I DON'T KNOW YOU

20.) pick your battles

• A L Y •

     We watched as Funneh wandered off, pressing her phone to her ear. Her words were mumbles to us, and with Gold there we couldn't eavesdrop even if we wanted to.

     I knew being nosy was bad; but she had been getting so many calls and so many things pointed to so many different conclusions. It was like she was once open to everyone and then she just... shut down and became more secretive.

Or were we just too nosy?

     Kyran, Gold, and Alec hurried off as Evan stared up at the sky, tapping his foot against the ground to a rhythm. I wrapped my hand around my other arm, watching Funneh's movements.

She froze, then pulled her phone down and away from her head, rubbing its screen with her thumb. She seemed lost for a second before she put it back up to her ear.

I don't know what made me have the intuition to watch her actions, maybe it was because I was curious. Funneh was a cool person, no malicious intent ever behind majority of her actions. I liked her as a person entirely.

It's just, I was curious.

    Alec had told me about her good deeds; and I for one, had seen my own fair share of her kind actions. Like at the arcade two years ago, when she went through all that trouble to find my charm. Or when she gave up the scholarship during Death-Con for me and Alec.

    And I knew how my brother felt about her; it was obvious. I had already placed my judgement that she was approved by me. And my conclusion on her still hadn't changed, it was just that she felt different.

I felt like there was more to her than what we knew, like she wanted to hide something. But another gut feeling told me it wasn't a bad intention, just for... some other reason.

     The day that the guys took her small box, I was confused. Cosplay? Maybe. And the letters and photos she had sent chords of emotion through me. It was obvious whoever those people in the photos were a lot closer to her than us.

     Maybe that was it, not curiosity, but was instead a different feeling. Jealousy? Replacement? Was that what that feeling was? Is that why we were feeling so skeptical of her all of a sudden? And not just her, but Gold too?

Replacement. Was that our thinking? Had we felt like we weren't as good as those people in those photos? Was it bad if we did feel that way?

    I pushed away any of my thoughts when Alec called me over, "Guys, look at this."

     I blinked once or twice and jogged over to the three, clearing my head. As I approached them, I slowed down as my eyes fixated on the ground below them.

     The grass was dark green, healthy but overgrown and uncared for. It would have looked normal to anyone from afar, except, it wasn't normal at all.

     It was hardly visible, but we weren't blind; in little dried out droplets, were the splotches of maroon. Dark crimson, that color that formed a path, a guide to what we started to put together.

     The blood droplets were basically invisible to anyone, but not to us. We saw them, the small indications of harm or violence happening there.

     "Is that blood?" Kyran asked from beside me, staring down at the little line formed by the droplets.

    "Looks like it. But, why is it there? And why does it look fresh?" Alec inquired, furrowing his eyebrows.

    "It continues down this way..." Gold pointed out, stepping forward to follow its trail, "...all the way down there."