Delta

Chapter Four

As I stood frozen, my seemingly imminent future of prison playing through my mind, my mom went full mamma bear. "What do you mean she needs to come with you? My daughter is not going anywhere. She did not commit any crime, so unless you have evidence or a warrant, Rose is not going anywhere but back to her room to finish her homework!" My mom shouted at Officer Pike, the rather intimidating looking officer shrinking down at the sheer force in my mom's voice. Gaining a little courage, he quietly replied, "Look Ms. a body was called in last night, found dangling on the balcony of Martha Hooper, right after the PTSD support group your daughter attended, ended." My mom hesitated at the sound of a dead body, glancing once between me and the officer before replying, "Do you think my daughter did it? You think she...she..she killed someone?" I went to speak up and give my two cents, but no sound came out, instead my mind flashed me back to the body of the man and then to my dream, when it was my body instead of the man's that was dangling from the balcony.

The officer, after taking a moment to come up with a good response to my mom's questions, finally responded with, "I don't think your daughter killed him. The evidence is more to suggest that a grown man did it. However protocol states that we have to bring in every possible suspect, so I'm afraid my hands are tied on the matter." This time it was my mother's turn to struggle with a response, and I could tell from her face that she wanted to resist, but she didn't quite know how or even if resisting was the best thing to do. Managing to put aside my fear for a moment to speak, I clear my throat and with a shaky voice say, "I'll go." Both the officer and my mom turn to look at me upon this, the officer's face filled with subtle relief, my mom's with dread and a wanting for me to protest, despite my submission. "In that case we should.." Officer Pike begins to say, as I cut him off halfway. "Can I change first? I..I just want to put on clean clothes." I half say, half beg.

At this point I'm not really sure whether the officer is going to let me change or not, his face seemingly torn between the two, however after a moment of silent debating, reasignment fills his face as he comes to an answer. "Go change. But you only have five minutes." He says, pretty much proving my point of him being new to the force, either that or the terrifying look on my mom's face. Not wanting him to change his mind, I run off, sprinting through the kitchen, and into the hallway, ending up in my room where I quickly shut and lock the door. A glance at the clock, which read 11:20, gave me a sense of when my five minutes would be up, not that I thought he would actually be watching the clock and timing me, and then I set to work on changing. I first stripped off my current clothing, the clothes I had worn the night before, the clothes that were on when I last stood on that balcony, tossing them into my large light blue laundry basket. Next I had to figure out what to wear, and after a glance at the weather app on my phone, I decided on a pair of buttersoft dark blue jeans and a white t-shirt with a red rim. Then it came down to shoes, an obvious choice for me as I quickly put on and tied my favorite pair, worn out black converse hightops.

Once my shoes were tied, I glanced at the clock, almost surprised to see that only two minutes had passed, leaving me enough time to quickly do something with my messy hair. Running out of my room, my phone shoved deep into my back pocket, I quickly turned from the hallway into the bathroom, grabbing my black hairbrush and getting to work on my tangled web of long dirty blonde hair. My large grey eyes examined my lightly tanned face in the mirror as I combed through the tangles, wincing as the brush got stuck in each hair clump. After what felt like an eternity of brushing, I pulled my now untangled hair up into a somewhat lumpy high ponytail. I would've taken a minute to try to do a better one, but Officer Pike had begun shouting out and asking when I would be ready as my five minutes were up. Evidently he had been timing me. One last glance into the mirror to make sure I didn't look completely terrible, and then I was out of the bathroom and walking through the kitchen and towards what I could only imagine as my doom.