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Maddie had managed to succesfully avoid Simon, Kate, Deena, pretty much everyone she used to be friends with. Her locker was in a different hallway than everyone else's, and she had no reason to be on the west side of the school on a Friday morning. No reason... other than Heather.
The Shadyside Mall was still a crime scene, so she couldn't go to the florist she used to work at, but they sold flowers at the grocery store, so Maddie stopped by the Grab & Bag before school to find something nice. She hadn't known Heather too well, but they were friends. They had lived across the street from each other since February, almost ten months, and they'd worked in the same mall, gone to the same parties. Maddie considered her a friend, and now she was gone.
She layed the flowers gently on the floor in front of Heather's locker, stopping to press a small post-it note, simply with a little heart drawn on it onto the locker, which had been decorated with other gifts, flowers, pictures, messages, things like that. Maddie stopped for a moment, clamping her eyes shut tight as she stood in front of her dead friend's locker. I miss you.
She opened her eyes, and came face to face with Deena and Kate. "Maddie,"
Kate didn't sound happy, and Deena's mood had been permanently sour since her and Sam broke up, but Maddie felt she couldn't make eye contact with either of them without feeling guilty.
"Hey," she said after a moment. Almost an entire month without talking to them, and that was the best she could muster up?
"Listen, I know we're not friends anymore," Kate did geniunely seem remorseful as she spoke. "But I know you and Heather were close-"
"We're not," Maddie coughed. "I mean, we weren't. Uh, sorry. I have to... go to... the bathroom," she laughed nervously. "You know, it's that time of the month,"
What was wrong with her? Why? What on Earth would possess her to say something like that? That moment, feeling Kate and Deena's eyes on her, Maddie felt she would have rather been possessed by Sarah Fier than someone who made her that socially awkward.
"Great," Kate set her face in a determined smile. "We were supposed to meet Simon in the bathroom. You can come with us," she hooked her arm with Maddie's and dragged her into the girls' bathroom. The stalls had been grafitied with the Witch's chant.
Maddie and Deena both stepped in, reading the words with mouths agape. "She reaches from beyond the grave to make good men her wicked slaves!" Kate said in her best impression of a witch.
Maddie was standing away from the other two girls, feeling out of place. A month ago, she might have joined in, but the loss of Heather and how extremely uncomfortable she felt were all she could focus on. "She'll take your blood!" Simon thrust the stall door open behind her, and Maddie jumped two feet into the air, so startled she didn't even remember to avoid eye contact with him. "She'll take your head. She'll follow you until you're dead!"
