Beholder

Prologue

LAUREN

I wake up on a cloudy Wednesday mid-September morning, feeling kind of lazy as the feeling in the air: heavy like it's about to rain.

 Lily was whimpering endlessly but I think if I wasn't there she'll cry her heart out. I stood up to check but when I finally got to her bedside, she seemed asleep. So, I guess I was just dreaming. This cause my long night and probably longer day.

Last night adding to that disturbing whimper of Lily, I could hear other strange noises coming from somewhere outside the window. I almost thought I was going crazy and now I'm starting to hear non-existent sounds but things got settled this morning.

Lily is not feeling very well. She went home at 11 pm last night, 4 hours beyond her usual time she goes home. Mom and Dad sleeps earlier than i do for freakish health reasons so they went to bed while I worried my butt off for any connections between my amygdala and my buttocks while they were in dreamland. They assume she was with Allen working on something for school. I was in a state of inward hyperventilation when, finally, the door creaked open and Lily tiptoed in (Being blind my whole life sharpen my hearing and my sense of vibration. I could now recognize my family and friends' by heaviness of their footsteps, even Lily's tiptoe because we use to sneak to the kitchen for midnight snacks).

I mumbled, "Where've you been?" but I got no response. 

I let out a small sigh of relief and stirred myself aside to sleep but a not a while passed, Lily unconsciously won't allow me any.

The next morning, Allen came to our house, checked on Lily and now walking with me to take over Lily's job of taking me to my classes.

We chattereed loudly about different things but we laughed more we talked. The inside jokes became all too numerous to keep track of.

Then, I can hear people, a chaotic mix of voices I can't recognizee. I don't think we're t school yet since we're only a few turns away from our house.

I can feel him walk further from my side then I heard him ask a woman what is going on and I heard that I am standing on Hallie Jetlock's frontlawn. She's one of Lily's good friends.

The sirens howled again and I could hear the police car pull away from the lawn. That gave me some relief because I found out that I wasn't hearing stuff and I'm not a loony (Hurray! or am I) and the strange noises I hearing last night were only the distorted sound waves of sirens that dispersed and hung into the dense mist of the nightly Crauser atmosphere.

Allen walked back to my side.

"Lauren," Allen tone shifted into a serious one and I wasn't expecting since we were just laughing our heads off a couple of minutes ago.

"Yeah." I answered.

"Hallie," I got the feeling that he was going to crack a joke.

"What about her?"

"Sh-sh-she's," he stammered the feeling I had before got washed away by the nervous that I feel in his voice, "dead."

"What?" I exclaimed, horrorstruck.

We arrived at the school block even in my shock, I have to fight my way to not have it anywhere near my conscious or sub-consciousbecause like shows, school must go on.

But it was merely impossible to keep it out when there is nothing else you could overhear from the people we pass by who are talking but that four-word sentence.

Allen got us one of those special edition of the school paper with 5 pages and he was so annoyed that he is already getting the voice in his head record and play repeatedly "Hallie Jetlock is dead" because even in the banner headline it is still imprinted. 

 Allen read to me about the preliminary police report on her death (simply because there wasn't really anything contained on it other than that.)

My breath tightened as I heard him read the findings. Even if I hear stuff like this on the news almost everynight, it seems different when I have it in mind that this person is one of the friends of someone as close to me as Lily. I hear personal stuff about her, have my own views about her, theories of who she is, she was once in our room, rubbed elbows a few times with her. She is almost close to me. The thought is riveting.

Hallie was found with 26 lacerations around the stomach area, the throat, the chest and the tummy.

There is only one set of prime suspects involved at the moment which is Hallie's foster family who she lives with. The police talked to the neighbors and found out about the fight they had about her being pregnant and being ingrateful. They said that people shouting at each other could be heard every single night at their house since last week. Added to that, they also had reprimandable indifference to the investigation and that puts them in a thread as prime suspects because the investigators believed in the possibility that she might have died in their hands.

They are now under surveillance as the investigation goes on.

Classes evidently didn't  go normal at all.

Hallie is pretty much everyone's friend so it made  such an impact and no one was really into listening to lectures and doing the activities except the one who strive to the top, though half- heartedly. 

Halfway through lunch,the principal announced through the speakers in a very gaunt voice that resonated around the oddly quiet cafeteria that  he decided to cut the class and that everyon emay leave as soon as they finish lunch.

I am about to ask my friend, Louisa who is seated behind me, where Allen is so we could go home but asked me if I'm already done before I could even say anything.

What normally would be a march of revelry from the hallways to the school bus to the homes or hang-out places became a walk down zombie lane with the light footsteps that used to sound so rowdy, and the ear-splitting noise sounded faint, slow-moed, and muffled. The hallways also paves a free way for a blind girl like me when I used to have to wait until it is almost empty before I go to make sure I get  out there alive.

Allen and I walked to my house, not a word said, to deliver the bad news. We had to be as gentle as possible.

By the doorway to our room where Lily is, Allen and I fought over who should tell here in hoarse whispers.

We opened the door without reaching an agreement and greeted Lily. Allen is the one to say it but she didn't say anything. Or maybe she wanted to say something but too sick for it or she is as shocked as I was that she can't move her lips a millimeter to speak. I don't know.

 Hey readers... I'm glad that you are my first few

I seriously have no idea what the vote is for but I think you should vote for my book if you think it deserves to get it...

Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about right now because my brain is practically floating on cerebral fluid, caffeine, and water because I stayed up all night for no f***ing reason!

 Thank you and #DFTBA