Chapter Four: No Light, No Light

•••

"Alright guys, phones down." Mr. Branson instructed as he looked around the classroom to where every single student was still looking at their phones after a mass text of a GIF of Nina's body was sent to the entire school.

Blair had her phone out, but she kept watching Noah, trying to make up her mind on whether she thought he had been behind the creepy phone call.

With the way he kept looking over at her wide-eyed and the few times he'd tossed his hand up in an awkward wave, she couldn't tell if he was just nervous, or if he knew she was onto him.

"But the Brandon James GIF put us on the map, Mr. B." Jake excitedly said, his mood seemed much improved from earlier that morning when he had his hand around Noah's throat, "I mean we've got like seven out of the top ten trending hashtags right now."

"You know, maybe you should focus more on your studies and less on Lakewood's web-buzz." Their teacher retorted.

"Which is what the killer is counting on." Noah spoke up and Blair made a mental note of how the only time Noah didn't seem nervous with attention, was when he was talking about serial killers.

"Alright, Will Graham." Branson took the bait and asked Noah, "What is this killer's design?"

"Well, murder's a lonely game, you know. I mean, say you're the killer, okay? You sneak into Nina's house, you skulk around and scare her and then you kill her. Boom! But then what? You take a victory lap around the pool? You just stand there watching the blood spread out into the water, thinking your crazy guy thoughts." Noah replied.

"Creepy monologue alert." Brooke mumbled under her breath, as she looked back down to her cellphone.

Thinking back to the phone call she'd gotten, Blair remembered the person on the other end of the line talking about how everyone online just wants attention. Posting and blogging about their movements –perfect smiles, perfect lives.

"So, what you're getting at is that the killer wants attention? Basically, it's no good if he's the only one watching?" Blair spoke up, eyeing him suspiciously as she spoke.

"Exactly, yeah!" Noah agreed, smiling as he continued, "Uh, it's the age of Instagram and Youtube and Tumblr. I mean we need to share the things we do or it's like it never happened."

Blair's throat seemed to run dry at hearing his words and her mind flashed back to the phone call, and again how it all happened right after she'd added him on social media and she still couldn't push it out of her mind how directly after the call, he'd messaged her online.

It was like every time she'd convinced herself that he couldn't have been the caller, he said or did something to make her question him all over again.

When Riley's phone went off, Mr. Branson grew irritated, "Riley, phones off."

"Sorry, Mr. B. " She apologized before looking back to her phone and explaining, "My friend from Saint Mary's texted… a girl that goes there died."

"No way!" Brooke called out, "Who was it?"

"How'd it happen?" Jake asked.

"It doesn't say." She shrugged.

Blair glanced back to where Audrey was growing increasingly restless and kept checking her phone and her heart sank as she remembered how she'd told her that Rachel went to a Catholic school.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Riley. But why don't we get back to-"

Interrupting their teacher, Audrey scrambled to her feet and said, "I have, uh, to go to the bathroom."

Once she was gone, and Mr. Branson saw no one was interested in the lesson he'd planned for the day, he said, "Why don't we all just take a few moments to clear our heads and get focused?"

The seconds ticked by, feeling like hours, as Blair watched the classroom door in hopes that Audrey would be back soon.

After several minutes, Blair stood up and announced, "I have to go to the bathroom too."

"Yeah, me too." Emma called over her shoulder as they made their way out into the hallway.

Blair slowed down as she saw Audrey with her forehead leaned against the lockers, but Emma rushed right over to her and placed a hand on her back, "Audrey, is everything okay?"

Roughly jerking away from her touch, Audrey stared up to her with red-rimmed eyes and tears running down her cheeks. "I called Rachel to check on her. Her mom answered the phone…"

"Oh my god…" Blair breathed, stepping up to them and already expecting the worst news possible – that Rachel bad been killed.

Only the news Audrey delivered next was even worse; not only was she dead, but she'd taken her own life.

"They found her hanging from her ceiling fan." In a tone full of blame she looked at Emma and repeated, "She's dead!"

