Skylar: After killing Justice
I’m living in the house of a dead girl, but no one knows this. Her name was Kayla Tacki, KayKay, to her friends. Not that she had many and mostly when I saw her in the corridors of Arden Academy she was always keeping to herself. Or latched onto Thana’s brother, Nabil like he was her lifeline.
I remember when Justice, Jasmine, and I were in Year Seven when the Tackis moved into The Circle. They weren’t posh or sparkly as they parked in their new driveway. No Range Rover or Land Cruiser in sight, just their old Benz that coughed out smoke every time Mr Tacki revved the engine. Most of the time, I stayed clear from their path when I saw their car, afraid my lungs would get clogged with carbon monoxide. Her family had the same dream everyone in the Circle had when they first moved here: “Maybe things will be different in The Circle. Maybe we’ll be happy here.”
Unfortunatel
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Ava: After killing Justice My brain is a murky pool of confusion, riddled with one fat, bold question: What the hell is a box doing in the wall? Whoever preemptively carved a square-sized hole in the wall, took out a brick and replaced it with cardboard, didn’t want anyone to know. Not even the hotel staff who I’m sure is oblivious to the incongruous box in the room. We huddle around the box, our short shadows shrouding it. Now it’s more of a small jewelry box with the telltale signs of someone else’s prying, shown by the silvery long scratches on the latch. “Do you think Justice was trying to open it?” My voice is quiet, tremulous, and unsure. “Maybe.” Skylar sits back on her calves. “The scratches are probably from fixing on the latch.” And because we have no clue what she’s alluding to, she taps her finger on the base where a molten piece is staggered from the rest of the lock’s body. “It most likely broke off a