Not Another Reason

Chapter Twenty

"Eve. Evelyn." Clay approaches Eve at her locker the next day, making her groan, but turn to look at him. "Hey, Clay, what's up?"

"I know you've been ignoring me and I understand that since that night you don't want to talk to me, or be friends with me anymore-" "Clay." She cuts him off, sighing, not wanting to discuss it. "But we have Justin."

"What?" Evelyn freezes, almost speechless.

"Over the weekend, Tony and I went down to Oakland." "Wait.. wait. Oakland? How did you know he was there?" "He sent a postcard to Jess from there, so we figured he still had to be there." He responds, making her heart drop. He sent a postcard to Jessica, but not her. He cared to reach out to Jess, but not her.

"So why are you telling me this?" Evelyn asks, now not even wanting to talk anymore.

"He wants to help. He said he'll testify to help Jess, he's, um.. a little too sick at the moment, but-" "What do you mean sick?" She asks, now worry filling her. Even when she couldn't stand him, she cared too much about Justin. "From being homeless." Clay lies. The real reason to Justin being sick is while being homeless, he continued to use more drugs. And since he began to get broker and broker as months went on, but still wanted a high, he turned to heroin, a cheap, accessible drug. Once Clay had let Justin stay at his house, he quickly found Justin's stash while he was sleeping, and now is forcing him to detox in order to be good for the trial.

"Look, he's at my house. We're taking care of him. If you want to see him or-" "I don't." She responded quickly, knowing it was a lie. Her anger taking more control than her truth.

"As soon as he's better, we're gonna take him to the Bakers' lawyer. He can back up Hannah's story." "Wait what? For one, it's not Hannah's story and it's not even Justin's. It's Jessica's. And I don't think he should be doing that with all these threats going around." "Eve, listen. Listen to me. Justin wants to help. And I know you want to see him.. he definitely wants to see you." Clay tells her, a little too loudly.

She looks around, shushing him and notices her boyfriend and group of friends approaching from down the hall. "Shut up, Clay." She says, huffing before walking away, not even stopping and ignoring the glances her friends gave her, knowing they definitely saw her talking to Clay.

Evelyn sat in the library at a table with Bryce and Zach, waiting what felt like forever for school to end so she could get away from the guys. She had been avoiding them all day especially her boyfriend, not being able to get Justin off of her mind and feeling like she was betraying them, but of course the group that ran the school was able to find her by their last study period, and this time she knew she couldn't get away, and decided to just wait for the bell to ring to leave as quickly as she came.

She was afraid Bryce would ask her about her talking to Clay, since she knew for sure he had to have saw her, along with her boyfriend, Scott and Monty, but thankfully when Bryce had mentioned it to Zach, wanting to know how he felt about it and how they were going to approach Eve about it, Zach had told him to just leave her alone and made up a lie about Clay just wanting homework answers, even though he also had no idea why they had been talking earlier that day, especially because she wasn't testifying.

Tyler and his new best friend Cyrus had sat only a few tables away, watching the group in disgust and anger. 

"This fucking trial's a fucking joke." Tyler begins, making Cyrus look up from his phone at him in confusion. "Marcus said Hannah was in love with Bryce, which is a fucking lie." 

Tyler had found an article that had been updating about the Baker trial, and it included Marcus's false testimony that he had provided in court earlier that day. "I tell the truth, I get endless shit. Marcus does his politician thing and blows back in like the fucking returning king." "What a motherfucker." Cyrus replies, looking over and noticing Marcus had just walked into the library, heading straight towards the table Bryce and his friends sat at.