Immediately Emma's eyes filled with tears of her own as Audrey stormed away from her.

Rachel was dead, she'd killed herself and Emma felt the full force of the guilt land squarely on her shoulders. She knew it was wrong when Nina was recording them, she felt it in her gut that it was wrong.
Yet, she'd done nothing to try and stop her.

Audrey's words swirled around inside of her heavy mind, replaying over and over how she'd told her that Rachel couldn't shut out everyone's cruel remarks.

"Blair…" Emma sniffled, looking over to where she was standing, "I –I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I didn't know Nina was going to post the video. Oh my god, I should have done something… I should have-"

"While I would love to comfort you and your guilty conscience right now, I think Audrey needs it more –don't you?" Blair said, shaking her head as she turned and hurried down the hallway.

She wasn't sure how she could make the situation better for Audrey. Nothing she could say or do would ease her pain or bring Rachel back, but at the very least, she could remind her that she's not alone.

•••

After finding Audrey sitting on the floor towards the back of the library hidden out of view by shelves of books, Blair slowly sat down beside her and pulled her knees up to her chest.

Knowing that Audrey was someone who hated for people to see her cry, Blair stared straight ahead and finally breathed, "I don't know what to say, Audrey. We all know Emma was always better at doing the comforting thing."

"Yeah?" She scoffed, "Well, Emma is the last person I want around me right now."

"Understandable." Blair nodded.

After several minutes passed of her being unable to stop the waterworks that had been let loose when she heard Rachel was dead, Audrey said, "I just keep thinking this has to be some terrible nightmare. I mean, I knew Rachel and she wouldn't have killed herself." Angrily swatting more tears away from her blotchy red cheeks, she repeated, "She wouldn't have killed herself."

"You said yourself that she couldn't shake those comments the way that you had, and the whole thing probably isn't just solely based on the video, but it may have been what finally pushed her past her breaking point." Blair quietly offered up.

"No." Audrey argued, "I knew her, and if she was really suicidal then that means I missed all of the signs and-"

"No way." Blair said louder than she'd meant to. Pulling in a breath she shook her head and looked over at her, "Don't put that on yourself, okay? Some people are really good at hiding things-"

"Or she wasn't suicidal." Audrey argued.

Anxiously, Blair, twisted the mood ring she always wore on her thumb and pointed out, "Not everyone who's suicidal looks the same, Audrey. Not everyone is unable to get out of bed and shutting themselves off from the world."

"What are you talking about?" She asked, wiping her eyes and turning on the floor to get a better look at her old friend. Her gaze fell to where Blair was fiddling with her thumb ring and she knew that meant there was something really big going on that she wasn't talking about. "Are you talking about yourself?"

Staring down to the green carpet on the floor, Blair said, "Look, Audrey, I went through something really bad in Atlanta-"

"What happened?"

"It's not important."

"It is to me."

"The CliffsNotes version is that I did something really stupid, okay? There was this guy –he was a little weird, didn't have a lot of friends, not like I did either though. He was kind of a troublemaker, but he was always nice to me and we ended up becoming really good friends… and then more." Blair started to explain, a bitter smile pulling at her features as she brought up the memories.
"I was a different person. Things were falling apart between my parents, I felt so out of place in Atlanta and overall I was just really unhappy –until I met him. When I was with him I could be someone else, I pushed the limits and just…"

"What happened?" Audrey softly asked as she rubbed her already painfully raw eyes and waited for her friend to go on.

"He, uh…" She breathed, "One night, it was pretty late and we'd been texting and things got pretty racy and he wanted me to send him some pics." With a shrug, Blair added, "I think you know what kind of pics I'm talking about."

Audrey nodded, and started to open her mouth to tell Blair she didn't have to go on if she didn't want to, but before she could Blair quickly said, "I took some pictures… but I didn't send them to him. I didn't send them to anyone Audrey, but by the end of the week everyone at school had seen them. It was a nightmare."

