Heyyyyyyyyyy, and welcome to (or back to) my blog! Just to catch you up if you have no idea what's been happening, I wrote an eleven chapter short story called Innocent Until Proven Guilty. Since that short story ended, I decided to write a sequel to it, and here we are.
So, an escape from the real world is the sequel. I explained what it's about in the first chapter if you need to catch up: https://miribrooks1.wixsite.com/quoted/post/an-escape-from-the-real-world-innocent-until-proven-guilty-the-sequel-chapter-one
Okay, now let's dive in to chapter two!!
Chapter two
“Excuse me!” Lilac said, pushing her way through a crowd of students.
“Do you need help finding something?” a voice asked, making Lilac stop in her tracks.
“Yes. I’m looking for the office,” Lilac said, finding the owner of the voice. It was a high school student. He was wearing a blue shirt with the Oakwood logo, and khaki shorts with a backpack slung from one shoulder. If Lilac could guess, he was probably a senior.
“Cool. It’s a good thing it’s my lunch break. I can show you. This way,” he said, gesturing for her to follow.
“Thank you so much,” she replied, hurrying to catch up.
As they were walking, he turned to her. “I’m Archer Patterson. What’s your name?”
“Lilac,” she said, giving him a small smile.
“Are you new here?” he asked.
“No, I actually don’t go here at all. I’m in college. I just wanted to see if I could talk to the principal about something.”
Archer shifted his backpack. “You could totally pass as a high school kid,” he pointed out, pulling a hand through his hair.
Lilac laughed. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“Well, here’s the office. Hope you find out what you need to know.”
Archer pointed towards a door, and Lilac headed towards it.
“Thanks again!” she said as he gave her a wink and walked away.
Lilac twisted a piece of her hair, opening the door in front of her. She let out a deep breath as she entered the office.
There was a woman sitting at the front desk, and she looked up as Lilac approached.
“Hi,” Lilac mumbled, clearing her throat. “My name is Lilac Ro, and I was wondering if I could ask the principal here a question?”
The woman looked at Lilac, bored. “I can’t help you. Sorry.”
“Are you sure?” Lilac pressed, noticing how rude the woman sounded the first time she spoke.
“Positive, miss. The principal is busy. You can find an email address on our website that will be perfect for asking any questions you have. We can’t promise to get an answer to you right away, but we will try our best.”
Lilac nodded slowly, a little confused. She decided not to argue, and turned around to go back outside.
Outside, she sat down on a bench and tried to decide what to do next. She’d driven almost an hour to the school, and she wasn’t about to leave without some kind of answer.
She put her tote bag beside her, opening it and taking out the jersey. She examined it for a minute, trying to figure out if it was important. If she needed to figure out why it was in her house in the first place.
“Was the office able to help you with your question?” Lilac heard Archer ask not even thirty minutes later.
It was past lunchtime, and judging by the empty school yard, Lilac assumed that school was over for the day. She’d been too busy looking at her phone and thinking about the next step to pay attention to the time.
“They were no help. The lady at the desk said she couldn’t help me almost right as I got in there. She was very rude, and I didn’t feel like arguing with her.” Lilac stood up, putting the jersey in her bag, and transferring her bag from the bench to her shoulder.
“Was that one of our football jerseys?” Archer wondered. He had seen a small patch of blue from the jersey as she shoved it into her bag.
Lilac stopped for a minute, looking into her bag. “Okay, since you’ve been so helpful to me, why don’t I just go ahead and tell you why I’m here?”
Archer nodded. “If you want. But, first, do you mind giving me a ride? I know I just met you and I probably shouldn’t be asking this, but I messed up my car pretty badly a few weeks ago, and I just missed the bus. My car is still in the shop, and I can’t get it until tomorrow. And I doubt my parents can pick me up, knowing them.”
“Do you have any siblings that could pick you up?” Lilac asked, making Archer hesitate.
Finally he said, “Yeah, I actually do have an older sibling. He’s not here right now though. So, he can’t pick me up.” Archer looked uncomfortable for a minute as Lilac apologized for asking.
“If you really don’t have a ride, then sure. I’ll take you wherever you need to go. I’ll just tell you what I came here for on the way.”
With that, both Lilac and Archer headed towards the parking lot, where Lilac had parked her light blue car.
As she drove, Lilac began to explain why she had come to his school in the first place, and Archer seemed very interested to know where the jersey had come from.
“I found it under the floorboard of my room in my new house. I have no idea who lived there before me, so I thought I would try to learn more about it. Maybe I can solve its little mystery.” Lilac paused for a minute, stopping at a stop sign. “So, that’s how I ended up at Oakland High. Just from a little Google search. And now I have no idea why I even bothered coming all this way because I didn’t find out anything at all. I still have so many questions about that stupid jersey.”
Archer looked out the window for a moment before asking, “Can I see the jersey?”
“Sure,” Lilac replied, handing him the bag as the red light turned green.
“Which one is your house?” Lilac asked a few minutes later as she turned into a neighborhood.
“Pull over,” he said.
“What?” Lilac asked, looking at him with a confused look on her face.
“Pull over,” he repeated.
“Okay, okay,” she said, pulling over to the side of the road as he had asked. “What’s wrong?”
Once the car was stopped on the side of the road, Archer held up the jersey, showing Lilac a number eight stitched in small letters on the sleeve of the jersey.
“This is my brother’s jersey,” he said.
So, that was the second chapter. I hope you liked it, as always! ~Ella
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