Corrupted (EXCERPT)

5, II

"What do you want to do?" Jaelyn said while Raven lay belly-down onto her bed, kicking up her legs as an attempt to get her energy out.

Jae was lying on the bed next to her, doing the same, though Raven was resting her head on her hands like a pillow, staring off into space.

"We could have a makeover," Jae suggested. "Or maybe paint each other's nails."

Raven looked to her then. "This isn't elementary school, Jae. And you know very well I'm not good at painting nails."

She faked a shutter. "I looked like I was bleeding from all my fingers for a month."

Raven laughed. "Yeah, it was a mistake to use red nail polish when I suck at painting in general."

They both giggled.

"What about brushing each other's hair?"

"I wouldn't even try," Raven said. "I even go to war with my hair daily."

"Who wins?" Jae asked.

Raven gave her a look. "Who do you think? My hair's like Medusa's. It has a mind of its own."

"Will it bite me if I brush it?" Jae joked.

"Maybe," Raven said back, "but I wouldn't risk it."

They both laughed again... but when the joking mood wore off... silence drew along them...

"Jae..." Raven said then, seeing her best friend glance at her from the corner of her eye, "you took psychology, right?"

"Yeah," she responded, "last semester, why?"

Raven tried to catch the words flying by her mind, forming a sentence. "So... you leaned about serial killers, right?"

"Yep," she said, "serial killer Fridays."

"Do you think that... Malachi is actually a killer?"

Her mouth gaped. "No... I was joking... Why are you asking me this?"

"You know how my parents were attacked?" Raven said.

A nod.

"And how I was attacked?"

Another nod.

"Well... I don't remember the place where I was attacked... and I don't remember when, really... I just remembered that the boy... had blonde hair."

"Like... dirty blonde? White?"

"I don't know..." she responded. "I just remember it being really light... and... Malachi has...."

"Blonde hair," Jaelyn finished. "Babe, lemme tell you this, okay? Like... ninety percent of the US population has blonde hair, whether natural or died."

"Do you think he's actually do something like that?" Raven questioned, shuttering when she spoke the words, "Kill me?"

"I don't know him that well, Ray," she responded. "So I can't really answer."

Silence.

"Buuuut," Jae said, "if you can describe his personality a little from yesterday... I might get an idea? But it most probably won't be a valid one."

Raven thought for a moment. "He changes."

"Uh-huh."

"So... he's like scare me with stuff he knows about me... like my favorite things and stuff... and when we did that assignment in biology, he had a whole paragraph, but I wasn't completely sure if it was about me or not... because he hid it... And I seriously think he has a one-way ticket to my brain because he knows how to push my buttons very well."