"But I thought you said you didn't send out pictures-"

"I didn't!" Blair cut her off, "They were on my computer though, and at some point he had to have gotten into my house and he emailed them to himself –and then posted them online for everyone else to see. I wanted something done, I wanted him punished for ruining my life… but you see, the pictures were sent from my email account to his and there was no way to prove that I wasn't the person who sent them and being under eighteen…"

Shaking her head, Blair explained, "As much as my dad wanted to take legal action against him, he basically said that if we tried, things could come back on me and I could face charges too. So pretty much there was nothing we could do… and then he'd obsessively text me saying how sorry he was and swore that he'd never sent the pics to anyone, the he thought I'd sent to him… can you believe that? It got so bad that he followed me around everywhere trying to convince me that he wouldn't do something like that to me, even broken into my house a few times when I refused to see him. Eventually we were able to get a restraining order against him, but the damage had already been done."

"After that I had no friends really, aside from the mean or sexual comments in the hallways at school, no one would even talk to me. Then one day at lunch this guy on the football team sat with me, and he was really nice to me and I was just… I was so lonely and naïve enough to believe that he actually liked me. But he lied to me and said that he and his girlfriend were broken up –they weren't and he was only interested in me because of the pictures." She could barely get her voice to raise over a whisper as she spoke.

Swallowing hard and closing her eyes Blair admitted, "I slept with him and it turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life, but I just wanted to believe he liked me, you know? I just wanted to feel something other than loneliness. His girlfriend found out and she and her friends came after me. It started with all these phone calls, the stuff you'd expect, telling me what a slut I was. Pretty soon, any post I made online immediately had all these comments, calling me terrible names and if it was a picture of me they'd call me ugly and nitpick at every little thing about the way I looked. A couple months later, there was this party and this group of girls… they beat me up really bad."

"Blair…" Audrey whispered, tears burning at her eyes for more than just one reason now.

"They didn't just beat me up." She found the courage to admit, "They held me down and –and they cut my hair and wrote the word 'whore' on my forehead in permanent marker. It was the single scariest and most humiliating thing I've ever gone through. Someone filmed the whole thing and they posted it online and I was completely mortified. Then the racy pictures of me seemed to resurface and… you wouldn't believe some of the comments on the pictures and video…" Her voice trailed off and she conceded, "Actually, I guess you can."

"But the point is, is that I got out of bed every morning and showered, styled my new shortcut hair, brushed my teeth –somedays I even wore make-up. I went to school and came home, I'd go and see movies with my mom on the weekends and we went shopping. I was going through the motions like normal, but I wasn't really there. I can remember sitting in class, copying down class notes off the board and inside all I could do was dream up different ways to die. And my mom, she'd tell me how proud she was of me, how I was so brave and…"

Her voice cracked and she looked up to see fresh tears running down Audrey's face, and now Blair's cheeks were tear stained too as she dredged up memories of a time in her life that she'd give anything to erase.

"And the truth was, I hoped and I prayed for even an ounce of the strength she thought I had, because then maybe I wouldn't have gone to bed every single night hoping I wouldn't ever wake back up." There was a pained look on her face and it was clear she was having a hard time talking about it, but she pushed through it. "It was kind of like… like that year we all went to that cornfield maze for Halloween and got separated away from the rest of the group because Emma had dropped her phone at some point and we all went to try and find it. You remember that?"

"Yeah." Audrey nodded with a hoarse voice.

"It was such a dark night, there weren't any stars and I swear we couldn't even see the moon and the corn stalks were so much taller than the three of us. We spent over an hour wandering around in there, all of us thought we were never going to find our way out." Running her tongue over her dry lips, Blair continued, "That's sort of what I felt like. Like I was stuck in some dark maze, with walls so high that there was no possible way to see a way out of it –no proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. There was just, not even darkness really, there was just a void. Nothingness. Living hurt too much."

Wiping her tears away, Blair struggled to speak through the lump that had formed in her throat, "The point is, is that –that whole time my mom was so proud of me for being strong, I was weaker then I'd ever been before. I was just standing on the ledge waiting for some gust of wind to knock me off, and no one knew how bad things truly were. Sometimes people aren't as transparent and easy to read as you'd think."

