Chapter 28: Curveball
After barely a day had passed, Lily was already back at college. That suited her just fine, she found it preferable to keep herself occupied. It was the quiet moments, where she wasn’t distracted that were the hardest.
During class, she could immerse herself in the work for a precious few hours. Focus on something other than the void that now occupied her life where Eve once had been.
As class ended, Lily was quickly surrounded by a group of students.
“Hey, Lily...”
“OMG, how are you holding up...”
“I heard something about Eve and a truck...”
“You and Eve were like, super close right...”
“She was such an asset to our team...”
“If you need a shoulder to cry on...”
A volley of about a dozen different voices, a cacophony of questions and condolences. Some of which were from people Lily recognised, her own classmates, Eve’s dodgeball teammates, along with others Lily was certain she and Eve had never interacted with before.
“I... I...” Lily stuttered as she clutched her bag tightly, trembling. She got up from her seat and pushed her way through the throng of students, squeaking meekly, “I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to talk about it right now... please excuse me.”
“Wow rude...”
“There’s something weird about this if you ask me, you know she missed class yesterday cause she was being held by the cops...”
“Seriously, shut up with your dumbass conspiracy theories...”
“All I’m saying is it’s always the quiet ones...”
“Her friend died asshole...”
Lily caught these, along with various other fragments of conversations from the gathered students as she fled from class. It seemed the rumour mill was already in full swing. Maybe coming into college today had been a mistake?
Lily found refuge in the gym hall. As always, it had been automatically booked for Eve’s usual specialised dodgeball training but given Eve was no longer around, the hall was empty instead. It would likely take a few days before the college administration updated the system.
Lily sat herself on a pile of gym mats in the gym’s dimly lit storeroom. As she did, the mats shifted awkwardly, as if something was preventing them from laying completely flat.
After moving a few, Lily found a sleeping bag had been sequestered underneath the pile. After pulling it out and inspecting it closely, Lily found a label that read, “Property of Eve Adenson.” It was Eve’s sleeping bag.
“What is this doing here?” Lily wondered aloud to herself, “Now why would Eve need her sleeping bag in here?”
After a few moments however, the pieces started clicking into place in Lily’s mind. Eve had said she’d been doing her secret midnight training sessions with the truck for a ‘few weeks’ when Lily had discovered her night time activity.
Lily hadn’t thought about it until now, but if Eve had been staying up all night playing with that truck, she’d have to have found some other time to sleep.
Reeling from the realisation, Lily clutched the edge of the pile of gym mats for support. If Eve had been ‘training’ when she should have been sleeping, then Eve’s original practice time must have become her sleep time.
Looking at the large dodgeball training machine in the corner, the same one Lily herself had made especially for Eve. Lily remembered the last night she had met Eve here. How strangely her friend had been acting. The lack of wear on the machine. The scent of fresh polish. It all led to one conclusion.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
Eve likely hadn’t used the machine in weeks, instead favouring the truck as a more exciting escalation of her evasion addiction. What’s more, she had made the effort to conceal that fact from Lily.
The smell of polish must have come from Eve quickly cleaning the machine to hide the dust which would have built up on it from weeks of neglect.
It was becoming increasingly clear to Lily, that damn truck, on some level, had already slowly started taking Eve away from Lily, long before it finally finished the job by killing her.
Lily’s fingers dug deeper into the gym mats as her grip intensified, her muscles tensing as a fresh wave of anger and adrenaline surged through her veins. The lies, the betrayal, they stung almost as badly as Eve’s death.
That truck, and whoever was behind it, would pay, Lily swore. They would pay for stealing away the one person that had meant everything to her.
But how? Sure, Lily had managed to crack the truck’s headlights at the abandoned construction site. But that was only because the vehicle had stayed still as she assaulted it. The moment the truck started moving again, she’d been helpless to prevent it from escaping.
As she pondered her options, Lily paced back and forth around the cluttered storeroom. There had to be some way she could take that truck and its driver down.
