Smoke and Mirrors (Smoke #1)

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Maybe, it was because of the such adolesence that seeped from her and ultimately attracted the wrong kind of crowd towards the last remaining strands of innocence she so tightly grasped?

Maybe it was because she craved the attention - attention that is glamourised by the commuication agencies to seduce callow, young girls to their undoing or just wanted to have a quick hit of happiness she thought he (or they) could give her?

Maybe, all she really wanted was just somebody to love?

Whatever the reason was for her, the same could barely be said about the boys themselves. Everybody noticed their fall from grace but hardly anybody noticed her drowing in her own guilt and sorrows. The flicker of the mouse flashed before my eyes, my mind trying to wrap itself around the latest scandal to find its way into the news. I clicked on the link and trailed my eyes among the bolded headline as I recited the kind of story that occasionally appear in the news.

Two Local Sporting Prodigies Being Questioned Over Assualt Claims ; Investigations Continue.

Living in a nation where sport was an absolute religion and the choice of team you had depended where you fitted socially on the hierarchy, talk of inappropriate behaviour of an athlete wasn't new although was rarely heard about within the media. As a community, many of us found it hard to believe that someone with a high position had the urge to commit such a petty crime against innocent women. But as a community, none of us were ever really surprised in the first place as it's happened in numerous cases before.

We weren't however used to used to the constant whispers and questions surronding the anonymous female and the distrubing claims that not only had shaken the media to the core, but prehaps the majority of Melbourne. Barely anybody knew her identity, barely anyone knew of her exsitence until her explosive allegations surfaced into the public. The only thing that was known to the public was that she was a teenager - roughly seventeen - and has accused a fairly idolised athlete for committing an immoral crime against her.

Throughout the frequent insults of 'homewrecker', 'corrupted' or 'asking for it' I would assume, none of us weren't sure if these fresh allegations weren't completely true or not but unfortunately this wouldn't be the last we heard of these sorts of claims. Unfortunately, hearing news as treacherous as assualt claims were becoming slightly more mentioned in the news over the past year. It was a pretty ironic thing. If I found various flaws within sport, why would I bother to continue follow it? It's a complex issue to tackle when there isn't a problem with the actual system itself but rather, the people within that system.

The allegations of the assault had only been fresh for the past few days, but there was still a lot of questions surrounding the claims. Right now, I could only imagine many people turning the pages of the daily newspaper and either bickering in complete digust for the alledged attacker or for the alledged victim. I decided to take a look at the story so far on the allegations that could be found online. I preferred to read it without the picture of a headless uniformed player probably having a smug smirk at the time of the photoshoot or some other irrelevant picture that clumisly vowed to be related to an article. 

This was still an allegation that was meant to be taken seriously, regardless of what anybody says. This was still an allegation that is meant to be taken seriously especially considering she was seventeen and underaged. 

Although she was a couple of years younger than me, it was still a terrifying thought. Whether or not these claims were true or not, things like this happen all the time.