"I'm sorry." Audrey managed to say, crying even harder. Both for the pain of losing Rachel and hearing everything her friend had gone through. The knowledge of knowing she'd almost lost Blair felt like a weight pushing down on her chest.

"See?" Blair sputtered through her own fresh round of tears, "I told you Emma was better at the comforting thing."

Somehow managing a hoarse attempt at a laugh, Audrey nodded, "Yeah, when you try it, we always ended up crying more."

Pulling in a loud, gasping breath as the laughter hit her, Blair nodded and used the sleeves over her jacket to try and dry her own eyes. Clearing her throat, she apologized, "I didn't drive to school, or I'd offer to get you out of here."

Starting to stand up, Audrey said, "I think I'm just going to the office to call my dad to come and get me."

"I'll walk with you." Blair offered.

Once Audrey called her dad and he agreed to come get her, Blair sat with her outside of the office until Noah found them. At that time she left to give them some time alone, hoping that he'd be better at comforting her distraught friend than she'd been.

••• The next night •••

Walking into one of the stalls in the girls bathroom at the school, Blair shut the door and leaned against it as she closed her eyes and blew out a heavy sigh.

The basketball game that night had barely been underway for twenty minutes and she was already kicking herself for agreeing to go with Emma and Brooke. Even in the bathroom she could hear the cheering from the gymnasium.

There were times when being around large crowds seemed to steal the breath right from her lungs and the gym had started to feel stuffier by the second. It wasn't long after Brooke had left to get some licorice whips from the concession stand, that Blair also headed that way with the intent of getting a small popcorn. Of course, her plans had been spoiled when she witnessed a rather unsettling conversation between Brooke and Mr. Branson.

It was already clear to see that Brooke was interested in their English Lit teacher, but through watching them interacting in class and passing by the room several times between classes to see Brooke hanging out in there –she'd already started to suspect there might be something going on between them.

Then, while standing off to the side of the line for the concession stand, Blair had overheard Branson telling Brooke how much he missed her, to which Brooke reminded him how he'd been the one to cancel their 'study sessions'.

The entire exchange had been uncomfortable and left her with a bad taste in her mouth. She'd escaped to the bathroom after Brooke had spotted her watching them.

Taking her phone out of her pocket, she was just about to text Emma and say she wasn't feeling well and was going home, but she stopped when she heard the door to the bathroom open.

Followed by the sound of a few heavy footsteps and then complete silence.

With her posture tensing, Blair turned around and faced the door of the stall she was hiding out in and waited for another movement or sound. The footsteps she'd heard were clearly walking into the room and she'd only heard the door open and shut once.

In a wavering tone she called out, "Brooke?"
Wondering if the teenager had followed her and was going to ask her to keep quiet about what she'd seen.

When there was no response, Blair cleared her throat and asked, "Hello?"

Just as she was about to push open the stall door and see what was going on, she heard the footsteps again; each one being firmly planted down and echoing through the room, making it abundantly clear that whoever it was –was making their presence known.

She heard one of the sinks turn on, followed by another and then another. The sound of the rushing water didn't block out the sounds of the steps getting closer to the middle stall she was in.

Holding her breath, she leaned closer to the door to look out of the crack and see who was in there with her. Though with the hair prickling on the back of her neck, she had a feeling she didn't want to see.

As she peeked through the crack, she saw someone dressed in all black and wearing a hood turn on another sink and her heart started to race near violently in her chest. She backed away from the door and tried to think through her current state of panic.

With trembling hands she pulled her phone back out and was going to text Emma for help; tell her what was going on and that she was officially scared and completely freaked out.

But when someone aggressively kicked the door open to the stall right next to hers, she nearly screamed and her phone fell from her hands, colliding with the floor and just like in the lake when she felt something under the water –she was frozen.

Air rushed in and out of her lungs, she clamored to cover her ears as another stall door was kicked in and the banging sound was almost deafening and she wondered how long until the door was kicked in on her stall.

Cringing she expected another loud noise to follow, but the room fell into a stillness.

