Realistic or Modern Secrets Kill

[awriternamedian]

​

Ami was the most popular girl in school. And not in a snobby, queen bee sort of way. No, she was genuinely likable. Half the boys in the school were in love with her (and a number of the girls as well). Both a brilliant athlete and exceptional academically. Class president, voted in unanimously, homecoming queen, and would most likely become prom queen as well.

So why would somebody kill her?​

Not a week into the new school year at the prestigious Silver Oak Academy, the most beloved girl in the school's history is found dead in her dorm room. Initial thoughts were suicide, but no gun was found. The school considered closing down, but it was eventually decided that they would stay open, in part in an attempt to discover who the killer was. Distrust now spread through the hallways, everyone looking at each other suspiciously. A murderer was walking among them, and everyone was a suspect.

They all had secrets. Deep, dark, sometimes terrible secrets. With the intense scrutiny they were all under, how long could they keep those secrets hidden? And who's secret was dangerous enough to get Ami killed?

​

 

[awriternamedian]

Wake up. She yawned and rolled over, burrowing deeper into her blankets. There was no alarm, which meant there was still time to sleep. Wake up. Something's wrong. Nothing was wrong. The only thing that was wrong was that somebody was trying to wake her up before her alarm. She was not a morning person. That kind of thing could get somebody's ass beat. It had certainly happened before. People only ever did it once before learning their lesson. She pulled the blanket up over her head and turned her face into the pillow, drifting quickly and easily back into sleep.

RUBY!

With a gasp, the girl shot straight up, heart pounding, her name ringing in her ears. "The hell Ami, why are you yelling my-" Her words broke off as she looked over at Ami's bed, before remembering that she'd been moved. It only made sense. Ami had died in their dorm room, so of course they couldn't let Ruby stay in there. Instead, they'd given her a room of her own. She supposed it was their way of trying to help with the grieving process, not making her share a room with somebody new. The only roommate she'd ever had was Ami. But now Ami was dead.

Tears welled up in her eyes and she brought her knees up to her chest, hiding her face between them. Her shoulders shook as the tears formed streams down her cheeks, dripping down and soaking the sheet that had already seen so many over this past week. She couldn't believe Ami was gone. The image of her smiling, bubbly face had been replaced by the sight of her lifeless on her bed, blood staining her golden hair, vibrant eyes lifeless. She hadn't been the one to find her. To be honest, she couldn't remember who it had actually been. All she remembered was being in the hallway on the way back to her room, seeing somebody stop in front of their door, and then screaming. So much screaming. She run towards them, terrified about what she might find. But of all the things she could have imagined, this hadn't been one of them.

Forcing her emotions to calm, a skill she'd learned over many years living with her parents, she finally glanced over at the clock. Five o'clock. Her alarm wasn't set to go off for another hour and a half, but there was no getting back to sleep now. She stretched her arms over her head before tossing off the sheets and swinging her legs out of the bed. She made quick work of putting herself together, braiding her curly hair and changing into track pants and a sports bra before slipping on a pair of black sneakers. Within minutes she was sneaking out a side door to go for a run around the grounds, hoping the exercise would take her mind off of things. It didn't. But she didn't know what else to do.

After working herself until her legs felt like jello, she glanced down at her watch and blinked in surprise. She'd been running nearly two hours. Maybe it had put herself out of her head after all. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she made her way back into the dorms before anybody could catch her. It was time to get ready. Time to get ready for the whispers. The pitying looks. The questions. And time once more to search for answers. She was going to discover who killed her best friend, if it was the last thing she did.

 

[Matt l ttaM]

Aaron was sitting up in his 'office' as the clock on his desk clicked over to 6:00 AM. He looked up around the room, the light in the room feeling almost stiffening when met with the darkness outside his windows. Another sleepless night, huh? He sat up and wiggled the mouse at his desk. His office area that he'd been given was uniform at best. The desk near the back of the room, the shelves on either side of the rectangular space, and a small sitting area in the middle. That's what the room had originally looked like. Shoving the desk against the back right corner, Aaron had long since placed a lamp and made the desk into his workspace, a variety of computer parts and pieces thrown about in various locations from various other projects. The shelves had been placed together opposite his desk and were stacked high with different books, from fantasy to textbooks. The only thing that remained the same was the small sitting area near the front of the room, the place where Aaron often helped the people who had issues with one thing or another.

