Blank Stars

chapter 16

Sophia was twisted, she knew I couldn’t argue with Alec. I knew she wasn’t stupid and I knew she would be upset but I never imagined that she would do something like this to me.

“Kyte? What’s going on?”

He walked towards me, slowly but he didn’t look particularly cautious, obviously he was confident that I couldn’t hurt him.

“Nothing, did Sophia bring you here?”

He sat down next to me and took my hand, forcing me to look at him at least a little.

“Yeah, she said you wouldn’t talk to her and she sounded really upset. What happened?”

I cursed to myself; I had been asleep, and if she had woke me up I would have talked to her, probably.

“Nothing, she just started an argument.”

My curt answer made Alec raise his eyebrows in interest.

“Do you want to tell me what the argument was about?”

The tone of his voice sounded accusatory as if I was keeping information from him, which obviously wasn’t true. I was about to lash out, getting irritated by his demeanour but the sympathetic look in his eyes reminded me that he was on my side rather than Sophia’s here. I let out a sigh before continuing,

“Well, I was reading some of my mum’s stuff on conspiracies and Sophia wasn’t happy about it, and I got angry at her.”

He looked at me without any kind of reaction, it made me feel a little anxious but I tried to ignore it. He seemed to be calculating something, what I don’t know, then he finally spoke.

“Kyte, why the sudden interest in conspiracies?”

I was thrown by the tone of his voice, it sounded sad rather than accusatory as I had expected it to. I stumbled through my mind to find an answer but my brain wasn’t being responsive so I blurted out whatever happened to make its way to my mouth.

“I wanted answers.”

Alec let out a sigh and I bit back on my tongue as I reconsidered what I had said.

“Kyte, you’re not going to find answers in conspiracy theories. The only answers you’ll find are from the police and the murderers.”

I shrunk back and pulled my hand away from him, refusing to let him manipulate me like this. He looked at me sadly, the way you would look on an abandoned puppy.

“Alec, they found something important, I don’t know what yet but they found something”

I sounded like I was pleading with him to believe me and I hated it. Everything in my voice sounded weak and defeatists, as if I was hanging on to the last few scraps of a crumbling theory despite only having just found it. Alec reached a hand forward as if to comfort me but I lashed out at him. He dropped his hand to his side. I stared up at his face, I wonder how odd I must have looked but I no longer cared, I was slightly happy that Alec had managed to evoke some kind of emotion from me, all be it not a particularly desirable one.

“Kyte please don’t do this to yourself. It’s not just you, don’t do this to me and Sophia.”

I pushed myself up against the wall pulling my legs up underneath me. I tried to distance myself from Alec as much as possible, without jumping out the window that is although I hadn’t excluded that option.

“I just need to know what they found out, I’m not doing anything myself.”

I lied through my teeth, struggling to make myself sound believable. From Alec’s look I could tell that I had managed to convince him, probably just barely, but enough to make him sigh and sit back.