She told me

Chapter 12

I drop the scoop and practically fly up the stairs, grabbing the baseball bat stowed in the corridor on the way. I push open the bedroom door and Cory jumps up, dropping the controller, "Dude what the hell?"

I look at the screen, now playing a montage of a guy running through a musty looking house and lower the bat, "Sorry, I thought you were getting murdered".

He sits back down, "well its nice that you care so much but you really need to chill out".

I close the bedroom door, "You are way too calm for someone who nearly got stabbed two days ago."

"Well, it helps that I was high" he hesitated, "and I guess this is the best I've felt since Maya dumped me".

"Aren't you two on a break?"

"This feels different, she hasn't talked to me, she's blocked me on Instagram, and she's deleted our pictures from her social media too."

"You've been busy".

He sighs, "thanks for inviting me, dude, you really didn't have to do that."

"I wanted to" I lied, "I really think we should hang out more."

He brightened up almost immediately which made me feel less terrible about lying to him.

After playing three games and winning two, I put down my controller, "hey, can I ask you something?"

"Sure, fire away"

"Does Peyton have anything going on with anyone?"

Cory squints at me, "what are you talking about?"

I wince, "hypothetically, if I wanted to ask her out on a date, do you think she would go for a guy like me?"

He leans back and closes his eyes, "Honestly, I don't really know. If you asked me this two years ago, I would tell you to go for it, but ever since the tragedy, Peyton has been different, Maya too."

"Wait, what tragedy?"

"Maya and Peyton had another sister, Valerie. She died of a drug overdose, there was this kid, took her out one day and made her try heroin. It wasn't a clean batch and when he realised, she was dying, he left her there and made a run for it. They found her body the next day."

"Wow"

"Yeah, it was tragic, the whole town was in mourning for a week. Valerie was an amazing person. Anyway, after that, things were never the same. Maya, she stopped going out of the house, I tried to help her, but she just wouldn't talk to me, about anything. I wanted to be there for her, but she wouldn't let me. Her parents finally put her into therapy and since then she's been doing better."

"What about Peyton?"

"Well, she used to be the most popular girl in high school, had her heart set on a modelling career, wanted to get out of town as fast as possible to follow her dreams. Now, she just scrapped all of that, she's studying to be an accountant and volunteers at the local library."

"That's...... I don't know what that is".

"Its weird, she hated math".

I was silent for a bit, still processing all that information. Maybe this town wasn't as quaint and idyllic as my father had made it out to be even before the bodies started dropping. Coming here was a mistake and if I didn't figure out a way to catch this serial killer soon, I'd probably be leaving this town in a body bag as Cathy had predicted. And honestly that wasn't a very appealing thought.

"Hey, do you think...?" I pause as I realise that Cory had fallen asleep. I sigh, it was my turn to keep watch and make sure no one slit his throat in his sleep. I settle back against the beanbag, sure that I wouldn't be falling asleep anytime soon.