Ava: After killing Justice
Wednesday afternoon brings a barrage of news that floods my phone with so many notifications that I’m forced to keep my phone on silent mode. This morning, someone tagged me in a post on Instagram and the numerous others inevitably woke me up.
I thumbed through the pictures and almost grimaced as Justice’s face from our Year Nine graduation stared back at me. We got older as I slid through them. I did this till I had enough of torturing myself and chucked my phone underneath my pillow, ignoring the string of messages popping up like clockwork. I’d been up since four a.m. The soft skin underneath my eyes, the ache in my neck and the pressure behind my eyeballs are screaming at me to catch some sleep.
Since I have a penchant for overstressing even the littlest of situations, I’m focusing on the names I’ve scribbled in my notebook. I’ve let that nagging feeling
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Ava: After killing Justice It goes on to say she’s a resident of the elite Circle so I backtrack, wondering why they’d state that in the registry, but then I notice the familiar colours of the national news station and almost let go of the device. Justice’s story has made national news and to escalate it further, the police are going to treat it as a murder investigation. All talks of runaway Justice are going to cease now, and so my time to find out who’s behind this has dwindled. The sound of mum reprimanding my sister bleeds out of the room and there’s only me and the nightmarish news staring back at me. Wordlessly, I place it on the counter with a loud thud, which is unintentional, but Asia springs at me and snatches it away. “My God. I know you’re upset about the news but no need to break my iPad.” “Oh honey,” Mum says and rounds the kitchen island to read it too. “Poor Justice. I can’t
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Ava: After killing Justice “She’s fixing me a cup of coffee,” she says to me, placing back her half-eaten cupcake. “Patience!” She calls out in such a bellowing voice it hardly fits her frail old woman’s body. Patience ambles into the sitting room and at the mere sight of us, her cheery expression crumbles faster than rocks at the edge of a precipice. She recovers quickly and plasters on a plastic smile while setting the mug of steaming coffee on the table. “Mother, what are they doing here?” Try as she might, her displeasure of seeing us has already meandered its way through her façade but my mum’s ever ready to give off her platitudes. “We’ve come over to give you our best. I’ve personally read the news and figured we’d offer our support.” I try to get past the niceties, plastering on my worried best friend face. God, I’m so burning in hell for this. “They keep saying they’ve found some sor
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Ava: After killing Justice For a fleeting moment, I can tell she believes me, but she glances back at whatever text message she read earlier and the mistrust resurfaces. “Winona Cho just texted me, asking if I knew Victor was cheating on Justice with you. She says you were out with him the night Justice disappeared.” “She’s lying.” For once, that’s the truth. She’s lying. I helped him back up that lie so he wouldn’t end up in jail because I’m ashamedly the stupid lovesick fool who hasn’t yet clarified if he was really at the arcade that night. That’s one thing about truths, it’s hidden behind layers of lies which only makes it much more tenuous to find. “Her dad is the chief of police,” she explains. “Isn’t he not supposed to discuss the case with his family?” I deflect, “someone should really call him out on it. It’s unprofessional.” “Unbelievable,” she mutters under h
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Anonymous: Before killing Justice I look at her from across the parking lot. She waves at someone—a girl, hair a mass of curls pulled taut in a ponytail, dressed in the same uniform with a worried expression on her face—but her heart’s not into it so she gets into her car quickly like someone’s closing in behind her. She’s not wrong. She hasn’t got the slightest inkling of what’s coming for her. She has no clue what I’m capable of. I asked for one thing: honesty. Was that so hard? I guess it was a cumbersome task for Justice. If she had told the truth, I wouldn’t have her darkest secret tucked away in my head like a festering tumor. Justice hasn’t been coming to the hotel. She’s ghosted me, sent me to voicemail and avoided the café all week where she knows I’ll be able to contact her. Ever since I gave her hair a trim, she’s gotten the courage to do all this. She starts the car, pulls out of
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Ava: After killing Justice Victor or me. A choice that was more than Justice ever gave me. She didn’t deserve either of us, but she was keeping us hostage like dolls, always pulling the strings, always blending the truth with her lies. We could only get out if she opened the door or if we could see past the darkness she brought. She was the only light source we could see, always blotting out the other lights, pulling us into her gravitational field because she believed she was the centre of everything. Don’t believe me? Ask Odette. Oh wait, you can’t because she’s dead. Justice made sure of it. Just like she made sure I came out as a drunken fool when I proposed she choose between her best friend and her boyfriend. With Odette, the choice was clear. In Justice’s eyes, she became a liability. A thorn in her side she needed to pluck out. It was five months ago at our midnight rendezvous in the
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Ava: After killing Justice A knock on my bedroom door snaps me out of my reverie. I stop smudging the concealer under my eye and my eyes flit to the door. Asia stands in the doorway and from her stance I can tell she’s been there watching me for a while, which makes me feel even more disconcerted. “Hey,” I say, brushing off my nerves with the flick of a brush across my cheeks. “What are you doing here?” “I just want to talk.” She pads into my room dressed in a diaphanous nightgown which could give Mum a heart attack if she wore it anywhere other than at home. My desk chair rolls towards me and as she sits, I stand, keeping a wide berth between us. “Talk about what?” I feign interest in my wardrobe even though I’ve picked out my outfit for Terry’s get together. I’m met with silence which is rather unusual. My sister is a stickler for confrontations, and if her rigid post
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Ava: After killing JusticeHe shrugs. “Nothing. It’s just been a while since you texted me for a ride. I bet if Justice was here you wouldn’t have.” I filter out the mild disappointment in his tone and hold on to it, hoping it’s real. Or maybe I heard wrong and it’s just wishful thinking on my part. Again. You’d think I would’ve learnt my lesson by now from that night out in the arcade. It’s my turn to choose: Victor or Justice. It isn’t a hard choice to make because, after everything that happened on Friday, I owe Justice a lot.Victor pulls out of the driveway, looking through the rear mirror to navigate the curve. Without looking my way, he asks, “Are we picking Cece up? From what I remember, she also doesn’t own a car.”“I think she’d rather die than breathe the same air as me,” I say stiffly, annoyed that I’ve someh
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Ava: After killing Justice Then he leaves, walking into the long hallway and disappearing into the kitchen on his left. I rub at my arms, feeling unmoored for the very first time like a baby deer, not sure what to do with its limbs. I don’t even hear the compliment about my cute heels until a duo of girls passes by me. “Well, consider me impressed you finally bagged him,” Terry remarks from behind me, a smattering chuckle following his statement. I subconsciously pick at a loose thread on my shorts, feeling my heart skip with a guilty beat. “It’s not like that.” He cocks his head to the side, taking his curls down with him. His beard looks rough and the skin underneath is red. He rubs at it now, watching me. “Could’ve fooled me.” He pushes off the raised table and moves closer. Rests lazily on the wall in front of me. “From what I’ve heard, you two were together Friday night.” <