He tapped on his watch, reading three different messages from people who had asked for him on the evening of the previous day. He yawned and stretched, rubbing his eyes as he realized he hadn't slept properly in a couple of days. He shrugged it off and went about getting everything ready for the school day. There was that announcement email he needed to send the assistant principal and he needed to go finish the searching issue students had been having in the library. Then, of course, there was that project that was due in a couple hours...and that class at 1. Aaron sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. It's going to be another long day.

With his hand back to the mouse, he went about typing up his email to the vice principal:

"To the Vice Principal,

When you make the announcements in the morning to the school, can you please include a request to the students to attempt to connect their phones to the school's Wi-Fi system? I've been finding some errors in the connectivity lately, so I need it tested. Inform them that their connect throughout the day may fluctuate and that they need to watch to see when it disconnects.

Thanks,
Aaron Matthews
The Student IT

P.S. I'll be by around 2 to fix that powering issue for your computer, though I assure you just like the last three times I've been there, it's simply that you kicked the power cable and disconnected it."

From there, Aaron leaned back and picked up a book off of his desk that he'd been reading through the night. I still have a few minutes, he thought to himself as he flipped the page.

 

[DuckPrince]

Maori Varcery​

Year: Junior
Location: Dorms and dorm cafeteria
Mood: Sleepy and uneasy/cautious
Interactions/Mentions: N/A

Beep... Beep.. Beep... The low ring of his alarm lulled the white-haired boy from his restless sleep, making him roll from his stomach to his back. So far he was alone in the dorm room, so he was able to wake up at the pace his parents set for him. They had a tight grip around his throat even when they were so far away. Exhaling shakily, the boy reached for his phone and picked it up with delicate pale fingers. Pressing the lock button, he cringed and squinted his blueish eyes to try and shield his retinas from the brightness of his phone. Blindly reaching up, he tapped around and lowered the screen brightness before turning the alarm off.

Heaving himself up, to sit on the edge of the bed, Maori rubbed his eyes and slowly wobbled himself to the bathroom after getting the necessary things from his closet. The same closet he was hiding in very far back.. ha. Taking a shower and dying his hair, he brushed his teeth and put in his contacts. Getting dressed in a simple grey turtleneck sweater and black skinny jeans along with leather black boots.

Grabbing his earphones and phone, student ID and his coat, Maori made his way out of the dorm, locking it on his way and to the dorm's cafeteria to get breakfast. By the time he was done getting ready, as he took his time, breakfast already started. It always started at 6:00 AM.. Getting there and scanning his ID, he grabbed a tuna sandwich and a bottle of banana probiotic yogurt and walked to the far back of the cafeteria, sitting down and beginning to eat. The food was pretty good, although Maori was more used to cooking for himself as had become a habit since neither of his distant parents cared enough to cook. He still felt sleepy.. It was getting colder outside, it explained his sleepiness.

The cafeteria was rather melancholy in the morning.. nothing much happened. No one was awake enough to give two shits about the people sitting anywhere pretty much. Some were glued to their phones and some could barely muster the energy to move their jaw enough for it to be called chewing their food. Someone would choke at this rate...

Finishing his food and drink, he got up quietly, sure to make no sound as to not draw any unwanted attention to himself, he walked to the trash and properly tossed away the wrapper and bottle as well as the bit of bread he had left. With that, the small thing left the cafeteria and went to his dorm to do his school bag and take the short walk to the main school building. Hopefully no one would catch him before he got there or something...

Luckily, it went as planned. A long while before classes started, Maori was already waiting outside of the classroom, on his phone with the hood of his coat over his head which effectively hid his white hair and most of his face. It made him more or less invisible and he'd have it no other way. Listening to his music over the headphones he always brought with himself, Maori subtly watched sluggish students shuffle through the halls, trickling in for their first class of the day. There was so much suffocating tension since that girl died.. She was popular, everyone liked her. Maori never met her. He was the outcast weird loner kid that was always bullied..

 

[jinkx]

Chloe Kabaka
Location: Dorm Room
Interactions: N/A

She couldn't remember drifting off to sleep but she must've managed it. Around half six, Chloe woke up and immediately wished she hadn't; she wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep and catch up on her rest after a few restless nights in a row. Her body urged her to roll back over and pull the covers over her head, so she could go back to sleep in her warm bed. Instead, Chloe forced herself up right and swung her legs around so she could get to her feet. Caught off guard by an abrupt dizzy spell, Chloe steadied herself against the wall and cursed herself for getting up too quickly. At least her roommate already seemed to have disappeared off somewhere, nowhere to be seen. It would've been embarassing if she'd witnessed that.

