Deadly Silence (complete) Chapter 68

Vivian shrugged her shoulders, neither confirming nor denying what Miriam said. “Like I said, none of this is worth being bothered about. Just let it go. Ignore the profile, pretend it doesn’t exist or whatever.”

“Is she always this stubborn?” Theo asked as he looked over at Miriam, who  raised her hands in a ‘who knows?’ gesture while shaking her head.

“Vivian.” The person who spoke her name was already behind her chair and their gaze made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. When she tilted her to see who it was, she was startled to find Laurent.

*Don’t tell me he’s about to give me the same speech I’ve been hearing all day…*

“Laurent what are you doing here?” Theo asked as he looked between the two of them. “Or did you talk to whoever’s impersonating Vivian online and think it’s her?”

“None of your business,” he retorted, his dark eyes never moving from watching his little sister. “We need to talk, Vivian.”

She let out a heavy sigh. “Can it wait til later?”

“No.”

Grimacing, Vivian pushed her chair away from the table and got to her feet. If last night’s talk with Laurent was anything to go by, whatever he was going to go on about today would probably end just as horribly. She was not looking forward to this in the least. “I’ll see you two later then,” she nodded to her friends before following her brother out of the cafeteria.

Vivian hadn’t noticed how the chatter around them had quieted down when her brother had appeared, or how it’d resumed with an increase in volume once they’d disappeared into the hall.

Unlike when Miriam had pulled her aside to discuss the ‘coming on too strong’ event, Laurent chose to have their conversation outside instead of in an empty classroom. The school’s campus was relatively large and there were plenty of spots where they could sit and talk with reasonable privacy. He led her to one such spot where a curved bench half encircled a large oak tree.

Vivian felt she already knew what this conversation was going to be about, but instead of heading him off before it began she stayed quiet. Allowing him to air his grievances and deflate whatever emotional bomb was probably going off inside him would, probably, mean less shouting down the road. Or so she hoped.

“Are you still hell bent on doing nothing about everything?” Yes, this was exactly what she’d been expecting from him and it made her sigh. It felt like she was spending the entire day on repeat and it was getting annoying.

“Yes.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am serious, Laurent. And I need you to accept it even if you don’t understand my choice.”

“What if I told Dad? What then?”

Vivian narrowed her eyes a little, not liking his threat. Was he really willing to go to their father and force a confrontation she was working hard to avoid? Why was everyone so stuck on this? “I don’t think you’d do that,” she finally told him after a minute had gone by. Goosebumps had risen on her arms as the early autumn breeze no longer carried the warmth of summer. Vivian rubbed her arms subconsciously as she half turned away from her brother.

“Wanna bet? You should know by now how far he’s willing to go to keep you safe, Vivian. Letting this go on too long will only make shit worse when he finds out.”

“Why does he need to find out? If no one tells him then it’s a non-issue.”

Laurent let out an angry, frustrated noise as he took a step closer to his little sister, towering over her as he looked down to meet her stubborn gaze. “You give him too little credit. The man can, and will, find out anything you try to hide from him. What happened yesterday? He definitely knows about it and probably already figured out who did it. And I’d bet he’ll know who’s impersonating you online by Saturday.”

A frown creased Vivian’s brow as her brother spoke. Maybe she wasn’t giving Samuel enough credit. It’s not like he was telling her everything, though, so it was only logical she wouldn’t do the same; it wasn’t part of his rules anyway. Well, not *really*. He did want to know what was going on in her life, but at the same time was someone impersonating her online and talking to everyone *but* her count towards something happening *in* her life?

If Miriam and Theo, and now Laurent, hadn’t brought it to her attention she’d have never known about it. And even so, it wasn’t actually impacting her life at the moment, so what was the problem?

Did she want to chance Samuel’s anger by not telling him before he found out through someone else? If she handled the issue herself — *if* she could even do anything about it, which she was certain she couldn’t and was the main reason why she had no intention of doing anything about it — things might get better, though most likely the person responsible would only escalate.

Running to Samuel would ruin her so called reputation in a different way, and it wouldn’t help the other students look at her any differently. This would be the same outcome if she went to a teacher or the principal. No matter what she did someone would say she made the wrong choice.

“So you need to make a choice,” her brother continued after a brief silence had fallen between the two of them. “Either do something about this yourself instead of letting these people walk all over you, or tell Dad about it. The longer you wait to tell him, the worse it’ll be for you when he gets tired of pretending not to know.”

“I’m not doing either of those things,” she replied with a shake of her head. “And if you try and force my hand…” Vivian had to stop herself from saying more, digging her nails into the palm of her hand as she fought the frustration churning in her gut.

“You’ll what, Vivian,” Laurent shot back, a sneer on his lips. “What will you do if I follow through with it?”