02

There were two people I wouldn't want to come across at the party. First was Elle. She's this random bitch that would often take Maisie away from me whenever she sees us together because she said, and I quote, 'I just don't like your guts'. I still have no idea what she meant by that, but I was sure if she saw me step into that house party without Maisie because she's dead, she'd just probably talk shit to me. Not that I couldn't handle girls like her. I just didn't want to waste time on her.

The second was Douglas. He's just . . . I don't like him. He'd offer me drugs, or drinks, or he'd slap my butt. In my second year, I punched him on his nose when he did that to Maisie. He's a sexist piece of shit that would just make fun of my dead best friend and would probably say some crap like don't you think it would be more fun if it was you who died and not Maisie because she's hotter and she actually had boobs unlike you.

I'm sure, as I was preparing myself to go to the party, Maisie was cheering me on from whichever dimension she was. I usually don't go to parties by myself before, and that was the only exception. I never would have gone there if the police were taking things seriously though. They weren't investigating enough, so stupidly, I thought I'd just take it upon myself. I just had a hunch that if there was a murderer somewhere targeting young girls, they would have been somehow responsible for making the house party go on even with the lockdowns.

Was the murderer a teen-aged boy? A mom? I had no idea but I would find out about it.

Though to be honest . . . I don't know if that was really my intention of going there. Perhaps I just kind of blamed myself that it happened and I was trying to redeem myself by actually doing something for once. It had been ten days since she died and maybe I only wanted to distract myself by fooling myself to believe that I was helping Maisie's murder case, but the truth is, I wasn't doing it for Maisie – I was doing it to save myself from the guilt.

Regardless, things like that were out of my mind as I fixed my hair ten meters from the house party, so I just went right in.

Elle and Douglas were there.

—