Chapter 2

“Geez!” Mia whispered to her friends as they left the room hours later. “They wanna know much or what?”
“No-one told, right?” Lucy asked when they were out of earshot of the two detectives. The eight girls each looked at each other, shaking their heads. “Good, I don’t think we should just yet, you know?”
“Not really-”
Ahead of the group loomed the hall once again. The students had all been sent home by now, school was cancelled, and when the girls were certain it was clear of teachers and cleaners, they walked up onto the stage and sat together in the corner.
For a few moments there was silence, which was only broken by breathing, and the air in the hall moving around slowly. The girls thought of what to talk about, without bringing up the day’s incidents. They soon found that it was impossible, and Jo voiced what they were each thinking.
“That mark… on her wrist, it was kind of, sick, hey?” She laughed uneasily.
No one else spoke; they were all too busy, deep in thought, remembering the last thing they had seen, just before leaving the cops’ presence:
The cold, empty sick bay, or at least, almost empty, for on the sterile white bed was the small, pale figure of Felicia, covered by a slim sheet, but still obviously her. They had been slowly moved to the bed, and Damien had lifted the sheet, just so that the girls could see Felicia’s wrist. In black ink, which contrasted greatly with the girl’s pale skin was a heartbeat that slowed and stopped, and underneath the words: “You know too much, DIE NOW.”

* * *

“I’m not sure we should have shown those girls her wrist, Dam,” Carla said slowly, as the car pulled back into the police station.
“We needed to see if they knew anything about it,” he protested.
“We could have shown them a photo!” Carla rebutted angrily. “And wasn’t it you who only this morning complained that the doctors hadn’t moved the body out of the way earlier?”
“This is different,” he replied, but couldn’t seem to point out why. The two entered the building, and moved to their floor. “Did any of the girls you talked to seem to think anyone would have a reason to kill her?”
“No, they all seemed really shocked at the question, too,” Carla said.
“Well,” Damien said solemnly. “They are kids; they shouldn’t have to go through this sort of thing at this age.”
“But they are, and we have to find out why,” Carla nodded. “Did any of the girls you interviewed seem at all… nervous, or, I don’t know, unsure of what they were saying?”
“…hmm, I remember one that did,” Damien said, and held out a folder he was carrying. “All their stories and anything about them that I noticed is written here.”
* * *
“We really have to do something, you know,” Mia said, the silence between the group being once again broken.
Each of the others looked about to respond, then hesitated, and remained silent. Lucy got up and paced around the stage. It was Valerie who finally answered:
“I think we should tell them, and I’ve thought that all along.”
“We CAN’T” said a few forceful voices in unison.
“Why NOT?” Argued Valerie, this time supported by Rebecca.
“Because we don’t have any evidence,” Mia said softly, staring at the ground. “Who was with her last night? Did anyone of us know before this morning that she… she fell?”
“No, we thought she went home early,” Yasmine said, shaking, “We didn’t think she might have stayed.”
“Did you find anything last night?” Mia asked hopefully.
“None of us would be in this mess if we’d found something!” Lucy cried.
“It was just a question,” Aleisha said. “So what did we decide to do?”
“We didn’t,” Celia replied. “But I think we should come back again tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?!” Jo exclaimed. “All of us?”
“All of us,” Was the answer.

