The Bad Boy's Sleepover

Chapter 30

Lola, Hanna, Nalini and Damien stood in awe as Edward spouted off on all the things he had been up to this past weekend. And it was honestly a lot.

He was pacing back and forth on the floor, between the table and bed in Damien's pool house and he looked wired, like he hadn't slept more than five hours in the past two days.

"So like I said. He's innocent. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the botched up doctored footage. There he was sitting on the bench, puffing out smoke like a chimney. It's crazy, isn't it?"

Lola leaned forward and stared at the video playing on his computer screen for what might be the twentieth time that hour. She couldn't believe her eyes when she first saw it either. Edward had done the unthinkable, the undoable. He was a genius who had just proven Julian's alibi, something his very own lawyer failed to do.

Or maybe he was paid off, who knows?

"So what do we do with it?" Damien asked, his face filled with equal mixtures of awe and admiration for Edward.

Edward simply smirked proudly while he pushed his thick framed glasses up his nose.

"Way ahead of you."

He opened a few tabs, one showing everyone he had sent the footage directly to the county sheriff's department. The other copies were posted on social media and emailed to various local news stations.

The one posted on twitter was already blowing up. It had already been retweeted about ten thousand times and the comments below the thread were exploding. Some people were questioning its authenticity while others were blaming the justice system for framing an innocent high school boy.

Before, people had jumped on the band wagon, calling Julian all kinds of names like "no hoper", "the town's menace", "bad boy turned murderer", etc. Sadly, Lola and her friends had bought into the stigma as well.

At one point she truly believed he had done it. Until he broke down in her room that fateful night.

Now everyone had turned into the ultimate sympathisers. They were now calling him things like "poor misunderstood boy", "sweet boy", "too handsome to have committed something so heinous" and the flattery was just going on and on.

Lola rolled her eyes at the most recent comment which had been typed by someone named Sweetcheeks, 'God he's so hot. I'd let him rail me through the night, every night. It's what he deserves, right?'

Two hundred people liked her stupid comment and there were countless other comments below echoing her sentiments. It made Lola's eyebrows knit together in a tight frown.

"Edward, you are a fucking genius, man!" Damien patted his back, looking like he wanted to hug him instead.

"I told you guys. This is all for Hanna. Thank her," Edward replied, his eyes fixed on Hanna's face which was slowly turning red like a tomato.

She turned away from everyone's scrutinizing gazes and cleared her throat. "So now that this is all out there. Does this mean Julian's name's cleared?" 

"We can only hope that this will push them to reopen the case and thus, yeah Julian will be free to walk around. For now." Nalini concluded and everyone fell silent, letting this revelation slowly sink in. 

"So what do we do now?" Lola voiced out after a few seconds. Her thoughts were still fixed on Julian, wondering where he was and if he was safe. She hated that he wasn't here to hear this news with the rest of them. 

She imagined his eyes narrowing in disbelief first and then crinkling at the sides in happiness and appreciation. In the short amount of time they had spent together, Lola had memorised most of his expressions. It was weird how she was sitting here thinking about this more than the huge news Edward had dropped on their laps.