The Polaroid Girls

Chapter 22

A/N: Hello my lovelies and happy Tuesday! I hope you're having an awesome week and I hope the rest is better yet to come.

This chapter is in Laina's POV only. Royce will pick back up next week. But boy--are things heating up--*fans self.*

Question of the week: Who are some of your favorite or most memorable historical figures? For me, there are many. But to name a few: Eugenie Clark who is a famous and one of the earliest shark and deep diving fish scientists, the Night Witches (seriously, just look them up. They are badASS), and Mary Shelley? The OG (Original Goth)?

What about you guys? Who would you want to meet if you had the chance?

Again, thank you so much for your continued support of me and my writing and don't forget to vote, comment, follow, and share this story! (っ◔◡◔)っ

The car ride back to Rosemont was quiet and tense after Alba's outburst at her in the marina parking lot.

"That girl is a fake! A liar." His words repeated on a loop in her mind, "She can't remember nothing because she ain't who she say she is."

What could he have meant? She was Elaine Evans, daughter of Marcus and Autumn Evans, and that's all she had ever known. How could she lie about who she was? Maybe if it was in regards to her personality, if he thought that had changed, but it wasn't. He said she wasn't Marcus' daughter which implied he thought she was lying about her own identity. But how was that possible? She was Elaine.

She tried to brush it off as his being delusional or dehydrated like Harvey said, but he had been cold and distant since the moment they arrived.

She tapped her fingers against her bare leg, her mind writhing in confusion. What was she supposed to think of all of this? At first, Alba's outburst seemed crazy, but then something in her mind clicked. As Royce and Finn went over the outburst while they drove, she pulled out the pictures Harvey had given her. She separated the two out with her in them and peered closer at each one, studying her face, her figure, her features, everything. And it looked like he--a lot, almost like a mirror to the image in her head of her younger self. But then she saw it again, that dark red mark on her left thigh. The same one she had seen on her leg in the picture on Harvey's Facebook over a week ago.

In both pictures the mark was prominently visible, high on her leg. She squinted at it, pulling the pictures closer to her face to see them better in the dim light. The mark was in a scraggly 'S' shape on the outside of her left thigh and looked to be a large birthmark or perhaps a scar from an old injury. It hadn't just been a mark on the camera lense or a play of light off the computer screen before, no, it was real and it was on her younger self's skin. Right in front of her eyes.

She turned her left thigh inward and ran a finger over the smooth, clear area on the outside of her leg.

What did this mean? She couldn't have had a mark on her that large and that dark and have it just disappear. There was no way. No way. She had no marks or scars on her legs at all, so there was no way she had had surgery to remove it. And Ethan had never told her about such an incident. So where had it gone? Why was her leg a blank canvas to this rigged mark on her younger self's body?

Then she remembered Ethan and Rebecca's secret conversation from the previous Friday at Bailey's bonfire.

Rebecca had made it sound like Ethan was living under a false name and Ethan made Rebecca sound like she was doing the same. If neither of them was who they said they were, was it possible she was a part of that? A part of whatever terrible thing happened between them previously and from there, Ethan gave her some new identity when she awoke from her own accident?