* * *
“Here it is,” Damien said, pulling out a piece of paper. “Let’s see, when I asked if any of the students at the school didn’t like her, Rebecca seemed a little, for want of a better word, hesitant to answer.”
“Did all their stories check out though?”
“Well, yes,” Damien replied. “The stories were all basically the same, but there were slight differences, times and stuff, nothing too big. But I get the feeling that they aren’t telling us something.”
“Yeh, they did seem to be a bit too defensive,” Carla agreed. “But what could they possibly not want to tell us? Anyway, we should keep an eye on them, just in case.”
“That brings us to the next question, can the school re-open tomorrow?” Damien asked. “We have the rest of the day to check out the area, and the principal said we can rope off around where the girl fell, and continue throughout the week.”
“Okay, as long as he can promise no-one will interfere.”
* * *
Mia yawned; science was not her most favourite subject. Next to her, Marilyn Bower, one of her class friends, also sighed, drawing a random pattern on a piece of paper. The bell rang, and she murmured “finally”, under her breath.
The two picked up their bags and walked slowly out of the room, turning left and heading towards the sporting fields. Felicia had been in their class until ‘the accident’ the day before, and they both sorely missed her.
Arriving at the change rooms, the two got into their sport uniforms, and walked back to the soccer fields. Their teacher, Mr. Kale put the class into teams, separating the two, and the game started. Mia stood alone, rarely going for the ball, the boys never pass to the girls anyway, and she guessed Marilyn was doing the same. Both girls knew that had Felicia been there, she would have been trying hard to play, and that would have given them reason to try, but as it was, they saw no point.
Mia suddenly felt a burst of energy, and ran for the ball, kicking it hard, and seconds later, she regretted her decision. A shout from just in front of her told her the ball had made contact with someone. She saw someone lying on the ground, and realised it was Marilyn.
“Oh god.”

Message I

Hey, Em, I just wanted to say I'm sorry for not posting chapter two earlier on in the afternoon, but some clever cookie *cough* me *cough* left her keys at home, and got locked out. Next time I'll try to post it earlier.

Chapter 1

“Finally!” Damien Milter put the phone back on the hook and pushed his black hair out of his eyes. It didn’t work properly and the strands just fell back over his face. “That was a long night!” He stood up and his brown eyes flitted quickly from his desk, and over to his red-head partner, Carla Alma, who was on the phone at the next desk. He waited till she hung up and caught her eyes.
“Carla, I'm going home,” he started to say, but she interrupted him.
“Sorry Dam,” she said. “There's a job we have to do first.”
Damien sighed. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” Carla replied. “But we need to get to the sporting high school. Something about a body.”

* * *

Yasmine Zhang hurried down the bus stairs. Her black hair bounced as she jolted down each step. Her bus had been late, and now she was late for school. She ran through the school gate and immediately saw a large crowd huddling at the base of the front office building. She sighed.
“Thank god!” she thought to herself. “Doesn’t look like the classes have gone in yet.”
She ran to join the crowd, and saw a cop car pull up behind her bus. A man with black hair jumped out of the driver’s side and ran toward the gates she had just come through. A pretty young woman jumped out the passenger side and followed him quickly, and the two of them pushed to the front of the crowd.
Where she was standing, Yasmine couldn’t see anything, but she spotted her friends, Lucy Williams, Celia Mathews and Mia Cowell standing toward the front of the crowd, and she pushed toward them. As she got closer, she realised something was terribly wrong.
Lucy turned and looked at her, and Yasmine saw that she was in shock. Yasmine rushed toward her.
“What is it?” she cried, but as she got toward them, she could see what was wrong, and why the crowd had gathered.

