Villains ➵ bill skarsgård a.u.

twenty three

Georgie, Jumper and I walked back into the school for a minute, leaving the guys by the parking lot. I’ve taken half of the papers from her, firmly hugging them against my chest. The pain in my stomach had subsided because of the paracetamol, although I still wanted to sink into the floor and rest, now was no time to fuck up. The tangles of my hair stood as a protection from the cold as it flowed on either side of my shoulders, goosebumps still forming under my sweater. We were heading towards the library, the hallways empty as we walked through just like how we liked it. No rumours, no gossips and definitely no scoffs from snakes talking about us.

The papers were the flyers for Sarah, her bright face printed on all of them in full color, grinning. I’ve thought about putting some on all the lockers we passed through, but then again, who would care? Nobody did when she was still with us, carelessly laughing and walking to class even though everyone surrounding her hated her because she was a cheater, it won't be any different now she's gone. Nobody cares but us and her parents. And even if I did post flyers, they’d just end up getting ignored and thrown somewhere in the dumps. Dustin was right on what he said the other day about Pamela. There were flyers posted on each corners of the school when she went missing, and people even went as far as knocking on doors and asking if they had seen Pamela. One even knocked on us and uncle Ron had to find out about it from other people.

I think he knew Pamela. After all, he cooked for the girls whenever Aunt Marianne comes home late from her job, and I’ve seen him on several occasions talking to Pamela about her dad and their family.

They used the same photograph of Sarah from the article online I read yesterday, underneath, the words; “Missing” written in big bold letters. I tried not to look at it too much, my guilt kicking in every time I did so, along with the fear of seeing the eyeless girl again. It had felt like forever since I’ve last seen Sarah even though it had just been a month and I’ve been having repetitive nightmares about her. Come to think of it; I would've never thought she would run away. She seemed too cool before everything. Out of everyone, she was the one who rarely cried; compared to Georgie who could sob for hours talking about her feelings, nonetheless, even though my friends and I were all different, we shared a lot of things from each other, one of which is; we were all good at pretending everything is alright.

We stepped onto the familiar pitch black rug in front of the library, the glass doors automatically opening from our weight. Unlike earlier when there were three students, now it was completely rid of people except for the librarian, sitting behind her desk in front of her computer. I lead Georgie and Jumper to the specific line of shelves I’ve left Bill in, trying my best not to fidget from the familiar blizzard raging from the a.c.

“So you were saying he was from Hillside Cross Station?” Georgie asked behind me, breaking open the silence.

“Yeah, I-I found him there.”

“And then?”

“Then he asked me to stay so I did.” I replied, realizing how weird it was that I even did. I had no valid reason to help him when we were both inside, other than the fact I didn't want to be alone even just for a minute. To this day I still wonder how he managed to convince me even though I was dying off my broken arm, and I'm still wondering why I'm doing it again. Come to think of it, it would be that easy to just scream and inform Uncle Ron of what's happening to me, but I didn't do it. I didn't fucking do it and I don't know why. My voice was stuck at the pit of my stomach.

“How did he even get to your house? That's like a mile away.”

“He said he followed Ericka.”

“Wow, she's not just a bitch, she's stupid too.” Jumper scoffed. “See, this is her fault again. Whenever something fucked up happens, it all leads back to her. She’s lucky I haven't seen her yet, otherwise I would punch her face inwards.”