She’d initially considered just waiting for the police to do their job, and bring the mysterious, murderous truck driver to justice. However, after her encounter with Officer Slaw and his pet pig, Lily felt if she wanted this job done properly, she’d have to do it herself.
As she paced around, lost in thought, a sudden sharp pain rang through Lily’s toe as it struck something hard. The agony snapped Lily back to her surroundings. “AGGHHH SHIT.” Lily exclaimed loudly as she grabbed her foot. She then gave a frustrated growl.
Peering into the gloom, Lily noticed a black gym bag that had been sat next to the dodgeball machine. Until now it had sat unnoticed, concealed by the darkness of the poorly illuminated storeroom.
As she tried to pick it up, her muscles strained under the unexpectedly heavy weight.
Breathing heavily, bracing herself and using all her strength, Lily managed to pull the bag onto the gym mats, enabling her to get a closer look at what was inside.
It was, a large pink bowling ball. She wondered what on earth it was doing here? Bowling certainly wasn’t one of the courses taught at the college. She turned the object over in her hands, feeling its significant heft as she inspected it closely.
Realising it offered no clues, Lily placed the ball to one side on the gym mats. She carefully ensured it wouldn’t roll off and break anything, such as the floor or Lily’s own foot. The very idea of the weighty ball landing on her foot made her wince uncomfortably.
Once the ball was in a secure position, it was time to inspect the gym bag it came in.
It didn’t take Lily long to find, that the gym bag, like the sleeping bag, also had a nametag attached to it, which read in bold typeface:
“THIS BAG BELONGS TO:”
Next to that, in scrappy handwriting that Lily knew all too well. It was the name of the bag’s owner, “EVE ADENSON.”
This caused more questions than answers. Eve hadn’t ever shown any interest in bowling. On the contrary Eve had always found it boring.
Lily smiled to herself as she recalled one birthday where she’d taken Eve bowling in the local arcade. Eve had taken one look at the game and responded to it with a bemused expression.
“So you just throw the balls at the pins and they just sit there and take it?” Eve asked.
“Yes, do you expect them to get out of the way?” Lily laughed.
“Why not? They should have little legs and run around!” Eve had insisted. “Or maybe little arms to throw the bowling ball back?”
Eyebrow raised, Lily responded with, “That doesn’t seem practical OR safe.”
They had then played a few rounds, only for Eve to disappear half way through the game while Lily was taking her turn. After an hour of searching, Lily found Eve playing laser tag elsewhere in the arcade. “This is more my speed, so what do you say Bestie? Want to join me?”
Lily, back in the present, shook her head firmly to dispel the memory, refocusing her attention on the gym bag. Rooting her hand around inside, Lily’s hand came across a paper sticky note. It appeared that it had originally been stuck to the bowling ball.
On the note, in Eve’s familiar handwriting, was a message.
“To Eve: Ask Lily to upgrade training machine to fire this (if she says no, keep asking until she says yes!) From: Eve.” Alongside the sentence was a crudely drawn picture of a bowling ball being fired from a cannon.
Lily, even in her current state, couldn’t help but laugh. This was classic Eve, reckless to the end. Imagine the damage firing a bowling ball could do...
Imagine the damage...
In that instant, a flash of inspiration surged into Lily’s brain like a lightning bolt from the blue. An answer to the question of how she could take down that truck that had killed Eve.
Lily glanced at the dodgeball training machine, then at the pink bowling ball, after her eyes had flicked back and forth between them a few dozen times, she reached her decision.
“I’ll do it, for you.” Lily whispered, laying a small kiss on the sticky note.
Turning her attention to the dodgeball machine, Lily thought to herself, “It’s going to take a lot of modification and reinforcement.” She pulled out her tools from her own bag and got to work.
Sure, it may take her days, maybe weeks.
But this was for Eve, and Lily would not let her down.
To Be Continued...
I Am Truck-Kun WILL Return.
