Hushed

Chapter 4: Suspected

    “Someone’s here,” he said to his colleagues and I took the opportunity. Without thinking, I ran at full speed. My mouth became dry and no voice came out of my mouth when I felt someone pull me and placed their hand on my mouth.

    “It’s me,” I felt his warm breath linger in my ear, it was Max. My heart beat slowed and my body felt relieved and relaxed.

    “Harvey, I think you should stop,” Matthew said but Harvey ignored him and just continued punching Cain.

    Harvey Gobbler was the school bully. Everyone got used to him bullying people that they just walk by and mind their own business, even me. No one has tried to stop him since he’s the mayor’s son. It’s kind of annoying how he just gets away with everything he does and gets everything he wants.

    How can the world be so unfair? Other people work hard to get their own things and pay back for the things they do wrong while others just get a free ride.

    Cain Mendez is always his target. Maybe it’s because he looks weak and he can establish dominance easily? I don’t know. Cain likes to stay in the shadows, sometimes; I don’t even notice him when I’m in a room with him.

    “What were you doing in the woods last night?” Max asked. I didn’t even notice him beside me. I’ve been steering clear of him for the whole day just to avoid this conversation. “What do you mean?” I asked, pretending not to know.

    “Don’t play dumb,” he answered. I don’t want to doubt him but I can’t help but ask so many questions. Is he the one who sent me the letter? Did he plan for me to almost get caught? My train of thoughts came to a stop when I suddenly heard someone call Maxwell’s name. I immediately looked at where it came from and saw Mikaela, running at full speed towards us.

    When she reached our location she immediately linked her arms around Maxwell’s which made me frown. “Why are you frowning?” Max asked, I didn’t even notice their eyes on mine; I was just looking at their linked arms.

    “I don’t know. I’m just thinking of something,” I answered. Was that weird? Did I really look upset?

    “You guys. I heard something from my father,” Mikaela asked. I can feel her excitement which made me think that she doesn’t know what happened last night. “Someone was found dead in the woods last night,” she whispered. I can’t read people.

    She’s looking at me. Does she know that I was there? What if she knows? Am I going to be picked up by police cars later?

    “We should talk about this later,” Max suggested which Mikaela immediately agreed to.

    “I’m going to class now,” I said. I really don’t want to have that conversation.

    “Aren’t you coming with us for lunch?” Mikaela asked.

    "No, I just don’t want to be late for class,” I answered. “See you guys tomorrow.”

    “We have drama club,” Mikaela said.

    “And we’re classmates,” Max stated.

    If I were to describe our last period, it would be weird and unfair.  That’s two words. There was just so much going on. We had our teacher, Ms. Alcoy for math class. I was kind of hoping for a substitute since I never really liked her. She’s old, grumpy and old. Is it just because she’s single in her 50’s? I don’t know. She’s just really weird and she has favoritism.

    Favoritism isn’t bad, for her, I’m talking about her favoritism. She favors Cain more than others, not just in our class but in our whole school which is good since she doesn’t call others during recitation and she grades everyone equally but today, today is really unfair.

    The class was running smoothly the first ten minutes. This stops when she calls Cain to answer her question. He ended up not knowing the answer which is really weird since he’s the star student and I have never seen him like this.

    Everyone in the room was shocked, even Ms. Alcoy. She asked Cain if he was okay and he said that he’s not feeling well so she dismissed him early. Now, we were left with an angry teacher and a silent and dumb classroom.

    Ms. Alcoy continued her discussion and everything went downhill. She asked so many questions in which no one answered correctly. She made everyone who got the answer wrong stand up all throughout the 2 hour long class. That’s torture.

    Now, I am a fan of questions but not math related. I’m a weakling in math and I was the first to be called, I’m telling you, my luck is so bad. I stood up through the whole class while Max secretly laughed at me. I envy him for being able to sit throughout the whole class.

    My thoughts were interrupted when someone knocked on the door. Oh no, is this the police? Have they come to arrest me? I walked to the door, nervous. What am I going to tell my parents? Should I just not tell them?

    Mikaela’s face greeted me as I opened the door. “Hi,” she said with a bright smile. Max was standing behind her.

    “Why are you guys here?” I asked.

    “Well, I figured that it’s a good time for us to talk,” she answers. Max entered the house and went straight to the kitchen before I could even let him in. He’s gotten used to the house since my parents aren’t home; they requested his parents to watch me every now and then. Instead of calling me, they’d rather call his parents.

    I let Mikaela in and joined her in the living room.

    “Isn’t what you expect?” I asked when I saw her looking around.

    “No, it’s just my first time here,” she answered and Max got back with a handful of snacks.

    “So? Tell us what you know,” Max said, his mouth was filled with food.

    “So, I was at the precinct and I heard these officers talking about a dead body in the woods. I heard them say that it was John Harden stabbed multiple times. They also said that they saw someone there and it’s one of the suspects of the murder,” she stated.

    Max and I looked at each other in shock. Did they know it was us?