Between Lies by Alison L. Perry

Author:Alison L. Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alison L. Perry Books, LLC
Published: 2017-07-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Harper was the first to move. She fell to her knees and picked up the bottle, searching around for the lid. It had rolled and come to rest by my foot. Picking it up, I silently handed it to her, still in too much shock to say anything. The blood was sinking into the carpet and I heard the faint dripping as it fell from the books where it had splashed. Weirdly enough, the sight and smell of it didn’t turn my stomach. I took a quick second to think about that.

Still on her knees, with her head lowered, she spoke. “I… I guess I owe you an explanation.” Her voice quivered and I wondered if she was about to cry. Sympathy welled up inside me. Whatever the reasoning was, it could wait. I was more concerned about getting the mess cleaned up before Ms. May saw it and thought someone was hurt. Having the school go on alert was the last thing we needed. What Harper needed.

“Not right now. We can talk about it later, but right now, we need to try to clean this up before anyone else sees it and sounds an alarm.” She nodded and sniffed. “I’m going to try to sneak out of here and go get some paper towels and sneak back in. Okay? Will you be okay while I’m gone?”

She nodded again. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.”

I tiptoed through the stacks, trying to decide which way was the best to go in order to avoid Ms. May. I hunched down low when I got to the tables and peeked over the top of a chair. The librarian wasn’t anywhere in sight and I breathed a sigh of relief. She’d probably gone to the lunchroom to get something to eat. I had a slim window of time to get to the bathroom and back. I crept along the side wall until I reached the double-glass doors. Closing my eyes, I trained my ears on the outside hallway, listening for footsteps or conversation that would indicate it wasn’t empty. After a few seconds, I decided it was clear. Like a shot, I flew out the doors and into the girl’s bathroom directly across the hall. I nabbed an extra roll of paper towels sitting on top of the dispenser and paused again at the door. Again, not hearing anything, I made another mad dash until I was through the glass doors and heading back into the stacks.

Harper was still there, waiting for me, her eyes red and wet.

“C’mon, you helped me. Now I get to pay you back.” I kept my voice cheerful because I knew all too well how the sound of sympathy from another person could cause a crying fit. I wrapped my hands with the towels until they were well-padded and handed it to her for her to do the same. I got on my hands and knees and pressed into the carpet where the blood was. It made a soft squishing noise and the towels became soggy as the blood soaked in.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.