.”

“Wouldn’t, if you watched where you stepped,” Eve muttered under her breath. Roxie nudged her and whispered in her ear.

“To be fair, in your room? Kinda hard not to step on it.”

“Hey, it’s better now.”

“Yeah, because I cleaned it up.”

“And I intend to keep it clean,” Eve retorted with a grin. Roxie snorted. Mr Verbeck smiled mischievously.

“What are you girls talking about over there? Are you whispering about my wife? Can I join you? I also have grievances to air.”

The girls exploded into a giggle fit, and even Mrs Verbeck was failing to keep a smile off her face. “Stop, Steven. That’s hardly funny.”

“I’ll stop when it stops making you smile, darling.”

The rest of the meal passed without incident, though Roxie did notice that Eve’s parents were just a little nicer to her than they needed to be. When Eve was finally able to show her to the front door, she stepped out onto the porch with her.

“Sorry about my Mom. She’s… old fashioned.”

“Hey, it’s fine. She wasn’t that bad.”

She kicked a pebble onto the street.

“Your dad’s cool.”

“Yeah, he rocks. I just wish he was here to rock more often, you know?”

“Hey, at least you see him sometimes.”

Eve’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you say that?”

“Cause I don’t.” Roxie answered in a flat tone. “You’re lucky to have a dad, Eve. Treasure him.” She left, promising to organise another meeting soon. They still hadn’t worked out their next course of action, and the killer was still out there.

Eve stayed on the porch for a while, taking in the night sky and thinking about the conversation she’d had with Roxie. Then a camera flashed, and she rushed back towards the safe glow of her home.

Eve arrived at school the next day with her apology to Vanessa already planned out. She ran over and over the words in her own, memorising them as thoroughly as any script. She hadn’t been fair on her only friend – she knew that now.

So suffice it to say she was deeply irritated when she found that Vanessa was absent from school that day. b***h, get your ass here. I’m waiting to apologise for being a crap friend.

Grunting in annoyance as she had to squeeze past a gaggle of excited students that had gathered, she took what she liked to refer to as her ‘loner throne’. The seat at lunch that she always took when Vanessa wasn’t around. She liked it because it was backed up against a wall, and the table was usually empty. Pulling out a novel, she flipped to her bookmark and started reading.

She was about halfway through the chapter when she heard a commotion on the other side of the room. Glancing over the top of the book, she lost interest in the book entirely when she realised what was happening.

Roxie was engaged in a fight with none other than Renee Ward. It hadn’t come to blows yet, but it looked close. The two girls were circling each other in the middle of a steadily forming circle of students. While she couldn’t hear exactly what was being said from this distance, she knew that it couldn’t be pleasant.

Letting her curiosity overtake her, Eve hopped up from the Loner Throne and edged closer to the group. Chase, fuming, attempted to lunge at Renee before being stopped by a few male students.

“What did you say?!”

Even Roxie seemed affronted. “Why the hell would you think it’s my fault?!”

“Because that’s what you do, Roxanne Amor! Isn’t it? You poison everything you touch. Every relationship! Every kind heart! And all you leave in its wake is destruction!”

“You’re making me sound like antichrist, for god’s sake! Literally all I have ever done is stop being friends with you! What’s your damn problem?!”

“I warned her,” Renee growled. “I warned that girl to stay away from you, because I freaking knew something like this would happen! And now look!”

“What’s happened?” Everyone turned at the sound of Eve’s voice. Silence fell, and she was met with the strangest mixture of expressions she had ever seen.

“Guys. What happened?” She prompted. Turning to face Renee, she complained, “I know you’re talking about me. So the least you can do is tell me what hanging out with Roxie-“ Roxie visibly cringed at the phrase, “has apparently done.”

Renee faltered, then glared towards Roxie. “You want to know? She can tell you herself. I told you to stay away from her, Verbeck.” She stormed off, and the people holding Chase back released him.

Eve’s questions now turned to Roxie, who looked confused.

“What’s she talking about?”

“Eve, surely-“

“What is she talking about, Roxie?”

Roxie’s eyes filled with sudden understanding.

“You don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“Oh Eve…”

“Goddamnit, what?! Tell me already!”

“Eve, listen. That friend of yours. Vanessa Pierce.”

“Oh god.” Eve’s hands flew to her mouth. She barely heard Roxie’s words through the dull pounding in her head.

“She was reported missing this morning.”

Eve fell back, hands frozen to her mouth as she shook her head. She couldn’t think, couldn’t make sense of the situation. Vanessa was… missing? What did that mean? Why, for the love of god, would her head not stop pounding in time to the rhythm of her heart? What was this feeling building within her chest and making it feel like an anchor had been attached to her stomach?

And then everything went dark.