Crazed Minds | ✔️

forty

She knows what I am but she won't believe me."
-Always Like This, Bombay Bicycle Club
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When the students file out of the Grand Hall, no one speaks. Not one single word. Maybe they don't know what to say. Maybe they think that if they speak, they'll be murdered next.

Maybe we're all just afraid.

I follow Jasper and the others out to the corridor and make my way to the Dining Hall since assembly was during period two and now it's lunch.

But I'm not hungry. I can't possibly eat, or I might just throw it back up.

I head through the doors, join the silent queue to the food, pick up a soda, and sit down beside Seth at an empty circular table. He throws me a sad smile and picks lifelessly at his sandwich. Alec then takes place beside Seth, and Molly beside him, before Jasper finally makes it over to us and sits in between me and Molly.

No one talks for a moment, until Seth mumbles while staring at his food, "I think whoever did it should just come forward and say something. All this confusion is making my head hurt."

"I think it's stupid that they assume it's one of us, what if it was a teacher? Or someone else completely?" Molly says frustratedly, dropping her wrap onto her plate without taking a bite out of it.

Jasper shakes his head. "I think it's smart to assume it's a student. Most of us are in here because we have the capability to do something like this. The police know that."

Alec's brow furrows in deep thought. He doesn't say anything.

Seth sighs and sits back in his hair, abandoning his lunch altogether. "I wonder what'll happen if they catch the person who did it."

"This school is a second chance. After this, there's not a third chance," I contribute quietly. "There's only a youth detention centre, and then prison."

They all nod sadly in agreement.

"I just don't understand why someone would do that," Seth says with a furrowed brow. "Sure, Naomi was a bitch who treated people like shit. But she shouldn't be dead. None of the people who died should be dead."

"You think they're all linked?" Molly mumbles, staring absently at her untouched food.

Jasper replies, "Reckon so."

Alec shoots me a concerned look as I watch my food, the nerves eating away at the insides of my stomach. Jasper notices and is about to say something when Seth muses quietly, "And if all weapons are taken off everyone who starts at Redwood Academy, how did the murderer have their own weapon?"

I freeze.

Her throat was slit.

Like...with a knife?

I stand up abruptly from my seat, catching the attention of everyone at the table. Alec looks the most concerned, but he also looks like he knows exactly what I'm thinking, which puts me even further on edge.

"Are you alright?" Seth asks slowly, frowning slightly.

"I-I need to go!" I almost yell, and before anyone can say anything, I run out the door of the Dining Hall and outside. I hear someone calling my name- Jasper, I think- and so I run faster. It's pouring down with rain. The water droplets are like hammers against my head, making the drumming of my heart worsen.

I race into the trees, following the path to Mr Jefferson's old house before he was murdered and we buried his body. I feel sick thinking about what we've done, what I've done, what I've made Alec and Jasper do, but the feeling drives me further. I plough over tree roots and under low-hanging branches, all the way to the cottage.

When I see his cottage, it brings a sense of dread and only worsens when I turn and race through the woods where the trail doesn't cover, right to the spot where we buried Mr Jefferson. The rain makes the ground slippy, and it's becoming harder to stay on my feet.

I stumble a couple of times as I pass over the place we buried his body and to about fifty feet away where I buried my knife.

And just as I expected.

There is a hole in the place where my knife was initially buried.

And now it's gone.

I stare at the hole for a long moment, my ears ringing and my heart racing and the rain drumming. My clothes are soaked, my hair likewise.

"Olivia."

I jump and spin around to see the source of the voice. "Jasper?"

He pushes his soaking hair out of his face and yells over the pounding downpour around us, "What are you doing?"

My eyes shoot to the hole for split second. "My knife. It's gone. Whoever is trying to frame me has taken it."

Jasper doesn't say anything for a moment, simply stares at me with a look of knowing pain. He takes a few steps closer to me until we're stood only a foot apart.

Why does he look so...guilty? one voice asks and I'm thinking the same thing.

"Jasper, what's wrong?" I ask cautiously, the look in his eyes making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. He bends down and picks up a rock from the ground.

I take a cautious step back.

I frown as he responds quietly, "I'm sorry."

He swings his arm back with the rock in hand.

Everything goes black.