Us Against the Apocalypse

9 - The Letter and the Blackmail

It was dusk, and Bluebell was sitting in her cubicle after spending the rest of the day outside. In her hands was the piece of paper Arlo had given her hours before, and she was afraid of opening it. It was crumpled up into a half-sphere, half-rectangle, with jagged edges sticking out everywhere. Hopefully all the key information had been preserved.

Bluebell was alone, and had told Harley earlier that him staying with her was unnecessary. Leo had offered his company too, but Bluebell had deemed it best that she be alone right now.

Harley's first diary was lying on the bench beside her, and she considered reading an entry to both postpone the inevitable and provide her with a distraction. Her anxiety had skyrocketed the second she sat down to read the slip of paper; she was both afraid of what'd it say and of disappointment. Reading something that Harley had written before everything went wrong could calm her down in a way that her own thoughts couldn't.

She placed the paper on her lap and picked up the diary instead.

April 23rd, 2087

My parents have gone on about getting a dog since I was a kid, probably about seven. They never followed through with it so I'd given up by the time I became a teenager. Now, it's suddenly been appearing in conversations again, as if they're seriously considering it, and that makes no sense since I'm so busy with modelling and school now. I couldn't balance everything with getting a dog unless my parents planned to do almost everything, which they wouldn't be able to manage with going to work.

I asked Riley what she thought and she said getting a dog sounded stupid. It hurt a bit but I definitely agree.

I've been seeing Riley a lot lately, and she's started tracking me down at lunchtimes too which means a lot. She has other friends, she's a girl after all, but I'm always one of her priorities. She tells me every day that she's here for me, even though she's really forthright sometimes. We don't fight a lot, but it bothers me when we do.

I don't know whether I can class her as one of my friends just yet.

Maybe I'll ask her about it tomorrow.

Riley cropped up a lot in Harley's diary entries, which was unsettling since Bluebell knew she was dead. A part of her wondered whether there were people out there who thought she was dead, or at the very least assumed she wasn't coming home.

Did Harley still grieve over Riley?

Her name had seldom been mentioned to Bluebell's face.

Though Bluebell was tempted to read the next entry, she didn't fancy being trapped in a rigid cycle of reading page after page just to find out what happened next. It wasn't a novel, it was an autobiographical account of everything that'd happened in Harley's life up to now. Getting hooked because of the story would feel wrong and selfish - Bluebell only wanted to read the diary when she felt as though she could, and she'd never read more than three pages at once.

She'd successfully distracted herself from the task at hand.

The paper was still on her lap, and she decided to just get it over with despite the consequences. She wasn't even sure what was holding her back anymore.

It took a few careful folds to unravel it and Bluebell was frightened of breaking it since it'd been through so much trauma already. It was a wonder that it was still in one piece; Arlo must've taken pretty good care of it, a thought which made Bluebell smile. Surprisingly, it was handwritten, and what looked like a letter. She didn't recognise the handwriting, which came as no real surprise, but it was blotched and blurred thanks to the condition of the paper.