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𝙑𝙊𝙇𝙐𝙈𝙀 𝑰. ── CASUALTY OF YOUR DREAMS!

❛ 𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒅 ❜
─── chapter three! ❫

003. ╱ ✹ ⠀⠀ ❝ green flags turned red
from all my bleeding. . . i fell quickly
for words, misleading. ❞

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     "SO, WHAT IS SHE LIKE? THE SISTER?" Liv's blue-green eyes trailed over her friends, curious about Tara's mystifying older sister. Prior to today, nobody ever mentioned her. Tara had once off-handedly, but that was it.

     Peering up from where she was positioning the billiard balls on the pool table, Kynlee glanced at the pink-haired girl. Their table was in the center of the dimly lit bar and Metalica was playing through the speakers. On her right, Mindy was holding her pool stick while Wes held her drink on her left.

     "Sam?" Chad asked before breaking into a gigantic grin. "Oh, Sam is so cool."

     A chuckle slipped past Kynlee's lips and she shook her head. When they were kids, he always regarded Sam as the coolest person on Earth. She would curse around them and take them all over town whenever they wanted. Admittedly, she'd get in trouble for it, but she never cared. Sam made the five of them feel like they were worth a million bucks.

     Mindy tipped Kynlee's pool stick at her twin brother. "You only say that because she let you wear Pokémon onesies to bed for a year," she argued.

     A series of laughs rippled across the six and Chad smiled proudly. "That's true! That's a true statement."

     Finally finished setting up the game, Kynlee straightened out her posture. She tossed her hair over her shoulders before taking her drink and stick back from Wes and Mindy.

     "No, trust me, Sam is not cool." Amber objected, staring dead at Liv. "Her dad left her mom, right?" As she talked, she pulled out the flask she snuck in and poured it into Chad and Liv's drinks. "Walks right out when Tara's eight, Sam's thirteen. Sam started acting out, getting in trouble with the cops. And then, on Sam's eighteenth birthday, she leaves. Ghosts them all."

     Kynlee frowned at those last three words. To this day, she could still recall how crushed Tara was and how she, Mindy, and Amber stayed the night at her place for days until she stopped crying. It had been hard when Sam left. Very hard.

     "Maybe Sam's changed. I just don't want to see Tara hurt again."

     To Kynlee, Amber's protective stance on the situation made sense. She got it and the two had similar conversations over the years.

     Obviously, they loved their friend and wanted to protect her, but this was different. Everyone was older now and had grown up. Tara was fully capable of deciding how to handle things with her sister now and all the others needed to do was support her.

     Squinting his eyes at the black-haired girl, Wes tilted his head. "So what, you're protecting Tara from her own sister now?" he retorted, tossing the stick in his hands side to side.

     Out of all the members of the group, she hated Sam more than anyone else, and Wes never understood why. The Freeman girl didn't grow up with Sam; she knew her for a year before Sam left town. It didn't make sense.

     "Well, someone has to." Amber defended herself.

     Opening her mouth to call her ex-girlfriend the fuck out, Kynlee was promptly stopped by Mindy. A slap to the arm was all it took for her to dart her gaze to the twin.

     "Don't. It's not worth it," the curly-haired girl murmured under her breath, giving Kynlee a look. Luckily, no one else heard her.

     "Okay, so no guys are good enough for her and now her family's off-limits, too?"

     Amber simply rolled her eyes at the rhetorical question.

     "Motive!" Mindy hummed, making an 'mm' sound. "If I can't have her, no one can!"

     This time, Kynlee couldn't help herself. "Here we fucking go," she muttered, lining up the pool tip with the cue ball. The game had yet to start so she might as well make the first move. It also gave her an excuse not to listen to Mindy's inevitable movie tangent.

     "What?" Wes deadpanned, feeling a twinge of panic sliver down his spine.

     Just like it was clear as day how Chad and Kynlee felt for one another all these years, despite Liv's recent presence, it was just as clear how the blonde felt for Tara. Everyone but those three failed to recognize that.

     "We all know you have a crush on Tara," Mindy said, not bothering to sugarcoat the truth.

