Get Out If You Can

One Year Ago

Caitlyn knew the red splatters on the wall were made in honor of her now widely-known arrival.

Good thing her parents weren't home yet. Nobody was home yet, and Caitlyn highly doubted what they said about 'having important work'. She knew her parents were out visiting their fancy friends, telling them their daughter had come back fit and fine and now was ready to socialize.

They'd been treating her like a novel, programmed robot ever since she set foot on the soil of the real world.

She'd been catching up on the news — Bennett High's news, that is. The only way to actually do that was to log on to the infamous Bennett Hawk. She laughed as she remembered how her parents had thought the account targeting her was the triggering cause of her assumed 'madness'. They had no idea.

Bennett Hawk was special in its own way. Nobody knew how they got their news, and it was an even greater mystery how everything was true. Until lately, of course. When they'd started targeting Caitlyn, they'd started puking out bullshit. Some of the stories were so obviously made up that Caitlyn couldn't bring herself to believe that people took them for real.

Either way. She'd got to clear up this message before someone photographed her and gave her parents a reason to ship her away. Nobody would ever believe her if she told them she wasn't the one who'd done it.

She dragged the ladder she'd carried from the attic, set it up against the wall, and climbed up with the cream spray paint. She knew she wouldn't do a professional job, but she'd clear it up decently enough for nobody to notice.

She tightened the drawstrings of her black hoodie around her neck, and aimed the can at the wall.

***

Caitlyn watched her parents' car pull into the drive from the sole window of her room. Kari still wasn't home. Everyone thought it was normal.

Caitlyn would've too if she didn't know better.

Her parents got out of the car and walked up to the porch, not noticing anything out of the ordinary. Which was brilliant. She could avoid the questions. They hadn't even noticed the can of cream spray paint, and it was lying right in front of their eyes.

It's funny how things work, right? You skip so much when you're not looking hard, and when you are, you see things that never were there in the first place. Caitlyn marveled at the thought. She hadn't been 'cured' at the center they sent her too, but she'd definitely learnt how to look at things differently. Very differently.

She turned her eyes away from the window and set them on the blazing screen of her laptop.

It was an old laptop; so old that it could hardly be called one. It took a whole ten minutes to realize that it was capable of connecting to the internet, and another fifteen to identify a network it could join. Caitlyn thought her parents had deliberately kept it this way, because, well, when someone comes back from a mental institution, you've got to get them in the mainstream universe slowly and steadily, right? You've got to make sure the internet hawks don't latch on to your already precarious mind.

You could give Callenfield a million mental health guidebooks and it still wouldn't get the point.

Caitlyn hovered the mouse over the items in the folder, looking for the one. She couldn't find anything so far.

Maybe she'd — maybe she'd taken the wrong folder?

Even if she had, though, it was okay. Sleuths make errors when they're still learning. She'd got plenty of time to try and make it the next time. The only letdown was, of course, the stakes were even higher this time. She couldn't afford to get sent back to that place when she knew what she was doing, she couldn't afford to have herself—

And there it is.

The corners of her mouth upturned in a slight grin as she clicked on the file name. It was an audio file. She navigated to 'properties' and noted down the usual, like she'd imagined she would while she was still planning — the file size, version history, timestamp. The timestamp was the most important thing.

The timestamp on this one incited two different reactions inside her. Triumph, because she'd been right for as long as she wondered. But along with triumph, the monster of revenge reared its ugly head inside her.

You couldn't blame her.

***

Enrique Torrez death

Enrique Torrez murder

Enrique Torrez Callenfield drugs

Enrique Torrez Callenfield

Caitlyn shook her head, staring blankly at her fruitless search history. It was like whoever had done this — she was sure someone had done something fishy, now that she'd heard the recording — had cleaned up behind themselves, and done it very neatly.

Caitlyn knew there was one person in Callenfield who could do that, and do it well. She'd seen it happen before her eyes.

She shut the incognito tab and stuffed her computer somewhere at the corner of her bed. She got off the bed and walked to her desk, thinking.

Where did everything begin? There were multiple links she could follow. But now, she'd seen the file on Kari's computer. That file was fishy. Half of her story had everything got to do with it.

Funny links were now popping up. When she'd first heard Torrez's name on the tape, she couldn't believe it. She rewound and replayed at least fifteen times before she allowed herself to take it for real — the evidence of which was she could now recite the conversation from memory.

Everything was starting to make sense now, though. She could see why Kari was so veiled. The voice of the other person on the recording belonged to a certain someone she'd planned to visit very soon. For some reason, by some error or chance, Kari must have stumbled on the recording, listened to it and decided to save it. And somehow, he'd come to know.

Well, whatever it was. Caitlyn picked up a pencil and peeled a Post-It from her stationery pile. She scribbled 'Enrique T.' on it, and pinned it to her bulletin board.

***

"Is there a way to stop it?"

"I'm afraid not," the bitch who used the school's counseling room to paint her nails replied. "We don't have any proof the student you're pointing at is doing it."

"It's obvious!" Caitlyn said, clenching her fists. She no longer cared that everyone around her was keeping a five-feet distance. "It's obvious it's him! I can explain—"

"Caitlyn, dear," she continued in her honey-vomit voice, "I understand you're — stressed. If you're feeling anything unusual, you should come see me. I'll talk to your parents, and—"

"I don't want you to fucking say anything to them." She didn't even bother to listen to the lady's reaction. She cut the call.

She looked around at the buzzing hall, searching for the two sane people in this school. She spotted Hunter Mason somewhere in a corner, leaning against a locker and scrolling on his phone. Somewhere ahead of him was Diego Torrez.

Something shot through her chest. What would he feel if he knew what she suspected? He'd probably ignore her. But he was smart. Couldn't he see that something was wrong with the way his brother died? Couldn't he tell?

Maybe he didn't want to know. Maybe he, like her parents, thought every little uncomfortable thing would disappear in thin air if they wanted it to.

She couldn't find the two she was looking for. She knew them only vaguely, they'd spoken a little before everyone declared her crazy. She didn't know what they'd become, but she hoped they hadn't changed.

But hope's a loose thread to hold on to. Most of the time.

She scanned the hallway again, observing everyone. They all did normal things. This was a high school filled with stories of absolutely normal students.

Or was it?