Her Soul

1. ripple effect

When a stone hits the water, it created ripples. People called it the ripple effect, the continuous and speeding results of an action.

Such a ripple effect had changed Aviana's life in a single blow.

There were three components to this ripple effect. The queen bees, Melvin the chocolate boy, and Sage the nerd. Aviana was one among the queen bees, they were a group of four: Mikilene, Scarlet, Baby, and Aviana.

But no one knew that Aviana was with them only because of Scarlet. The tall girl with black hair who'd befriended Aviana when she came to the school one year back as a newbie.

You couldn't get one of them as your friend though, they came as a whole pack. And that meant Aviana would have to bear to be near Mikilene, the queen of queen bees who wanted Aviana gone from Scarlet because of her stupid insecurities. Mikilene was a cockroach but Scarlet was worth it. Plus, Aviana wanted to be on the winning team to avoid a replay of the previous school's incident.

It all began when Melvin asked Mikilene for her essay as a model, the first step of the ripple effect. The stone was thrown over the surface of the water.

This set of a series of events that followed. Sage saw Melvin return the essay to Mikilene. She reported this to their teacher saying Mikilene was forcing Melvin to do her work. She wanted to be a knight in shining armor for the boy she secretly loved. Yes, Melvin was Sage's long-time crush.

This led to Mikilene getting extremely upset and thus she planned a payback. No one messed with the queen bees. Sage had gone one step above and messed with the queen of queen bees.

The ripple effect proceeded as Mikilene took Sage's silver diary wanting to expose her embarrassing secrets.

But Scarlet and Aviana spoke sense into Mikilene. No, more like forced her. They told her it was very low, even for the bees to read another one's diary. Mikilene agreed reluctantly to only act like they read the diary.

Then Aviana dropped the diary in an abandoned cottage just like Mikilene asked to. Mikilene was waiting to prank Sage that they'd read her diary. But Sage was on leave that day.

And so the ripple effect continued.

Since Mikilene, Scarlet, and Baby had a birthday party to attend they forced Aviana to go to Sage's home and inform her about the diary. This was just a normal daily life prank that Mikilene pulled so Aviana agreed. If she had said no the ripple effect could have stopped. But no, that was not the case.

On her way back home from school, Aviana stopped by at Sage's. Sage was surprised to see Aviana. "Aviana! I think you are at the wrong address."

"No, you are Sage. I know," Aviana replied looking tense. She got a look at Sage's house. Her bag was on the floor, open, books and other things were spread out. It was clear she was searching for something.

"Okay, what do you want ?" Sage asked awkwardly. "Look, this a wrong time. I'm in the middle of something."

Aviana peeped in. "Seems you are searching for something."

Before Sage could reply Aviana asked, "Could it be something possibly silver and rectangular?"

Sage was taken aback. "How do you know?"

When Aviana told Sage they were the ones who'd taken the diary, she closed the door and stepped out. "What do you mean?"

Aviana presumed something in the diary must be related to Melvin. Who didn't write about their crush? So she threw the bait. "Knew you had a thing for Melvin."

"How dare you!" Sage started, but Aviana cut her off.

"Tomorrow some pages will be on the noticeboard, goodbye!" she said and started moving before she told sage where the diary was.

Sage came running behind. "Wait! This is not fair, all this because I reported the essay Melvin wrote for Mikilene!"

"You think Mikilene would submit Melvin's work! Please, hers is much better," Aviana said apologetically. That was true Mikilene was the best, Melvin only came after her.

Sage was standing by the window. "Please!"

Feeling sorry, Aviana closed the window and drove away. All the while she never noticed a boy hiding behind the bush.

She called Scarlet the next second she started the car and told her about what happened at Sage's. Even now it was all simple but things got complicated the next morning; the final climax of the ripple effect.

A death happened.

Sage was dead the next day--fell from her balcony. Starting from an essay, it ended in a death for which Aviana was responsible. All because of something that was in the silver diary.