Evan Farrington's Confession | ✔️

five

Evan gently pinched her lip as she left school, just enough to keep her mind focused on nothing but the mild pain. A couple of school buses were trundling out of the carpark, chattering with lively students. They gave off a pungent smell; exhaust fumes and petrol, the kind of viscous odours that feel like they're clogging up your throat with black oil. Evan hadn't waited for the corridors to thin today, she had allowed herself to be swallowed up and swept outside with the current. Somehow it just felt safer. The air surrounding her still felt heavy. Thicker and darker than the mist. She pulled her jacket tightly around her and quickened her strides. Her boots hit hard on the pavements and the sound comforted Evan. It felt like a normal sound. She'd bought these boots with her mum back home. They had cost a fortune, a fortune that they didn't really have but as Suzanne had said, 'they were a Christmas present'.

Evan considered going into the forest to get her shoes. She slowed right down at the turning off the main road. She knew that it very quickly became an uneven path which quickly became barely a path at all. It winded through the smothering trees with erratic urgency. Evan hoped to God that one of her shoes hadn't somehow landed on it. That would be a piece of bad luck if she ever saw one. All the evidence that she had (stupidly) left would give her maybe a few days of safety but the shoes would give her hours. If they found the shoes she would have the time it took them to drive to her house with the sirens shrieking to come up with some kind of plan, some kind of explanation. Evan had one hell of an explanation. But somehow she got the feeling that it wouldn't be very well received. Evan wasn't even sure if she believed it herself. So she didn't take the turning and kept walking straight home. The forest dwindled out of sight. Her shoulders slackened bit by bit as the heavy trees (and her trainer her bloody bloody trainers) got further and further away. It was an if: if they found the shoes. They might not think to check the woods today. In which case it was better for the (incriminating damning crushing killing) evidence to be hidden (not well) than for her to be seen carrying it home. That would be extremely difficult to get away with. Evan slowed down to a marginally more relaxed walking pace and ran through the other traces she had left behind. Footprints. But the footprints hadn't been mentioned. And the hall had been clean. She didn't stop walking but her brow crinkled.

Evan picked up her pace again, hand straying toward her lip. Maybe the police just hadn't mentioned them. That must be it. They can't tell reporters everything and they certainly can't tell students everything.

(what if..?)

Would she tell the police if they came? If they found the shoes and drove straight on down to the dwelling of one Evan Louise Farrington  who's bloody stupid shoes had her bloody stupid name on the bloody stupid tongue. Evan didn't think that she would. Juvie sounded better than a padded cell. Her breath hooked and choked her so violently she had to stop and catch her breath. She was almost home at this point, her neighbours houses lining the sides of the road.

But maybe it would be good to have some kind of explanation. Maybe she could tell someone else about what (really) possibly happened. About what she thought had happened, how she remembered it. It didn't have to be taken as fact and it probably wouldn't. But at least...

Evan didn't finish the thought. What good would it do? To have an absurd, far-fetched, unbelievable reason for killing someone. For ending another human being's life.

(murder, any way you look at it)

She let herself in through the front door and hurried upstairs. Suzanne wasn't back yet and the house was silent, all of its occupants staying safely in their own little section of the building. She tore a piece of paper from her notebook and sat down at her desk, tapping her pen nervously. A confession. Was that the best plan? Probably not. But something told her that she had to write it. Evan just hoped that the something wasn't an Emperor.