CHAPTER 2: THE GIRL WHO DIDN'T SMILE.
737 Words
The roar of the crowd faded behind her with every step.
"Echo looked at me!"
"Did you hear that last song?"
"Yes, maybe, I don't know! I wasn't paying attention.
"How would you know? you were too busy drooling over him". A fan says, forgetting, she too was doing the exact same thing.
"Can you blame me? He's Echo."
Zira lowered her gaze.
They saw a star.
She saw something else.
Something that made her uneasy.
Zira adjusted the strap of her pulse and kept walking.
She could still hear Echo's voice lingering in her mind.
She hated that.
Music had a way of dragging old foolish memories to the surface, memories she had spent years ignoring having no courage yet to bury them .knowing one day, they all would have to face.
She clenched her fist as her eyes seemed to shiver.
A faint smile touched the corner of her lips.
Not one of happiness.
One of certainty.
"You're seriously weird, Zira." Chelsea said.
"He looked right at you!" Chelsea continued.
Zira paused for a second before continuing to walk
"Then he was looking at the wrong person"
Chelsea blinked. "Are you serious? Millions of girls would do anything just to be noticed by Echo"
Immediately after Chelsea spoke something in Zira's expression changed.
A forgotten memory clawed at the back of her mind.
Her faint smile vanished as quickly as it appeared.
"And what about you?" Zira said as she shifted her gaze to her friend who was walking quietly beside her.
"Hmm..." Chelsea hesitated, a sheepish smile tugged at her lips.
"I guess I'd probably faint if he looked at me."
Zira raised an eyebrow.
"you're admitting that?"
Chelsea laughed.
"Of course I am. He's talented, handsome, and the whole country is obsessed with him. I'm only human."
Zira looked away.
"That's exactly the problem."
Chelsea frowned.
Zira was silent for a long moment.
"...Nothing."
"You know when he looked at you tonight, it was weird."
"Weird how?" Zira asked as she kept on walking.
"It felt like...he wasn't looking at the crowd anymore."
Chelsea laughed awkwardly.
"Forget it. I'm probably imaging things."
"You weren't imagining it," Zira said quietly." I saw it too."
Chelsea stopped walking. "And you felt...nothing?" she asked, staring at the stoic girl beside her.
"I felt watched" Zira replied dryly.
Chelsea stared at a her.
"Watched by who?"
Zira shrugged. "I don't know."
"The drummer?"
"Maybe."
"You're saying that like it doesn’t bother you." Chelsea insisted.
"Because staring isn't a crime."
Chelsea sighed. "You always act like nothing gets to you."
Zira didn't answer.
Her phone vibrated once.
She glanced at the screen.
...NO CALLER ID..
"Run through."
Her thumb hovered over the keyboard and lowered the volume.as she covers her mouth with her phone.
"Hmmm". Zira replied.
The reply came almost instantly.
"I found something. The call logs don't match the timeline he gave us"
Zira's expression didn't change.
"Keep going."
"The number we've been tracking stayed active for three minutes after the concert ended. Someone was waiting for a call."
"Or waiting for confirmation." Zira suggested.
" Exactly what I was thinking. There’s one more thing...I found a lead. The person we're after didn't make the call...they received one same location. Five minutes after the encore.
Zira's thumb hovered over the screen.
"So the receiver was the real target." Zira concluded.
"I knew that "hmmm" meant you'd connect the dots"
A faint smile tugged at the corner of Zira's lips.
"You give my "hmmm" too much credit."
"Not really. It usually the warning sign that you've figured out something I haven't."
Zira ended the call, locked her phone and slipped it back into her pocket.
"Everything okay?" Chelsea asked.
"Yeah," Zira said calmly. "Just someone checking in."
Chelsea wasn't convinced, but she let it go.
They continued walking in the silence.
Zira's fingers tightened around her phone inside her pocket.
"The receiver was the real target." Zira mumbled to herself.
"If that was true....."
"Then someone at the concert had just become far more dangerous than they realized."
Chelsea noticed Zira mumbling something under her breath.
Zira looked away before Chelsea could ask another question.
Behind them, footsteps echoed across the empty parking lot.
Chelsea kept walking.
Zira didn't.
Slowly, she turned, her gaze cold and calculating as she scanned the alley.
No one was there.
Still, the sensation of unseen eyes lingering on her wouldn't leave."
- Writer
