17. "slanderers"

Banana pudding smeared across Jayvee's lips, as four of us sat criss-cross in the center of the building's parking lot, just to watch the day go by.

I planned to go back inside and hide out in my room for a bit longer to recharge after all the draining communication, but when Jared stepped out from his own hide-out and I could see the wounds he inflicted in the fear of Nova's eyes, I stayed put.

It happened before, and she says she wants to tolerate it, but the wounds haven't healed. I couldn't leave her until then, at least.

I don't know whose side I was supposed to be on when it came to murder, but when it came to the dirtiness in our group that I've recently found out about, I had to side with Nova. If her peace and organization was entirely an act, I'd be impressed, because in comparison to the others she gave off an aura that I was more willing to be around, and I wanted to protect that from getting ruined.

It's the one good thing we had left whether it was a trap or not.

That's how I ended up outside this long, my heart on low-battery while it had to act like it was full, and that's why I was noticing stupid things, like how we were prisoner to our rooms behind closed doors, only to become prisoner to the parking lot behind closed gates when we wanted fresh air. Yes, I came to notice that to an extent, we were already in prison, and on a completely different note, things like the pudding smeared across Jayvee's lips.

You don't realize how much little things can bother you until they do, and when they do, you find yourself holding back on informing the person in order to avoid embarrassing them, simultaneously realizing that you yourself, have little courage and great weakness, but maybe there were times that that was acceptable, because it certainly paid off for me this once.

Never before, but this once it did.

The blank expression on her face when she stared up into nowhere vanished like the flame of a candle being blown upon, and it left space for this newborn spark -- a spark of realization, which I only noticed because of my inability to look away from the messy abnormality, but I saw it for certain. I couldn't have made it up.

It was so deeply profound and I could tell there was a ton bundled in it for her to be left so astonished, even if it disappeared as soon as it came. It affected her whole body too when it left her. Her weight fell back more evenly into the chair, but I was curious. I had to know what she had going up there -- if she had something useful to share without knowing.

"Why? What is it, Jayvee?" I asked, the words slipping off my tongue. Shyness chased after me right after they did, and I didn't know how to act when I was trying to work with someone who became an enemy to me in under three seconds, but I tried to. That was the important thing. I tried to because we weren't near the end of this yet.

We had to work together until we knew who we shouldn't be working with.

Jayvee sat up again and in some sort of way, it's like I could see the thoughts floating in the air that she had already lost making their way back into her head. Her eyebrows were furrowed and her mouth opened and closed again as she pondered on it a bit more.

"It's just so weird, isn't it?" She said, more in her own head than out of it.

It peaked the interest of the other two with us. "What's weird?" Jared questioned her.

"You know -- that thing that happened back then."

Nova was impatient, and out of it, she spoke to her the way teachers do when they have kindergarten students. "What thing? Use your words, Jay. No one can understand you unless you use your words."

If Jayvee was fully present, something like that coming from Nova out of all people would've sent her into an uproar, but in her state, it didn't. With a consistent pattern, her hand hit the pavement over and over again like an eight count for a dance number or a choreography, and she was out of it. On Mars, on Jupiter, on Pluto, maybe, but most definitely not Earth.

"Ugh, it's so hard to remember. Too much happened yesterday. Am I making this up?" She finally got herself to say, and at this point her furrowed eyebrows became so contagious that we didn't know what to say. We were as lost as she was, except she had a thought and we didn't. Somehow, it must've clicked in her that we couldn't follow if she couldn't talk, and she bit her tongue hard to wake it up, blinking numerously, before she could get a hold of herself. "Correct me if I'm wrong, alright? Jewee was the one who screamed first. He discovered Ryan first, laying on the floor."

"Well, yeah. Is that what this dragging on is about?" Jared sounded disappointed. I had a feeling he would've been more angry with her rather than disappointed if he could, but he couldn't. The wounds stinging on his face would be a constant reminder that there were some people in this world you don't mess with, but he was still daring enough to question her. That was at most. "I'll never forget his scream. He was terrified out of his own skin, but what about it? What's the big deal? One second the man's standing and the next he's on the floor. Jewee screams. So what?"