     Eyes widening, Kynlee shook her head at the statement. Why was nearly everything her friends were saying out of line that day? She pulled the cue back slightly before striking the ball, staying in position while the rest of the board balls flew across the table.

     "Okay. Come on, Mindy," Wes scoffed, trying to act like the insinuation wasn't true. Luckily, the twin didn't bring it up again.

     "But we're all suspects," she pointed out, a solemn tone painting her words.

     It was then that each of them felt a shadow of doubt cloud their perspectives of how they saw their friends. In Woodsboro, especially in Woodsboro, members of friend groups had a tendency to turn into masked murderers at the drop of a dime. Every time it happened there was a new motive fueling the bloodlust, but the outcome was always the same: friends lied and people died.

     Innocence was a disguise worn well by teenagers.

     The moment was quickly cut short by the Meeks-Martin girl's next sentence. "Except maybe Liv."

     A flattered and touched expression appeared on Liv's face. "Thank you!"

     "You're way too boring to be a psycho."

     It took everything in Kynlee Manral not to bust out laughing. Everything. The joke wasn't— okay, it was funny, but she didn't want to laugh at Liv's expense. That'd be mean and she didn't ever enjoy being on the receiving end of Chad's glare.

     So instead, she pressed her lips together and hid behind the pool stick. Her gaze was locked on the carpet until she heard her name.

     "And maybe Kynzie," Mindy added. "You're loyal to a fault when it comes to your friends. That's your fatal flaw."

     Amber snorted, rolling her eyes. "If that's not the fucking truth," she grumbled.

     Only Wes and Kynlee caught what she said and Wes gave her an incredulous look. Sure, he didn't know why Amber ended things with Kynlee, but he knew he would always defend Kynlee. She had a good heart and good intentions behind everything she did, regardless of whatever Amber believed.

     Kynlee's jaw slackened and her eyes narrowed. "Okay, Amber, don't even fucking start—"

     "Yo, Liv." An unfamiliar voice interrupted the conversation and the teens turned to see that Vince dude advancing toward them. "You want a real drink? Or are you happy sitting at this kids' table?"

     Immediately, Chad stepped to his girlfriend's defense and marched over. "All right, hey. Listen up, Uglier Michael Myers, it was a summer fling. It meant nothing."

     Vince raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, was I talkin' to you?"

     "Good God." Kynlee groaned, tossing her pool stick onto the table before maneuvering around it. Out of the remaining five, she knew she was the only one capable of calming the jock down if need be.

     "I don't fucking care who you're talking to," Chad snapped, easily towering over the man. In the background, Kynlee called his name, but he ignored her.

     "Liv, let's go," Vince ordered, motioning for the pink-haired girl to come with him.

     "Don't you fucking talk to her!" Chad shouted, moving so he was shielding his girlfriend from view.

     And in case anything got violent, Mindy, Wes, and Amber positioned themselves in front of Liv. None of them knew this Vince character and whether he was someone who would back down and not respond with violence. Precautions needed to be taken, just in case.

     "Shut your mouth," Vince warned, jabbing his pointer finger in Chad's face. However, he didn't get close enough to touch him yet.

     Chad's jaw clenched. "I don't want to fucking hear your goddamn voice." He felt a gentle tug on his shoulder and he didn't need to look to know it was Kynlee.

     "C, let it go. Come on," she hissed, glowering at Vince. Her level of irritation was rising higher. This asshat wasn't worth getting in a fight with.

     "I'd listen to girlfriend number two," he suggested, smirking. That comment alone was enough for Chad to ball his hands into fists and inch closer. "You better shut the fuck up." Right as Chad got in his face, Vince pulled out a switchblade.

     Bystanders who were onlooking gasped at the knife.

     Connie, one of the regular bartenders at Sunrise Sunset, intervened from where she was at the bar. "Hey! Get out of here or I'm calling the cops."

     In unplanned unison, Kynlee and Chad shooed Vince away and told him, "Go!"

     Leaning around the pair, Vince wet his lips and looked the McKenzie girl up and down. "I'll see you soon, sweetheart," he winked, backing up.

