The Girl Who Kept Running

23. The Girl Who Fell Into A Spiderweb

15 June, 2047

Sundel Agarwal. Aruna Ragini. Cecil Grover. She wasn't sure what her name was supposed to be now. 

She could still hear the pitbull growls. Every now and then they would alternate with scarily earnest barks. She kept holding her breath and hoping and praying that the dogs left the thoroughfare, clearing the area for her.  

Their owner, that vile Pernelius Higgins, pretend monitor, would clap, hoot, or yell to communicate with his dogs or to scare her into giving her position away. 

She was hidden from their view by the thicket of trees behind the long barn-shaped auto garage. But she was trapped: she could not move in any direction without creating a distinct rustle that would easily carry over. 

Exactly how did I find myself in this position again? she asked herself for the millionth time. 

All she had wanted was to make sure her name was in the clear in the aftermath of Fuddy's murder five days ago. Leaving the city with a suspect's baggage would be like jumping off the cliff into a waterless ravine. 

After escaping from the shabby row of old townhouses that fateful night, she had run straight to an apartment block where her school friend Tina lived with her grandparents. Feeling safe there, she did online chores, mostly editing, proofreading for end-of-year school papers and even wrote an essay for a lazy kid of middle class parents. This would allow her to buy her ticket to Lansing.

She had stopped going to school as there was no point and it ensured her safety. On the third day of these arrangements, Tina approached her with a grave face on returning from school. 

"You told me you were hiding from your Uncle as he was harassing you."

"That's right. What's the matter, Tina?"

"Remus from 12th grade is telling everyone that you're a shady girl as your uncle was killed in a controversial manner and that's exactly when you stopped coming to school."

Tina was a really simple person and pretending to be shocked in surprise at the 'news' of her uncle's murder was an easy trick to fool her friend and earn back her trust. 

The real worry, however, was the possibility that the police might catch on to her presence on the scene at the time of murder. 

Instantly, she knew what needed to be done. 

The very next day, she caught a bus to Eastside, Kalamazoo and reached the crop of old, gringy-looking, matchstick-box houses along narrow streets. 

She remembered well where Maximillan Bachir lived, that whizkid from 10th grade . She had been to his house with her friends at a party he threw for all the nerdy, less popular kids in school a month ago. He had made no secret of his self-made status in the deep by-ways of the internet then. He impressed the guests with his mastery of the gargantuan cyber-iceberg that the surface swimmers of the world wide web had no idea existed. 

Reaching his house, she had to knock the backside window of Max's bedroom for ten minutes before he paid attention. 

A claustrophobic scene of close range battle strobed around her in holoview when Max pushed up the window pane to let her in. 

"Cecil! How unexpected. Wait. Aren't you … Maybe I shouldn't have let you here."

She instantly turned her attention to him. "I know the rumors and they're all wrong," she blurted out in one breath, then narrated how she'd found herself trapped in a closet while her uncle was butchered outside by an angry organ scout.