whisper | rilaya

twenty four

I found myself at the same marble floored house that I was at the night Riley was arrested. A scrawny boy opened the door, letting me in silently.

"Is Lucas here yet?" I asked.

Farkle nodded and tilted his head to gesture towards the boy rummaging through his fridge as he led me to his room.

I cleared my throat, and looked around, noticing that the extremely large house was ironically empty; like it always was.  "Parents working late again?" I asked.

The skinny boy nodded. "Yeah." He muttered. "They always are." His tone was sad, yet empty- like he's been used to this feeling of loneliness for a while now.

I didn't know what else to say to him, we haven't really talked since I yelled at him that night, and I wasn't sure if I should apologize or not.

"I'm not mad at you, you know." He said, almost as if he read my mind. "You were right. Riley is my childhood friend and I shouldn't have been that quick to jump to conclusions about her. I was just so upset about the death and I didn't know where to put that anger towards since they haven't been able to find the actual murderer yet."

He sat down at his computer desk and started up the system. I followed and placed a hand in his shoulder to comfort him. "I'm sure they'll find the culprit soon." I assured.

Farkle shook his head in denial. "It's been months, Maya. The statistics of finding the murderer decreases more and more each day." He said sadly.

"I know." I whispered. "But don't lose hope, okay?"

"I won't." He promised. "I just wished things would go back to the way they were before. Now Riley has been back in my life for a couple weeks and I can't even look at her without remembering that Mason isn't with us anymore."

I remembered back to this morning and how heartbroken Riley sounded when she told me about that. "I know, she told me about this morning."

Farkle spun his computer chair around and raised an eyebrow to look at me. "You two have really hit it off since you met, haven't you? I can't say I didn't expect it. People shunned the new girl and the girl accused of murder so they ended up not having anyone else there for them but each other."

"Uh yeah.." I agreed rubbing my neck with the back of my hand. I could hear Lucas' heavy footsteps travel up the staircase. "I'm guessing you've seen the photos?"

Farkle nodded and cracked his knuckles in a stretching motion just in time for Lucas to come into the room. "That's why you two are here today, isn't it?" He smirked. Computer systems and hacking used to be Farkle's favourite hobby but he's been too overwhelmed lately to be bothered with a case.

Not until today.

~

Lucas sighed and plopped himself onto Farkle's bed. "This is taking forever." He whined.

"Shut up cowboy it's been like two and a half minutes." I retaliated, watching Farkle type random numbers and letters into his computer.

I glanced down at my phone to see that Riley had texted me a little over an hour ago. Miss you already <3

My heart fluttered and I sent her a series of different coloured hearts as a reply.