     In response, Liv flashed him the middle finger.

     Chad shook his head angrily. "Hey, man, fuck you," he spat, glaring at him.

     "You kids too! Let's go!" Connie shouted, gesturing for them to get out.

     "Did you see that shit?!" Chad scoffed, glancing at his best friend for confirmation that she'd just witnessed the same encounter. He made his way back over to the pool table, fists still clenched.

     "Yeah, I did," Kynlee clapped him on the back, sighing. "And he's not worth the time and energy. Let's go, knucklehead."

     Everybody downed their drinks and gathered their belongings. The game barely had time to commence.

     When they got outside, Kynlee noticed that nightfall had begun to come down on the town. That was the one downside to getting closer to the fall season— it got darker earlier out. The plus side was that the hot and stuffy California weather lessened in its intensity.

     "Hey, guys," Wes spoke up, pausing.

     Noticing that the blonde was no longer next to her, Kynlee pivoted to find him staring at his phone. "What's up?"

     "My mom just texted," he said, assumingly typing out a reply to Judy. "She wants to talk to Kyn, Liv, Amber, and me down at the station."

     "Why not Chad and Mindy?" Liv asked, swinging her and Chad's intertwined hands.

     Chad squeezed her hand. "She questioned us earlier at school," he explained, guessing that was why. Now that Vince was out of sight, he'd calmed down.

     "Try not to seem too suspicious," Mindy advised the four who'd just been summoned.

     "Minds, shut up," Kynlee groaned, flipping her off.

     "What?! Any of us could be the killer," the curly-haired girl pointed out, side-eyeing each of them. This wasn't a laughing matter. Literally any of them could be the masked killer who attacked Tara. History tended to repeat itself when it came to the identity of Ghostface.

     Kynlee narrowed her stare, shaking her head sadly. "You're having too much fun with this."

     "Come on," Wes said, digging his keys out of his pocket. "Let's go."

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     THE SILENCE OF THE POLICE STATION WAS EATING AT KYNLEE MANRAL. It was also getting on her nerves. She couldn't focus on anything except the sound of the clock across the room. In a way, she was hyper-fixated on it and every tick that passed by.

     Kynlee's knee and foot bounced up and down impatiently as she bit the inside of her cheek. With her eyes locked on the clock, she let out a breath. All she wanted was for it to be her turn to be interrogated. At least it would give her something to try and focus on and she wouldn't be suffocated by silence.

     Unlike most people, she wasn't nervous about being interviewed by the Sheriff. Her alibi for last night was solid. For those whose alibi's weren't... Well, it sucked to suck.

     It pained her to think of any of her friends that way, but Mindy's words of caution kept playing perpetually in her mind. Any of them could be the killer and if history told her anything, it was likely there were two killers. A small fact that Kynlee couldn't help but contemplate.

     "Who do you think the killer is?"

     Blinking, Kynlee turned her head to the right. "¿Qué?" she asked on instinct, shortly realizing it was Amber who'd talked to her.

     "You heard me," Amber smirked, nudging her shoulder. "Come on, tell me."

     Kynlee's eyebrows knitted together. So now she wanted to talk to her? Really? After all her snarky comments today? Well, not just today. It'd been every day since the breakup at the beginning of August.

     "Probably some rando that got bored," the black-haired girl shrugged.

     Both Wes and Liv were being interrogated, leaving the ex-girlfriends alone in the waiting room. Wes had to be questioned by an officer since he was the Sheriff's son and Judy was speaking with Liv.

     Amber gave Kynlee a knowing look. "Now, that's not true."

     A frown tugged at the corners of Kynlee's lips. Out of her circle of friends, only Chad and Amber could tell when she was lying, and she hated it. (That excluded Pa and Judy Hicks.) However, that didn't matter. She and Amber weren't on great terms and she no longer felt comfortable opening up to the girl. The last time she had, what she shared ended up being used against her.

     "Why are we even calling the person who attacked Tara a killer?" Kynlee avoided giving Amber a straight answer. "Nobody's been killed."