I ran a hand through my hair. I couldn't contribute because I had no idea what she was trying to explain, despite starting to touch base on it, but I convinced myself that if I shut up and be quiet rather than said that I'm confused out loud, she'd get to the point quicker, and I wasn't necessarily wrong using that logic.

"I don't know. I just find it strange. When I was trying to remember if he was the first one to see his body, I also remembered that we were still unable to see. The room was spinning and going black and all that -- we had no idea what happened, what all the ruckus was about, and we all regained our vision shortly after that, each of us around the same time. Why was he -- I know just a fragment, but still -- earlier than us? The person aimed well enough to kill him. Could you do that blindly? Do any of you actually remember him injecting the vaccine?"

I thought back to it. We all did, and I couldn't remember whether he did or not. I wasn't paying much attention to anyone else at the time, but never once in my eyes, did he inject it.

"I don't think so, but he had to have done it though," Nova brought up. "He had to have, because he had black blood like you and I, Jayvee. Our blood claimed the three of us were guilty. If he didn't inject it, he would've bled red, like normal."

"Exactly. See? He had to have injected it. Are you proposing that Jewee, the most innocent and kind hearted of anyone within the six of us was behind a murder?" Jared had to mention. I want to say that he was acting too desperate to find a way to defend him when he heard such a proposal, but I couldn't present proof for it. There was something in the way he looked and the way he talked that said that, but I don't know what it is.

"I'm not trying to propose anything. I'm simply stating what I remember. Don't get pressed," Jayvee fired back at him with a good level of sass. "And besides, is it impossible that he did it before hand? Maybe he knows something about the vaccine that we don't, or he was able to get a hold of it in a way that we couldn't and that's why he was able to open his eyes and 'discover' the body before we did."

Jared didn't like what he was hearing. It seemed he took personal offense. "You're reaching way too far, girl--," he tried to respond to her jokingly, but in it was this realism that he couldn't hide.

Jayvee didn't care what criticisms she received. Once I got her to start talking, she wanted to finish. "Plus," she continued, ignoring Jared entirely. "I know Jewee is a shy guy naturally, and English being his second language makes that harder for him. Seriously, I understand that. I'm not looking down on him for his shyness, it's not a negative quality, but what I am gonna say is I also find it weird that even though he's shy, he always spent his time with us or around us. He didn't have to say anything, but he would be there -- then, we come here, and he rarely comes out of his room unless he needs to as in the police are here and need to speak with us. Is he feeling--?"

"Guilty?" Jared jumped in once more, finishing it off before she could. He was becoming very active in the conversation as the opposing side, since Jayvee got deeper into her thoughts. "No, he doesn't feel guilty -- not like that."

Nova, seeing him a bit flustered, thought it was funny, and she wanted to prolong it. I could see the intention hiding behind her sly smile, which was more genuine than it's been. "Even if he didn't do it, maybe he knows someth--."

"No. He doesn't know anything."

"How could you know what he knows?"

"I just -- I know him. I know he's not like that. Accepting death is different for everyone. Just because I hated Ryan, doesn't mean he did. His heart is too big to hate anyone. I know that he doesn't know anything."

The girl raised an eyebrow. "I think we've learned a lot about each other that we wouldn't have known -- that we aren't even supposed to know because we're going through this, so what could you mean by that? That you know him? What do you mean? How could you mean it? You're not him, so you don't know. That's it. We don't know anybody that well."

"Trust me. When it comes to him, I understand everything," he claimed. He pushed on, refusing to let go of the matter until he had won, which didn't make sense to me. Whether he fought for it or not, the opinions of other people likely wasn't going to change, but this one was important to him. So important, that he'd spend the rest of his life debating it if he had to.

Thinking about what his motive was behind that made me blank.

It could be that he thought pressure on Jewee would expose him, or would expose Jewee. Or, maybe he thought that that's what he was supposed to do -- that it was right and that it was best to fight for him. It might not be any deeper than that.

The one thing that was for sure is that if progress existed in our vocabulary the last two days, it sunk into the sand just now. This brought us back to square one: somehow everyone was guilty, but somehow everyone was not, and none of the pieces fit together.

"We have to talk," I said. "All of us."

We have to talk if we're going to figure anything out.

We have to talk if we want to be free.