Fall for me

Chapter nineteen

We're pulling up the long driveway that leads to Chase and Raken's house, and suddenly it takes much longer than it ever has before. This time Stiles let me drive, he's sitting in the passenger seat of my car looking antsy. "So... why do you think no one can remember her?" I ask. "Uh — I don't know. I mean everyone we've asked had taken drugs at the party and who knows how much they've taken before or after then." He says while continuing to look out the window. He pushes his hair off his forehead and glides his hand all the way through gripping the back of his neck. "Do you think any of this is real? Or are you just going along with it to please me?" I blurt out. He takes a moment before he responds. "I'm not going to lie to you... at first I was definitely on the fence. But after being chased through the streets by a big guy...with a big knife... and finding everything we've found — I definitely think there's something fishy going on here. You're right... it doesn't make sense. Why no one remembers her, when I think back to that night when she was driving all crazy up the driveway all I see is a flash of light. Like maybe I really did see her face that night but it didn't register and now it's too late, the memory is tainted." He finishes as soon as I park the car. We sat there for a few minutes taking in what he said... and the realness of it. I can't wrap my head around any of that... the facts are that it doesn't make sense. That's all there is to it. "You ready for this, Sunshine?" He says while stepping out of the car, not waiting for my response. I follow closely behind him, not wanting to leave any room between us. I look into the garage as we're walking up and both Chase and Raken's cars are here, we picked the perfect time.
Stiles doesn't waste time knocking on the door, instead he leads us to the side door that we all came out of that night and walks through. We find our way to the stairs ascending them faster than ever before. Once we get to the hallway that both their rooms are on, we quietly walk past Raken's door that is to the left of Chase's. Stiles quietly knocks on Chase's door and the suspense I feel while waiting for him to get up and open the door is nerve wracking. What seems like eternity but can only be a few seconds pass and the door swings open. "Hey–" He says confused looking into the hallway. Stiles pushes him back into his room and I follow closing the door as quietly as I can behind us. "Dude! What's going on?" Chase says. His hair is ruffled and sticking out every which way. His eyes are still droopy from sleep... and I swear he has a drool mark along his chin. "Shh — shhh. Listen, I will explain everything to you tonight... but I need you to get Raken out of his room for as long as you can without making him suspicious." Stiles says. Chase starts pacing between Stiles and I, with a concerned look on his face. He opens and closes his mouth three times before he abruptly stops pacing and looks directly at Stiles. "I promise we will tell you everything tonight, just please trust me and don't ask questions now." Stiles says pleading with him. "Okay... Okay. I need his help with my car, but it's something he's fixed before so I'm sure it won't take him too long to fix it." He says while walking out the door. "Okay, that's perfect and don't let him know that we're here." He adds in case he didn't already know that. Stiles peeks under the door and watches as two pairs of feet descend all the way down the steps before we start our most dangerous plan to date. My heart is beating so fast as Stiles slowly opens Raken's bedroom door. I don't know exactly what I expect to be behind this door, but definitely darkness... and everything scary. But when the door finally swings open, it's a very minimal room. The walls are painted a very pale yellow, and the only pieces of furniture he has in here is a very large bed, and a desk with a computer on it. "I'll take the laptop, see if you can find his phone." Stiles whispers. I'm not sure why he's whispering considering no one is up here... but I do my best to be quiet too. I look around the outlets for a phone charger, until I find it on the left side of his bed. I follow the cord all the way to the end but come up short... I look along his desk but the only thing on it — other than his laptop are ruffled papers, a few highlighters, and a pen. I left out a huff of air to show my frustration, when I heard a vibrating sound coming from his bed. His bed is still mostly made, it just looks like he woke up and flung the covers off him... and left it. I walk to that side of the bed and feel around until my fingertips come into contact with a cold surface. I wrap my fingers around it and hold it up in victory... but Stiles has his head stuck into the computer. Time to get to work.
I slid up on the screen, and there's a passcode. I look down at the keyboard and realize it's letters, instead of numbers. Fuck, this is going to be harder than I thought. I try a few obvious ones but it keeps vibrating saying that it's incorrect. I can feel the invisible clock running out of time, so I type in 'Good girl' a phrase he'd used when he broke into my house. It vibrates indicating that it was wrong again. "Fuck." I mumble under my breath... then finally it hits me. I type in 'Princess' and the screen lights up and I've gotten in. I don't even think about why his password for his phone is princess... that's a problem for a different time. I began to look through his photos but there's only screenshots of food orders and pictures of sunsets. They're very beautiful... almost breathtaking. Before I close out of the gallery something catches my eye... I click on the picture and it's the man. The man who chased us around the town when we left the library. It's a mugshot of him, he's as scary as I remember him... I send the picture to myself and make a mental note that I have to remember to delete the texts to myself so he won't see them. I click on the text icon and the only message that pops up is the one I just sent myself. Who deletes all their text... no one unless they're trying to hide something. I always keep all my texts... you never know when you're going to need them. This only makes me put extra buzzers on my mental note, I have to remember to delete it... because he will definitely notice. He has a few games on his phone, the normal games you would expect teenage boys to have. The logos are guns, or dark buildings, lined with neon lights. One app in particular stands out to me, it has a pale blue background and the center is a sunset. Chills form on every inch of my body and I know, this is a spot the difference. A man who doesn't have a sliver of color in his room, or anywhere in his photos... and then he has this? I click on the icon and wait for the screen to pop up, when it does it has four empty boxes and a keyboard pops up. Another password... but at least it's numbers and I have a better chance at guessing it.
