Chapter 3- Everly

I squeezed the arms on my chair to the point of my knuckles turning a deathly white as we took off from the airport in. I was fine with the flying, but take offs made me nervous every time.

The flight from San Jose, California to Portland, Oregon was going to take an hour and a half. Jeff and I took the opportunity to read over the bulky packets one more time.

I was to be posing as Myra Arnett, the older sister of James Arnett. We were moving from Alabama after the sudden death of our mom, Karen, to live with our father, William Arnett. I thought this was a good enough cover to explain why I was moving at the end of my senior year.

Though the packet was large, it didn’t really hold any more information as to what was believed to be going on. I mean a drug ring is pretty simple, too simple for us to be handling. Especially on a long term case.

Jeff took it upon himself to come up with our nonexistent mother’s death, “How about car accident?” I raised my eyebrows at him, “Nah, too boring.”

He ran through a great lists of possibilities, all seeming the have flaws to him. Suicide was too dark and we’d be treated as if we were on suicide watch ourselves. Murder was too close to our organization, too many questions would follow. We needed to pick something simple that wouldn’t bring many follow up questions.

I rolled my eyes as he listed off some mob conspiracy that we could explain to everyone, I cut him off mid theorize, “How about, she fell down the stairs and cracked her head open on the tile floor? And our house maid found her.”

 Jeff looked at me sideways, “It annoys me that I can sit here and rattle off for 10 minutes all the deaths that don’t work and you just come up with one in a split second,” he huffed at me.

“I don’t think I should be proud of my ability to think of obscure deaths,” I laughed at his disappointed face.

“I would be,” he muttered in a childish voice before getting up to get a drink from the mini fridge.

Boss came emerged from the front of the plane and handed us both small packages, “A phone and some money for the both of you.”

I pulled out an iPhone and what had to be at least a thousand dollars in cash, I mean how did he make money anyways, all we did was kill people.

I got on my iPhone and frowned at the preset background, “Who are these people?” The picture was me with my arms around two people on either of my sides.

“You need to seem like a normal teenage girl, so I photo shopped you into a picture to make it look like you have friends. That’s Lily and Hazel, their fake phone number are in your phone.” He looked pretty happy with himself as he explained all the fakeness of my life.

I went into contacts, I had over 200 hundred contacts! I only knew that two of these numbers were real, James Arnett and William Arnett. There were bunch of other fake Arnett’s in my phone, he even had added my fake dead mother. How convenient.

“I also added girly type music to your phone,” he gestured to me, “And boyish rock music too your phone,” he nodded his head Jeff’s way.

I scrolled through the music on my phone, 1D, 5SOS, and Ariana Grande littered my phone. This was not my type of music to say the least.

“I also took it upon myself to make you both Facebooks, Instagrams, Twitters, and Vines. I hear the kids are very into social media these days,” Boss was smiling to himself again, happy with his work. But it was a creepy smile, one that I didn’t mind not seeing all the time.

I scrolled through my pictures on Instagram, sure enough all photo shopped pictures of me and random people. Some were of Jeff and me, there was even a picture of my fake mom with a caption of how much I missed her. He had gone way overboard with this.

Facebook was really over the top though, there was even happy birthday messages on February 6^th. I wondered how he had changed the dates.

This was kind of weird to see all these events he had made us apart off.

I was done, I didn’t even want to see what he had tweeted for me or vined for that matter. I pulled some earbuds from my backpack and snatched away Jeff’s phone.

“Hey! I was using that,” he tried to grab it back from me, but failed miserably.

“Perks of level nine, ninja training,” I smirked at him.

His mouth opened in awe, “No way!”

I was joking, but he could believe what he wanted.

After plugging my earbuds into his phone, I scrolled through his music. Sure enough he had some of my favorite artists, Imagine Dragons, Green Day, Sam Smith, the Luminers, etc. I swear Johnson did this just to torture me.

We landed a short while later.

“Okay, kiddos, you start school tomorrow so you need to go out and get some school supplies before then, go over your story with each other one more time, and get a good night’s sleep,” he pulled some sheets of paper from his brown leather brief case, “Here’s your school supplies list and the address to your guys new house.”

“Don’t call us kids,” I shot him an annoyed glare.

“Is that really all you got from that?”

I smirked and grabbed the papers from his outstretched hands, “So this is bye for a while?” I asked, my voice coming out hopeful.

“No actually, I’ll be checking about every other week.”

“You know there’s this great new technology that allows people in different places to communicate with each other. I think you should check it out, cell phones come in handy. Or if that’s too complicated for you I would be glad to personally set you up an email.”

“Your funny, Everly, or should I say Myra,” the smirk fell off my face and danced its way over to his, “But anyways, I have my orders.”

Johnson taking orders, now that would be the day. But who was giving the orders?

Jeff and I grabbed our bags and exited the plane. There was a new silver B&W sitting outside the plane and I could see the freshly fallen water droplets on the silver car.

We had landed at an opportune time, the rain had ceased for a short while. So we quickly made our way to the car and threw our bags in the trunk. Jeff took the wheel, as usual, and I sat in the passenger seat.

We pulled away from the private takeoff site and onto the freeway, “Can you look up a staples on your phone so we can get the supplies?”

I nodded and typed it into maps, “Take the next exit.” I set up my phone so he could see the directions and leaned back into my seat.

“I don’t think this is going to be as bad as you think, Everly.” Stop talking, “It could really be a learning experience on how to control your emotions and handle even the most difficult of situations.”

I looked at him sideways, handle my emotions? What was this a therapy session? I could handle my emotions just fine, thank you very much. I choose not to speak because I knew he was trying to be helpful and knowing me and my big mouth I’d just say something hurtful. See controlling my emotions.

He kept talking about the positives of this assignment, and I don’t know who he was trying to convince. When he realized that I had zoned out, he quit talking and focused on the road, his lips in a hard line.

What was up with him?

We pulled into the staples parking lot at approximately noon. We continued our silence as we walked through the store picking up things we needed.

“What’s the difference between these two brands of pencils? Like which ones best?” I couldn’t care less about the pencils, I just needed to gage his mood. I could tell you the type of music someone listened too, the type of upbringing they had had in one look, yet I couldn’t tell if my own partner was angry.

He brought his eyes up to meet mine and pointed at the packet in my left hand, before returning to his search for a neutral colored notebook. Something was definitely up with him.

He left shortly after that mumbling something about a new computer.

Sighing, I continued riffling through the binders trying to find a 1 inch binder that wasn’t pink, purple, or bright green. I ended up having to settle for the bright green and I tossed two into the cart before turning around and running straight into someone.

I mumbled a sorry and looked up at the figure hovering over me.

Holy s**t. I would know those piercing blue eyes anywhere, Nick f*****g Catter.

Author's Note

Be as brutal as possible please!