Silence –aside from the still running water, which was now spilling over the sides and spreading across the floor from the sink drains being clogged.

When Blair noticed the water on the floor, it was starting to close in on her. Kneeling down she swooped up her cellphone before the water could touch it.

Her throat ran dry when she heard the footsteps again. Remaining crouched down, she watched as the dark hooded figure came to stop directly outside of her stall.

Desperately clutching onto her phone in one hand, she place the other over her nose and mouth to try and quiet her breathing and slowly rose back up to her feet.

Someone was right on the other side of that door, and that someone knew she was there as well.

Her mind was racing; logic telling her to scream for help or call someone to come to her aide. After all, no one else knew she'd went into the bathroom. She was alone, on her own –aside from the person in there tormenting and scaring her.

Her fingers fumbled against the touch screen and as much as she wanted to call someone, she couldn't keep her eyes off the black shoes visible from under the stall door long enough to do anything.

Were they going to kick her door in? Was it someone just playing a prank, or was she in serious danger?

A million questions bounced around inside of her head, along with trying to desperately work out an escape plan for any possible scenario of what might happen next.

One thing she knew for sure was that she couldn't keep standing there, she was a sitting duck for whoever was in there with her and if they kicked that door in, she'd have no place to run.

Maybe if she dropped down to the floor, she could scurry under the stall walls and get to the door to run for help. Or maybe if it came down it to, she could climb up on the toilet and try to see who was in there with her.

Maybe –

The footsteps retreated from their stance and her racing thoughts halted to an abrupt stop, solely focused on their continued echoing until the door to the bathroom opened and shut again.

Scrambling to get her phone back into her jacket pocket, she closed her eyes and then rubbed her hands over her face trying to get the courage she needed to make a run for it.

Perhaps whoever had been there had really left, or the scarier thought was that they were still in there and this was a cruel trick to give her a false sense of security.

Either way, she had to try and get out of there.

Pulling in a deep breath, her soaked shoes sloshed around in the water on the floor as she stepped back up to the stall door and slid the lock to open. The metal scraping against metal was, for the moment, seemingly the loudest sound on earth.

Taking in another breath and silently hoping it wouldn't be her last, she quickly pulled the door open and darted through the empty bathroom to the door, where she wasted no time jerking the door open and running out into the hallway.

The slick soles of her shoes couldn't find traction on the floor when she tried to come to a stop after racing around the corner and seeing someone was there. With a gasp she tried to stop, but her legs and wet shoes betrayed her and she fell to the floor.

"Oh my god!" Noah yelled as he watched Blair completely wipe out on the floor right in front of him. Running towards her, he knelt down, "Are you okay?"

"I –I…" She gasped, trying to catch her breath, still trapped in a complete state of panic.

Realizing who'd she'd almost ran into, she slapped his hands away as he tried to help her up and demanded to know, "What are you doing here?"

"I came with Audrey, she's filming game highlights-"

"No!" She yelled cutting him off, as she scrambled up to her feet and stared at him wide-eyed. "I mean here, right here –in this hallway. What are you doing here?"

"Why are you wet?" He asked, as he saw the end of her jeans and shoes were sopping wet, "What happened?"

Roughly rubbing her hands through her hair, she shook her head frantically back and forth.

Growing increasingly worried, he cautiously took a step forward and tried to keep his voice steady and calm, "Blair? Are you okay?"

"No." She admitted, her voice was muffled behind her hands, until she helplessly dropped her arms and her eyes locked with his, as she continued, "I am so far from okay right now."

•••

A/N – Thank you guys so much for reading, I hope you all liked the chapter and can't wait to hear what you thought!

If you're interested in following me on tumblr, I recently changed my name on there to 'twofacedharveydent'. I post chapter updates and other edits to go along with my stories.

Thanks to: RHatch89, Straight Edge Queen, Hotstreak's crossover stories, foxcharin, emmetluver2010, xxXWolfsLullabyXxx, lilrilakkuma, and annabelleigh1996 for reviewing the last chapter. Thank you so much for the support and kind words :)