Once it had passed, she drifted over to the window and pushed one of the curtains aside to look out at the grounds. It didn't take long for her to spot Ruby running with the kind of energy most people saved for running from monsters. She supposed she was thinking about Ami. She watched her for a moment before withdrawing from the window and setting about getting ready for the day.

Things had been different since Ami had died. There was a kind of heavy tension that hung in the air that nobody really liked to talk about, as if pretending that everything was normal would bring her back. Tears sprung to Chloe's eyes just thinking about it but she wiped them away with her thumb without making a sound. Waking up was difficult now because every day felt slightly off-kilter and for a moment, she wouldn't remember but then she would and the guilt would pull her down into the ground. Not that most people would be able to tell. Chloe was smart enough to display the necessary amount of sympathy without letting her aching heart get the better of her. She'd lost her friend and it was terribly sad but there was nothing she could do to bring her back. It was better just to move on. She applied her make-up carefully to cover any cracks in her mask.

Once she was prepared, Chloe headed down to grab some breakfast before class. If there hadn't so recently been a death among them, Chloe would've made a joke about everyone in the cafeteria looking like zombies this early in the morning but she knew it wouldn't be recieved as well as it would have been a fortnight ago. Although she wasn't sure she'd be able to stomach food, she picked up a yoghurt and apple before going to her usual table. The handful of her friends who were already awake and hungry enough for breakfast greeted her in a more melancholy fashion than usual. Even those who hadn't known Ami personally had been affected by her death. Everyone had known her, at least by sight or name, and her lack of presence haunted them all. Chloe divided her apple neatly into six and dipped one of the pieces in her yoghurt and tried her best to join in with the usual conversations about anything, anything at all, that wasn't to do with Ami.

For once, she couldn't wait to get to class. At least it gave her something else to focus on.

 

[Canth]

MARIA & PETER
​

Maria woke with a start, jumping up in her bed, eyes wide, clutching at her throat with desperate fingers. She was frozen, her veins like ice, her lungs stiff and broken in her chest. Seconds passed like minutes, and it felt like an hour before her chest seized and that subconscious part of her brain took over, opening her windpipe and allowing a whistling gasp to fill her lungs. Her breaths came in heavy pants, her chest rising and falling with the intensity of one finishing up the last mile of their first marathon. Cold sweat gleamed along her hairline and rolled down her arms. Her sheets were soaked through, wet and cold. Her fingers, knuckles pale, gripped at her comforter as if it were a shield against some horror. Yes, a horror, one she felt deep within her bones.

Every night for the last week, Maria had woken like this. Drenched in sweat, panting with labored breaths, filled with some dark and horrible terror that made her both cold and hot as fire. A spike of adrenaline would first leave her frozen, and then a red hot flame would burn throughout, and the goosebumps that lined her skin would send tingling shocks through her body as she came down. Feeling would begin to return to her toes and fingertips, and she would be flooded with an overwhelming sense of fear. Fear of...something. She did not know why the dreams had started—no, that was a lie. She knew exactly why, the denial was just too sweet to give up. She clung to her dismissals and forced herself to forget, refusing to hear or see the truth. It was crazy, her mother was crazy. Dreams were just dreams, nothing more. It was just a dream.

The digital clock on her night stand hit five-o’clock, an hour before it was supposed to go off. She sighed, dropping her head into her hands as the adrenaline wore off and left her feeling more exhausted than she had been when she fell asleep last night. It was pointless to try to fall asleep now, her senses spiked and images flashing across her eyelids every time she closed them. Instead, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, feet hanging bare over the cool wood flooring. She pushed herself off, dropping to the ground with a tired thud. She went about the dark room, shuffling tired feet and rubbing at dry eyes with the excitement of a cold rock. She was not an early riser, not by nature. These restless nights and early mornings had taken their toll, and she felt she might fall apart in some celebrity-style breakdown if she did not get some proper sleep soon. A quick tousle of her thick brown curls, a swipe of make-up to freshen up her face and rid it of that just-woke-up-dead look, and a change from sweats to jeans and a crew-neck NASA sweatshirt and she was out the door in zombie-like fashion.