* * *

Damien and Carla strode passed the mass of murmuring students, heading to the front. Already some police were escorting traumatised students to another building to talk to them, and when they got to the front of the crowd they could see why.
“Get them all away from here!” Damien said angrily. The other police started herding the students into the school’s hall. “God!” Damien continued. “What kind of person let's kids see a dead body!?”
“Calm down,” Carla shuddered as she neared the body lying on the ground. It was a blonde girl lying face down on the ground, amidst a small group of glass shards. He looked around, and up the wall behind him, where he saw a smashed window on the second floor.
Talking to a man leaning over the blonde girl, he asked, “ How long?”
The man, turning said, “Morning Damien. I would say, around eight to twelve hours, but without an autopsy, I can’t say for sure. It couldn’t have happened before last night though, for sure, as there was a staff meeting here after hours, and they saw nothing.”
“Thanks Doc, have we identified the body?”
“There was no ID on her person, but a few girls who said they were her friends told Ray that her name is Felicia Collins, and she is in year nine.”
At this point Carla came over to Damien and the doctor. “Dam, I think you should see this…” He followed her over to the body of the girl, and looked as Carla pointed to the exposed right wrist.
***
Yasmine, Mia, Lucy and Celia stood together whispering, just to the side of where the police were working.
“What do we do?”
“Should we tell them?”
“No way! We need more proof, they’d never believe us!”
“Are you serious? Look what happened to Felicia!”
“But we can’t! It’s our word against-“
Lucy stopped mid-whisper as one of the policemen came over to the girls. “You were friends with …”
“Felicia,” Celia said softly, when he hesitated.
“Felicia,” he finished, nodding at her. “Were there more of you in her group than this?”
Silently, the girls nodded.
“Everyone is over in the hall, would you mind going over and finding the others?” Again, the girls nodded, again they were silent. Then Yasmine seemed to find her voice.
“Come on, we better go find them,” she said, starting to walk off towards the hall. Elsie hesitated, and then followed, as did the others.
The four walked slowly through the garden path that led to the quadrangle, and then to the hall. They didn’t talk for a while, and then Celia broke the silence.
“What are we going to do?”
“Tell them!”
“Keep it a secret!”
“GIRLS!” Mr Corry, the school principal, walking out of the hall, said sharply to them. “You should not be out here!”
Each girl tried to hide the fact that they had jumped, and then avoided the principal’s eyes.
Finally Yasmine informed him of what the policeman had asked them. He nodded, and then left them, possibly to talk to the police himself.
The girls walked into the hall, an air of unease among them. They were intercepted by an English teacher, Mrs. Crawpo, immediately after entering.
“Girls, you’re late,” she told them, before they explained again what the policeman had asked. “Alright,” she said, leading them up onto the stage to their right. Walking towards the microphone in the centre, she asked them who she should call for.
* * *
“The girls are getting together their group,” Damien told Carla. “ I don’t want them to see the girl’s body until I have talked to each of them, put her in another room, and I will take them in together to see the mark.”
He asked the Doctor if the body could be moved for a while, and after the man hesitated, he agreed. He watched as two of the other policemen put on gloves, and began to move the body. Looking past this sight, he saw the group of girls he had earlier sent away, walking towards him, accompanied by four he hadn’t seen before.
“In here,” he called across the remaining distance between them, indicating a spare classroom. He let the eight girls into it, then waited to catch Carla’s eye. When she saw him, he waved her over, and they entered the room as well, closing the door behind them.
The girls were all sitting on and at the desks, talking softly, or looking expectantly at the cops, who in turn looked curiously at them.
“Okay girls, this will work best if we all know each other. I'm Carla, this is Damien, and we are, as is per evident, exploring the death of your friend. As we have not contacted your parents, this will not be a proper questioning, though we do want to know if you can tell us anything,” Carla said quickly, glancing at her partner. “I'm going to go from this side of the room to that,” she pointed left to right, “If you could say your names in turn…”
“Yasmine Zhang.” Carla nodded.
“Lucy Williams,” said the girl next to her with rather long, light brown hair.
“Ummm,” said the next girl, “Mia Cowell.”
“Rebecca Moore,” The brunette sitting next to her said slowly.
“Aleisha,” said the next, without adding a last name.
“Jo.”
“Celia Mathews.”
“Valerie Hughes,” said the last, a girl in shorts instead of the skirt, and with blonde hair.
“Alright, now first up, we are gonna ask you some questions as a group, then some individually,” Damien said. “First off we’ll start easy. Did your friend have any enemies, or people who disliked her or her family that you know of?”
“Are you like, allowed to question us?” Aleisha said almost immediately. The other girls looked at her, before Yasmine joined in:
“Yeah, don’t our parents need to give consent?”
Carla looked at Damien.
“We’ve worked that out already, don’t worry. Back to the question, was there anyone that disliked her?”
The girls all looked at each other, and then shook there heads, one by one. Each murmured “no I don’t think so”, or something like it.
“Right,” Carla continued. “And has anything odd been happening with her recently?”
Again, nobody answered sufficiently. Damien sighed, “Okay, we’re gonna have to do this individually. Blondie, come with me.”

Prologue

Heavy breaths and loud footsteps told her that someone was coming up behind her. The girl paused at the window, and peered through it into the gloom, as a shadow fell over her. She realised that she had been holding her breath and quickly caught it again. Turning to the person casting the shadow, she said:
“Yasmine, don’t do...” She gasped. “Yasmine?”