𝕞𝕚𝕣𝕣𝕠𝕣𝕤 ┉✧ L.T.

/ chapter thirty - one /

// a.n. a nice long chapter, because i took A LONG time to update, I know. Life's been busy :( enjoy!! and thank you for reading once again. ♥

♫

The Technicolors - Tonight You Are Mine

The Neighbourhood - Paradise

Paramore - Brick by Boring Brick

♪

There's not much I remember from the following days; the days after Marcelo's death that was quickly called "accidental". Marcelo; someone I had never met, yet someone who knew us and had impacted my life so much. After a very detailed talk with the police, with the highway traffic cameras being the only source of truth, Louis and I were proven innocent. The conclusion was that, whatever had happened, we were the ones being chased. It was Marcelo Farell's fault for chasing us – not ours, for escaping.

Eventually, the media found out every little detail about the accident. I didn't know how – they just did. They knew how me and Louis had gone out for a drive, how we drove up the hill and then back down hours later, and I was driving, we were heading to our tour bus, when Marcelo started chasing us. They knew the exact times and even our speed. They had acquired parts of the traffic camera footage and it was everywhere during that first week after it became known.

They knew it all. And for the little things they didn't know, they would ask us – Louis, me, Elisabeth, Aiden, and Hayley – every time they caught one of us outside. And no matter how hard we tried, we would sometimes let them know more than they should.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about Jupiter. That little band from Thessaloniki, Greece, who were being chased by someone since the beginning of their first tour and they never knew it until it was almost too late. The whole narrative had made headlines; Jason, the gas bottle, what happened in Prague – they even knew that Marcelo got into that TV studio with a gun in his pocket. Within two weeks, Jupiter was the center of attention, we had become a rising star that someone was trying to shoot down.

People were speculating – making up theories and trying to piece it all together, to find out if they were chasing us, or The Scarecrows; if it was just Marcelo Farell behind all that, if everything would just stop after the accident, since he was dead. We were in every celebrity magazine cover and our music was in every radio station; the paparazzi were following us, even if we went out to get coffee. People were following us down the street, just to ask for a photo and, some of them, would ask for a Polaroid - they were so invested in the story, that they knew how I loved them. Everyone knew our name. They knew what we liked – they had watched all of our interviews, in search for clues that would help them. All these strangers were happy we were still alive.

Of course, more and more people discovered our music through the story. Of course, Adam had done his best to squeeze in some more tour dates – we'd play twice in the same city sometimes and, often, day after day.

And I, was suddenly a hero.

In the eyes of the world, I was the one who ended the opponent with a single move. The one who checkmated Marcelo Farell, once and for all, thanks to being faster. The one who managed to get through the opening first. And if I hadn't been there that night, God knows what could've happened – maybe Marcelo would try to get the rest of Jupiter of The Scarecrows. According to the world, I was the one who prevented all that could've happened – and saved Jupiter. The hero.

I wasn't sure if I hated it or not; something wasn't sitting right in my brain about being suddenly so popular just because I survived a fucking car accident. But I believed them, for the sake of my own sanity. I had to believe them. I had to drown out the thoughts and the pictures flashing into my brain, to ignore the nightmares I was starting to have. And, to my surprise, it was working; I was so getting so good at pretending I'm a hero, that I fooled myself, too.