Peter always got breakfast at 6 A.M. sharp. He was anal about those things; he always woke up at precisely 5:30, fixed his hair to an easy messy-nice, and pulled on the usual dark straight jeans and solid-color t-shirt. He had his routine down pat, nothing ever out of place, always in the exact same order, no wiggle-room. Maria used to make fun of him for it all the time back home, though she could do with a more set morning routine herself. She was always running late to class half-dressed, her hair a tangled mess of curls, eyes wide with the fear of one who was teetering on the ‘one more tardy and i’ll have to fail you’ fence. She never ate breakfast, whereas Peter never skipped it. They were on first appearances, complete opposites. Nothing could be further from the truth. Everything that mattered—family, love, the important things in life, they were completely in sync.

Peter was already set, tray in front of him, seated at a table with one other person, a young girl in his grade by the name of Emily White. She was a little taller than Maria, petite, and very cute. Peter and her had clicked the moment they met each other in their first class that first day of freshman year. They were on the soccer team together, both good enough to be looked at, good enough to pay their way in part, neither expecting to go pro. Emily, who was normally boisterous and loud cracking one joke or another, fiddled silently with her strawberry yogurt, twirling her spoon in it in a lazy, mindless motion. Peter thought to ask her if there was something on her mind, when his big sister Maria slid onto the bench beside him.

“What’s up, short stack? Is this place always this dead this early in the morning? Coulda sworn the cafeteria was filled with ghosts.” Not exactly kosher given the school’s current mood, but Maria often spoke without thinking, though she never meant any harm.

Peter eyed his sister with legitimate surprise, not expecting to see her until maybe lunch time, if that. He blinked, and she seemed to guess what he was thinking.

“Just thought I’d swing by and see what the breakfast hype was all about.” She shrugged, looking down at his oatmeal and bowl of seasonal fruits. Maria cocked a brow. “Meh, doesn’t look like I’ve been missing much.”

“No...guess not.” Peter went back to plucking at his fruit, finding himself in just as boisterous a mood as Emily. Everyone was acting so weird these days, not even his sister was immune to the change.

 

[NyanNyanYummy]

Sophia sat at her desk in the fading dark of the morning light, the only other light in the room was a small desk lamp set at its lowest setting. A soft chime echo'ed in the room, only audible because of how quiet it had been. She checked her phone, setting the 5:45am alarm to rest. Sophia never used an alarm to wake up, she felt that waking up naturally promoted a much more comforting day. The alarm had become a necessity due to recent incidents. It had been a tough time since the passing of that girl, many of the students were still in grieving and looked to her for comfort. Fortunately for her, the comfort most of them sought were creature comforts from home. Most just wanted snacks, treats, and drinks not offered by the school, which were simple enough to get in bulk within a short amount of time. Others wanted more specific regional treats or higher ticket items like hand held games and trinkets, all of which took quite a bit of scheming and bargaining to get while the demand was still high.

knock knock knock

Sophia lets out a large sigh. A bit early today. The knock was the cause of the darkness and hushed alarm in her room, the unfortunate side effect of so many young students experiencing such a profound tragedy. The low light and silence was meant to give the impression that she was still sleeping, in an attempt to take advantage of any peace and quiet she could get. The students, however, had begun to visit her room earlier and earlier as more of them flocked to her little shop, in an effort to get their guilty pleasures with enough time to savor them before the start of classes. It was understandable, but still very frustrating. She knew they were not disturbing her mornings maliciously, which is why she never turned any away.

Sophia was already dressed for the day, she didn't like anyone to see her in an unkempt manner. She quickly walked to the door, avoiding the boxes of merchandise sitting around her dorm room. She opened the door and on the other side was a young first year girl, a customer that was consistently first in line. She never bought much, a treat here and a treat there, but she loved to chat, a lot of them did. Today was definitely no different.


Sophia checked the time on her phone, 6:15am. The shop was busy as ever, even with the two people helping her. The line was still so long, with no end in sight, another morning without a minute to herself.

Her closest assistant must have noticed the exasperated look on her face. "Take a break boss, we got this," she remarked with a light tap on the shoulder.

"I think I'll take you up on that Jen," she replied with a smile on her face. "I'll be in the cafeteria if you girls need me."


As she walked into the cafeteria, she only made a passing glance at the few students awake this early. Everyone looked fairly deep in thought to notice her, not that she blamed them. Sophia grabbed a quick cup of tea and some toast with strawberry jam, not the most hearty breakfast, but good enough to get something in her stomach before classes. She took a seat at a 2 person table near the window, placing her ledger on the table. Just because she was taking a break didn't mean she couldn't get any work done. Sophia took in the mediocre scent of the cheap bagged tea, taking in the view before getting started.