1987 [BoyxBoy]

Chapter 12 - Why Did She Have This?

The four teens spent almost an hour scrubbing the paint off of house. They were able to remove most of the letters before people started driving down the street. They garnered stares while they finished the last few letters off the house. Billy's brain was running marathons throughout the entire process. He kept replaying different scenarios of how the afternoon could have went—if his mom was in the house.

"Billy, are you okay?" Sarah asked as she wrung out her towel.

The boy just remained silent, intensely scrubbing specs of red left on the vinyl siding of his house. He heard what his friend had said, but he was so overwhelmed with emotions that he couldn't form a proper response. All he could think about was how downhill his life was going. He felt like he was spiraling into a pit of blackness. Everything he thought he knew, he didn't.

"Billy," Sarah said, trying to gain the attention of her friend.

No response.

"Hey," she walked towards him, gently placing her hand on his shoulder. She felt the boy tense up at her touch.

Billy dropped his towel back into its bucket. He turned around and embraced Sarah with a hug. No tears were coming from his eyes. He just grasped onto his friend; his eyes flooded with terror. Horrible things kept happening over and over and he was starting to fear that he was next.

"You guys, people are starting to come. We should go inside," Denise exclaimed.

Billy broke his contact with Sarah, picked up his bucket, and walked towards his front door—his three friends following him. They each dumped out the water in their buckets into the grass and stacked them back in Billy's garage.

"Something isn't right about this," Sarah uttered, ad they collectively gathered in Billy's living room.

"Well, no shit, Sarah," Peter snarked at the girl—her rolling her eyes in response.

"Not like that. If you'd let me finish, I mean something isn't right about what happened. They busted open Billy's front door and painted on his house, but left the bag intact?"

"Maybe they didn't know where to look," Billy suggested.

"No offense to your hiding abilities, but under your bed is not the most secure and hidden spot. Why didn't they take it?"

"Maybe there's nothing in it that connects them to the murder? Or maybe they took whatever connected them out and left the rest?"

"Well, is there even a point in searching now? It's basically a waste of time at this point."

"Or not," Peter interjected, on the floor with a blue jacket from the bag in his hands. "Look at this."

Billy quickly grabbed the jacket from Peter's hands, ruffling it to see what was so special about it.

"What the hell are we supposed to be looking at?"

"Look at the name stitched on the tag."

The two girls joined Billy in looking at the tag, resulting in confused looks being slapped onto their faces.

"Is this-" Denise started before being cut off by Sarah.

"There's no way it's him. I've heard Brenda go on rants about how much she hated him and how he's disgusting and how he's a loser," Sarah explained, confused about what she was seeing.

"It says 'G. Robinson.' Who else do we know with a first name that starts with 'G' and a last name 'Robinson?' "

"Maybe it's his secret twin who also happens to have a name that starts with 'G.' "