The Heart of Beacon Heights

The Truth Shall Set You Free

A/N: Part two of the finale (see previous chapter for part one). I thought I should spoil you with two chapters back to back since I made you wait so long. Expect a few final twists along this journey.

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Chapter 13:

The Truth Shall Set You Free

Nights were the hardest part for Ava. Sometimes she would lay awake and think about all the good times she'd had with Nolan. Sometimes she had nightmares about seeing him impaled on that fence. She couldn't get the image out of her head. That was not how she wanted to remember him.

Dylan, Caitlin, and Ava had been hiding out, mostly together. They had been through hell together. Like the girls from Rosewood, they were now inseparable. They'd started out as mutual acquaintances gravitating in Nolan's orbit, but after his death they'd formed the depths of a bond that could never be broken.

Ava woke before sunrise the morning that Alison and Emily were set to leave town. She didn't know they were leaving yet. No one knew. They'd kept it quiet. The last thing Alison and Emily wanted was more attention. Best to slip out quietly.

Ava was good at doing the same. Sometimes at night when her friends were sleeping she would quietly leave their room and go up to the last place Nolan had been alive. She'd stare over the edge for hours before returning to her friends. Sometimes she went to the docks and peered at the lake water in the darkness.

The young girl was still so distraught over losing Nolan that she hadn't really been paying attention to others around her. The world continued to go on. That was the hardest part...watching everyone else live their lives while she was stuck in a world that had been thrown off of its axis. The pain of her grief was overwhelming.

That morning she had slipped out of Caitlin's dorm room, where they had all been staying. They'd been excused from their classes for the week with no repercussions. Claire made it perfectly clear to their teachers that the work they missed was of no importance. The professors had been instructed to award them A's for any assignments they had missed. It was her way of trying to make things up to them, as well as giving them time to deal with the trauma they'd been through.

Before leaving Ava turned around and looked at her friends. They were sleeping peacefully. She was grateful for them. She quietly gripped the doorknob, careful not to wake them. She glanced over her shoulder one last time before disappearing through the door.

It would be an hour before they realized she was missing.

Caitlin woke up and found Ava's side of the bed empty. She looked down and saw Dylan on the floor on his little cot, snoring.

"Dylan." She whispered.

He snored louder, so she threw a pillow at his head to wake him up.

He sat up and ran a hand through his messy bedhead and yawned.

"What?" He mumbled.

"You snore." Caitlin narrowed her eyes at him.

"Sorry." He sat up.

"Have you seen Ava?" Caitlin sat up against the edge of the bed.

"Dude." Dylan picked up the pillow she'd thrown at his head and threw it back at her. "I just woke up."

Ava had been taking everything extremely hard. Caitlin was worried about her. She voiced that concern.

"I'm worried about her." Caitlin rubbed her eyes, catching a glimpse of herself in her mirror. Her tired eyes were sunken in and her hair was a mess.