The Sound of Their Presence

Chapter Thirty Eight: Why Did She Send Us Here?

Cheyennee's POV

     When Kat finally leads us to the motel room we will each stay in, she has already called me a friend to her and grown a severe hatred for Shane. Shane takes his luggage to his room, and I take mine to the room next to his. When I enter, someone is sitting on my bed, atop the grey comforter. With their back to me, I have no idea who the person is. By the feminie slouch of their shoulders, I guess that she is exhausted.

    "Quem são você?" I ask, hurriedly.

    "I have no idea whatsoever what you are saying," Jillian turns to face me.

    "Jill!" I practically tackle Jillian when I launch myself across the room to hug her. "We wondered where you have been! I thought you were meeting us at the airport . . ."

    We disentangle, and I give her a moment to recollect herself beofre pressing for answers.

    "I was delayed, sorry. Let's go see Shane. I need to say something important, but I am only saying it once.

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    We all sit on Shane's grey blanket, spread across the hard matress.

    "So, what is the news?" he asks his aunt.

    "There is a major complication," Jillian responds. She looks back and forth between us, an ominous expression settled on her gentle features.

    "Go on!" Shane and I simultaneously sputter, becoming impatient with how often and how long Jill is randomly zoning out, off in her own little world.

    "Well . . . "

    "Just spit it out, please," Shane whines, impatient. Although it was rude and harsh of him, I cannot fully blame Shane for his impatience . . .

    "Cheyenne, Lilith reported you as a murderer if all those in the woods that night they- Well, and she claimed that you are a teen runaway, too."

    I can't help my jaw from dropping, or the tears that well in my eyes, wanting to make an appeaance. I bite this down, but feel an empty dark hole growing in the pit of my stomach.

    "She has reported me as Shane's kidknapper," Jillian continues," and claims that we are all accomplices. Lilith is trying to make him sound like the innocent one of our 'terrible trio,'" and Jillian makes air qoutes with her pale fingers at 'terrible trio.'

    We all sigh, in an awkward silence, until Shane turns up the radio next to his bed. Of course, it won't work. Static is the most sound we can get from it. Then again, that could have been the alternative to the ringing in my ears from the harsh silence.

    "I don't understand foreign music, anyways," Shane says, with an abrupt bark of a laugh.

    "Ooh! Ooh! I know!" Jill cries out, hopping around in a smal circle, switching back and forth, from left foot to the right. Shane and I exchange a look, both our eyebrows stretching towards the sky. Neither of us can help but laugh, until concern overpowers amusemant as Jillian topples to the ground, landing on her face.

    I rush to her side, and she starts laughing like a maniac, until Shane pulls her up by her wrist, so she that longer lies in a crupmled heap of clothing, on the concrete floor.

    "You know what?" I ask, puzzled.

    "Kat recommended this really cool nightclub with Portugese and Americans!" she exclaims as if we have nothing else to worry about.

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    Hours  later, the three of us dance awkwardly, after Jill had somehow managed to talk SHane and I into going with her.

    "You know tonight is kareoke night here, right?" Jillian asks us.

    Shane and I exchange looks. "We are not singing any duets together!" we shout simultaneously, pointing at the stage, where some man, completely wasted, is singing somehting in such a slurred blabber, that everyone is booing, drunk or not. 

    Suddenly, Shane grew one of his lovely smirks that never meant anything good for me. "Cheyenne will sing, after you do!" he cooed at Jillian, laughing his head off all the while.

    "You will need to sweeten the pot," Jill giggled. At this, Shane's smirk dropped. We both knew that she wanted us to do a duet.

    My turn to intervene! "You can pick our duet, if we can choose your song!" Shane regained his smirk when he heard everything I had to say.

    "Did Kat really have to send us here?" Jillian asks, rhetorically.