the boarders

Valentina

Fucking hurry up, I'm in the toilets, got some big news.

Valentina read Octavia's text and quickly ran out of her English lesson to the toilets. Her heart was pounding inside her chest. She just knew it had something to do with Drew, it just had to, and Aurelia? God knows where she was.

As she sprinted to the toilets, Valentina reminisced about last summer, just how carefree it had all been. The south of France, flirting with pretty French boys and living on a diet of baguettes and red wine. Life had seemed so simple, Drew was besotted with her, and so was the entire world. Herself and her friends were on every single Instagram story and every newspaper, people wanted to BE them.

Unlikely now, thought Valentina, no one would ever want to be in their position. She'd seen the type of shit that was written about them now, old photos drawn up, exposing them all as troublesome and druggies. Sure, they'd all snorted a line in their lifetime, but they weren't addicts, or anything else the newspapers wrote about them all.

She pushed the bathroom door open and saw Octavia looking extremely small and petrified. "God, Octavia? What's wrong?" Valentina grabbed her friend and hugged her, wiping a tear away from her face. "I saw Aurelia and Drew, Aurelia threatened me." Octavia stopped, choking back tears. "She has a gun."

Valentina felt the room spin, and leant a hand on the sink, breathing in deeply. "Why would she do that?"Octavia shook her head, confused, tears slipping out of her eyes.

"We loved her. Like a sister." Octavia cried, leaning into her best friend to comfort her.

"Well," Sighed Valentina, comforting her friend, "Our prime suspect is Drew." She could see his face in the back of her mind, no longer comforting, but sinister.

"What if he brainwashed her?" She suggested, thinking back to a newspaper article where a perfectly normal man had been brainwashed to become a notorious serial killer.

"I suppose it's possible." Sniffed Octavia into a tissue. They both hated thinking of their friend, beautiful, funny and kind Aurelia brainwashed into some kind of monster.

Valentina stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and thought deeply. "I think we should report it, to the police." She said finally, after thinking. Octavia said nothing, and just nodded.

"Come on, O, let's skip Art and go to the station." Valentina said holding Octavia's hand, and they sneaked out of the school.