Ava: Before killing Justice
I’m leaning toward my bathroom mirror trying to remember what the girl in the YouTube video I watched earlier said about twisting buns. Holding a lump of my natural hair it looks almost futile now. There’s nothing a little gorilla snot won’t fix.
Every weekend I surf through the internet looking for new styles to torture my short hair with so I don’t look boring at school. Most people wait to see what I’ll look like all seven days of the week. I can’t disappoint; it’s just not in my nature to. Standing back in Arden Academy’s virgin white uniform, I look perfect to the eye. If only people could see the small monster sitting at the back of my mind just waiting for me to set her free, they’d be wary of me.
I’m finishing up with my lip gloss when an abrupt banging of the door startles me. My little sister’s voice fills my ears. &ld
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Killing Justice Chapter 10
Skylar: After killing JusticeI’m not a fan of superstition, but if these staggering photos are anything to go by, I’ll say this is definitely a bad omen.The pictures splayed on the floor tell us we were being watched that night. The realization makes my skin crawl. If we bury Justice’s body, that’ll give whoever has decided to mess with our heads the perfect opportunity to take another picture. One so incriminating the police won’t have to even question us on if we killed her or not. And if we don’t, we’re still in trouble. So we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Perfect. Just frigging fantastic.“We can’t bury her here in Fox Park.” If no one will say it, I will. Thana makes an audible gagging sound behind me and I retch myself from her, afraid she would vomit anytime soon.“She stinks,” she mumbles behind
Killing Justice Chapter 11
Ava: Before killing JusticeWe make it to school in a nick of time, precisely an hour or so before the first bell rings for the first period. I’m leaning against my locker, fumbling in my knapsack for Justice’s padlock while she fixes her hair in her compact mirror. I haven’t gotten used to knowing she’s cut her hair to her shoulders and curled the tips. She said she would rather die than have short hair, but here she is, raking her fingers through it. Cece is ranting on about this online novel written by an anonymous romance writer at school. I find it irksome that Cece of all people gets to have a juicy exclusive every Friday when it takes me days to get something eligible for the sports section for the school’s paper.“How do you get the chapters to even publish them, anyway?” I ask her reluctantly and hand Justice her padlock.Cece is all smiles, sugar and spice and everythin
Killing Justice Chapter 12
Skylar: After killing JusticeI’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
Killing Justice Chapter 13
Ava: After killing JusticeYellow crime-scene tapes. Blue and red lights blinking in the distance. Familiar words are written on those peculiar long tapes. Do not cross. Crime Scene. And just when we’d thought we would go back to normal, this had to happen. I can’t say I didn’t expect it. The moment we saw those pictures splashed around in the Crimson Hideaway, I knew the world I was living in had ceased to exist. The lines between right and wrong have blurred out of existence. Who’s to say, we didn’t cause this? That by Skylar speaking to Mr Paps we already signed his death certificate in advance for him. Now more than ever we have to find out who killed Justice and Mr Paps.“How’d he die?” I ask Skylar who’s to my right standing in the chilly air in her usual blue hoodie and black jeans. Somehow strangely I know the answer before she tells me.“Stabbed to deat
Killing Justice Chapter 14
Thana: Before killing JusticePayback tastes sweet until you get a feel of the aftermath. That’s what I should’ve hammered into my head that day in the washroom after Skylar, Ava, and I discussed faux-killing Justice. It felt good to plan it, amazing to imagine it even, but afterwards, all I was left with was fear, guilt and shame. It wasn’t worth it. I would give anything to see Justice alive and walking down the corridors of Arden Academy like a shiny bullet soaring through the air. I don’t know how the others tell it—that Friday morning or afternoon Justice did something to hurt us. But she’s been making me bleed ever since Kieran made my family move to The Circle last year in September.I was new that year. Fresh meat, Justice said. I thought she meant it as a joke and it’s weird how happy I was that she had noticed me, that she had even spoken to me. I’m used to being invisible to my dad a
Killing Justice Chapter 15
Thana: After killing JusticeDeath is inevitable and comes in many forms. The first being my mother’s, Mary—that’s what I call her now, not Mum like Nabil and I used to—died from pulmonary embolism, that’s what my dad told me a few hours after he got an out of the blue call at a quarter past midnight. Then came Kayla’s death. A hit-and-run that left her broken, her stomach sliced open, blood oozing from the wound. Another form was Jasmine. The fall didn’t kill her, apparently; it was a blood clot that shot straight into her brain.And now Justice but no one knows this, but all the same, by Monday morning, news of Justice’s disappearance has spread throughout the school like wildfire, seeping into every chat room, creating new hashtag posts every minute someone clueless gets a whiff of the gossip circulating.Normalcy has become a thing of the past. Chaos and fear have desce
Killing Justice Chapter 16
Thana: After killing JusticeMiss Spellings must sense I’m uncomfortable with the way the conversation has steered toward me because she says, “I think that’s enough questions for today. Wouldn’t you agree?”The detective’s face remains expressionless. “One more thing.” His eyes slide to mine. “When was the last time you saw Justice?”This time I don’t lie. “Friday,” I say simply.He sighs, disappointed in my answer. His partner, who I’m trying to devise a name for in my head, notes it down. I feel oddly queasy about being evaluated this way. “Did she behave out of the ordinary?”From Miss Spellings expression, I know he’s already asked this before. “Normal, she seemed normal.”“Can you elaborate?”“I mean as
Killing Justice Chapter 17
Anonymous: BeforeToday I decided to pay a visit to my therapist. A robust man in his early fifties with neatly cropped black hair, dressed articulately in a dress shirt that smells too much of starch and straightened black trousers. His office is small yet stretched wide with a variety of books. From Charles Dickens to Ernest Hemingway, my eyes skim each cover. His taste bores me.A small picture of his family—three girls all alike, tall and as slim as their mother—sits on his polished desk facing me. He fingers the frame every time he gets up to see me out the door. Nothing goes unnoticed by me.Footsteps resonate through the door behind me. It is pushed open, and he steps into the room with enough hauteur to make me scowl. “I didn’t know you were coming in today.” As though to prove a point, his eyes spy the calendar perched on his desk. It reads October 20th, which is a Tuesday, but I&rs