Ask for help

“Help me,” you say.

“What?” Shelby frowns and turns at another noise. “Did you hear that?”

“It’s an initiation. They’re trying to find this girl that I brought down here. Tell them you didn’t see us,” you whisper.

Shelby frowns. Then she looks you up and down.

“You’ll owe me one,” she says.

“Fine,” you agree without hesitation.

The stairs creak.

“OK,” she says. “I’ll tell them something. Meet me back here.”

“Sure,” you say.

“And put this stuff back,” she whispers.

“OK.”

Shelby tiptoes away, and you crouch by the box, picking up the book. Someone put a lot of work into this book, and it has articles at the end that are as recent as a few months ago. Someone who lives in CCL house right now is the one updating this. How strange.

You put it back, along with several other objects that you don’t really get to look at very closely.

Then you stand up and creep away, making your way back to the spot where you left Delilah.

She’s gone! Oh no… you can feel your initiation slipping away. It could be another month before they give you another chance. This sucks…

Your bare foot touches something wet on the cold floor. You look down to find… paint! It’s footprints! So the paint Delilah’s feet is working as intended, but this is bad! She’s going to lose this initiation too. Ugh. You can’t believe you didn’t just beat her when you had the chance.

Maybe there’s a way to fix this. You follow the footprints.

Something cold touches your back. You jump and spin around, finding Delilah right there. She’s trying not to laugh, and she looks thrilled. What’s she got in her hand?

“Is that paint?” you ask, looking at the can that she just touched you with. “What are you doing?”

She has a sponge in her other hand.

“Don’t you see?” she asks excitedly.

“See what? You just blew it,” you whisper at her angrily.

“No, I’m a genius. I can clean up with this. And put more paint on with this. They’ll never know that we didn’t do it their way,” she gushes. “We’re safe down here. All we have to do is…” she trails off then shrugs, and your eyes are stuck to the jiggle of her chest. She’s so closet to you that you feel the heat from her body. “All we have to do is kill twenty minutes,” she says, looking up at you.

God… you had her all wrong. You thought Delilah was shy, but she’s actually a horny little schemer. A very pretty, horny little schemer who still smells like rum. Even if you weren’t drunk, you would…

Wait a minute. You forgot about Shelby. She wanted to meet back at that hidden box.

Delilah moves closer to you, and your bodies touch. “Want to help me clean up and paint?” she asks.

Go with Delilah’s plan?

Or go meet up with Shelby?