"Hey, Chase just texted me. He said at most only fifteen more minutes." Stiles says. Apparently he's finding stuff over there, because he hasn't come to check on me or the phone since. I try a few random numbers and none of them work. My breathing increases as I feel the invisible clock over my head once again. This is it... if we're going to get any real information I have to get into this. I scan my brain trying to think of any numbers that correlate to him, but I keep coming up blank. "When's Raken's birthday?" I whisper. "Um — give me a second." He responds. A few moments later he calls out, "May Twenty Eighth, nineteen, ninety seven." I type in zero, five, two, eight and it vibrates, so I try again and type in one, nine, nine, seven... and it vibrates again. That's when the numbers appear in my head... zero, nine, one, six. I don't know what they mean but I type them in and it opens. I let out a relieved breath, "Yes." I whisper to myself. There's only three files, something that doesn't look very important from the outside. I hold my breath and click on the first file, titled 'Medical'. When the file opens I soon realize that they're the same forms that we found in his dads office. Except not everything is blacked out this time, only the name and the address is blocked out. I scan the digital page and my jaw drops to the floor... "Stiles... I have something big. I'm sending everything to myself right now so keep looking at the laptop." As I'm skimming over the pages upon pages... that seem never ending my stomach churns. How could he do all these things? One page reads, 'Petite teenage girl, brought in with bruises covering the entire right side of her torso'. The next page, 'Teenage girl came in with cuts and bruises all over her face... unrecognizable.' I take a deep breath in as I read the last page... 'This teenage girl has been brought in multiple times in the last six months. All for domestic abuse, she refuses to press charges. Today she came in throwing up blood, and the entirety of her torso was bruised and swollen. Her hair had so much blood in it, you couldn't tell what color her hair was until after a nurse washed it all out. When asked what happened the only thing she would say is "I'm pregnant... Please help me." She wouldn't tell us who did this, but I'm assuming it's the same person who has been doing this to her the last few months. When she was discharged, she was no longer carrying a baby." I have to hold the vomit in that keeps threatening its way out. I hold down the share button and send all these to myself too. I click out of the file and click the next one titled 'E'. Once it opens there is page upon page of messages between him and someone else. I scroll back to the top of the page and click on the first screenshot, this is why he doesn't keep anything on his unlocked portion of his phone. He has everything that's closed to him double locked away... where no one can get to it. The name that I'm staring at on the page in front of me causes my entire body to still. There's no way... this is impossible. 'Erin' is who he's texting with. I know my time is running out so I skim through each picture. They start as cute, loving messages. My heartbeats faster and faster the further down I go... it goes from loving sweet messages to borderline death threats. It's like he's keeping this all inside him... somewhere far enough that no one else can see, but close enough to attack if he ever needs to. I hear the swishing sound of water take over all the thoughts in my brain... It's now like a coping mechanism. Anytime something gets too hard for me to see or think about the waves come crashing in... not letting me focus on anything else. I click the share button again and send this file to myself as well. I'm about to click on the next file when I hear Stiles behind me, "We have to go." I click out of the app and erase it from his history, I then click on the text icon again to make sure the files went through. The last one is only at ninety eight percent, but I can't delete it until everything goes through. I hear Chase laugh obnoxiously loud from the bottom of the stairs as if giving us our final warning. "Erin, now! We have to leave now!" Stiles whisper yells, just as the file sends completely. I erase all the evidence that I was anywhere near his phone and Stiles grabs my hand and pulls me out the door.
Now we can hear everything more clearly and someone is walking up the steps, quickly. There's no time to run, we're completely screwed... I can now hear the heavy breathing of whoever is running up the stairs, and Stiles does something completely unexpected. He pushes me back onto Raken's bedroom and crashes his lips onto mine. He glides one hand along the left side of my waist while the other is softly gripping the right side of my neck. It's definitely hot, I'm going to have him kiss me like that when we're alone later... that's for sure. When he pulls away Raken is standing about a foot away from us, with his mouth slightly open. The look on his face I can only describe as anger. "What — What're you guys doing here?" He lets out through his gritted teeth. "Oh hey guys! Did I not mention they were here?" Chase comes to our rescue from behind Raken. I look at Stiles and he has a smug grin on his face... the only way I can describe it, is possessive. Like he won some prize that no one else is aware of. We're all standing there silent and I'm looking at my feet, but I can feel his eyes burning a hole into me. No one moves a muscle, like we don't want to make a move to set him off. "Oh, my bad man. This is your room isn't it? My bad." Stiles says lacing our fingers together and pulling me close to him. "Well, we have to get out of here... but I'll see you tonight Chase." Stiles says and Chase nods in our direction before we walk as quickly as we can down the never ending steps and out to my car. I can't believe we actually pulled it off...
  I don't think I've ever been more afraid of Raken than I am right now — Knowing what he's done... what he's capable of... goosebumps form on every inch of my body, and I feel like I'm going to be sick. This is sickening — he is sickening. I was too anxious to drive home, so Stiles does. My only job is to text all of our friends and tell them when to come over... and that it was important. Andrew is working late, so I told everyone to be here at seven.

***

  Everyone got here about twenty minutes ago, we had ordered Chinese food ahead of time so we could butter them up before giving them everything we had. I've never been so nervous around them before, we all grew up together... Yet while we're all sitting here, I feel like I barely know any of them. I look over to Stiles, and he gives me a confident smile... we planned out how we were going to ease into all this, but now I don't know if I can start. My stomach feels like it's ripping its way out of me and my head is getting fuzzy. I blink a few times trying to regain all the focus I need to continue, but I can't. If I were all of them  sitting here listening to what I said, I would think I was crazy too. Especially Chase... who knows how he's going to react. We have proof though... it's not like we're making all of this up. Stiles must have gotten the hint, that I in fact wouldn't be starting us out so he did.
  " Hey guys... could everyone come and sit down on the couch please?" His tone was serious, no one asked questions... just did as they were told. Everyone crammed onto the couch Stiles was standing in front of, while I lingered behind Stiles leaning on the bookcase. "Wait... Is this your way of telling us Erin is pregnant?" Auggie loudly protests, from between Court and Lindsey. My jaw dropped in horror, but then again I would rather be telling them that... then what we were about to tell them. "What? No." Stiles says confused, then he rips the bandaid off. Everyone's faces fell, and by the look of anger on Chase's face I decided it was time to bring out our evidence board. I walked around the corner and wheeled it back out so everyone could see it, after looking at Raken's phone earlier we put every piece of evidence we had on here. I watched the room filled with my closest friends as they read everything we had to offer them. Stiles stayed quiet as they all read, he was looking down to his feet, as if waiting for them to come to him. A few minutes of silence passed, the longer they took to speak the more and more anxious I got. My stomach was trying to compete in the olympics, with the number of flips it was doing.
  "I knew it." I heard someone whisper from the couch. I looked around at all of them but nobody had moved an inch. "I knew it was real, I'm still having nightmares about it." Tristan finally spoke. I curved my lips up to her, trying to show her I understood and I'm glad she spoke up... without looking happy about this whole situation. Chase stood up and threw his arms up, "You expect me to believe all of this?" He looked around the room but ended up with his eyes on me. I instantly stiffened, the look in his eyes was exactly what Raken's looked like... when he thought Stiles had hit me. "You did this! You planted some — Seed in his head to get him to believe you or something.." His words echoed in my head over and over causing me to miss the next thing he said. "Hey! Don't talk to her like that, just look over everything we have and then tell us what you're thinking." Stiles said moving his body in front of mine... out of Chase's view. I've never in my life been afraid of Chase, he'd always been sweet and caring toward me. It really puts in perspective that you really don't know anyone like you think you do. Just that thought brought back memories of my dad. The flash of anger on his face before his hand came swinging at me... Stiles walked up behind me and glided his arms around my waist, hugging me from behind. No matter what was going on in my life, Stiles always sucked it out of me and made it better. I don't know how I could ever show him my gratitude for that... but I will spend the rest of my life trying, if that's what it takes.
  Before everyone got here earlier we printed out copies of everything I sent myself from Raken's phone, so everyone could have their own copy. Stiles didn't move a muscle as we sat there watching everyone's reactions together. I honestly didn't know what to expect from Chase... considering he helped us out earlier. But honestly... if I had a sibling and someone was accusing them of this, I probably would have reacted the same way. I'm not mad at his reaction really, just upset that he would think of me that way... that I would do something so — cruel. But everyone has their own opinion and I can't judge his reaction until after he reads everything. I'm sure some of the stuff we dug up, even he doesn't know about, but on the other hand... maybe he does.