     Amber hummed. "Yet."

     Scowling, a mask of disgust covered her face. "Fuck off with that. You sound like Mindy. Don't put that energy into the universe," Kynlee said sharply.

     "I'm just being realistic," Amber defended. "We live in Woodsboro, Kynni."

     At the usage of the nickname Amber had coined for her when they were dating, Kynlee tensed. It'd been nearly two months since she last heard it uttered.

     Before anything else could be said, the Sheriff and Liv returned.

     "Kynlee?" Judy called, giving the Manral girl a warm smile when they locked eyes. "You're good to come back now." She jutted her head in the direction of the interrogation room.

     A breath of relief left Kynlee and she visibly deflated. Finally. Wordlessly, she stood up and followed after the Sheriff. At the same time she did, Liv walked past her and they exchanged small smiles.

     Suddenly, her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her back pocket. While she continued to follow Wes's mom, she checked who texted her. Not to her surprise, it was Chad.

     hey, wanna come over and play pokémon heartgold when you're done at the station? i'll order us pizza too :)

     An involuntary grin spread across her cheeks and she typed a reply.

     fuck yeah! wes was gonna drive me home, but i'll have him drop me off at your place. is it gonna be just us playing video games?

     Chad responded immediately.

     and mindy if she decides to be annoying hahaha

     Biting down on her lip, Kynlee tried not to break into a bigger grin. It was difficult not to when it came to him.

     sounds good! i'll see you soon :)

     At that, she muted her phone and tucked it away. Just in time, too, for they'd reached the eight-by-ten-foot interrogation room. The door was opened for her and she gave Judy a nod of appreciation.

     "How are you doin', Kynlee?" Judy asked, sitting down at the metal table.

     Kynlee sat across from her, nodding. "I'm okay. How are you?"

     "I'm all right, thank you," the blonde woman smiled, laying out her notebook, case file, and pen. "I just have a few routine questions for you. Is that okay?"

     "Yeah, sure," Kynlee answered, pulling her hair into a high ponytail.

     Picking her pen up, the Sheriff clicked it open and brought her notebook closer. "So, I'm just going to jump straight to it. Where were you last night?" Throughout all eighteen years she'd known the black-haired girl, she'd always been direct. There was no beating around the bush with Kynlee so Judy did her best to meet her where she was at.

     And Kynlee matched her energy instantly.

     "I was at Pa's, my dad's, tattoo shop, Dragonborn Ink, from five to seven-fifty-two, I think. The cameras can confirm it. He was doing a new tattoo on my arm," she rolled back the mesh long sleeve of her top, showing Judy the new ink. "Then, I went to the high school to meet with Chad and Liv after football practice. It takes twelve minutes to get from the shop to the school, but I ran so it took me roughly eight minutes. I only know that because Chad gets out of practice at eight and I made it there right before it ended.

     "I met with Chad when he got out. Liv didn't show. We had plans to go to Yamato's, that Japanese restaurant off Thornpike Road. It ended up just being me and Chad, though. We were there until close and then he drove me home."

     "Yamato's closes at ten, right?" Judy checked.

     Kynlee nodded. "Yeah, it does."

     "When you got home, was anybody there?" Judy gave the girl a reassuring smile; she could hear her platform boots tapping against the ground. Although Kynlee took medication for her ADHD, Judy knew it was still a challenge for her to sit and focus on a single task at a time. Restlessness came very easily to her.

     "Pa was. We watched Garo: Crimson Moon until midnight." At this, a look of confusion appeared. "It's an anime show," she clarified.

     The Sheriff hummed, jotting something down in her notebook. "Ah, okay, okay. I want to go back to something real quick," she read over a line she'd written earlier. "Liv was supposed to meet you at the high school, but she didn't show up?"

     "Uh, yeah. Chad said she texted him, saying something came up and she couldn't make it," Kynlee shrugged, not letting on that she was well aware of how suspicious her friend was coming across in this interview. If she could change that, she would, but she'd known Judy since she was born. The two knew the other well enough to know when they were lying. So, lying to help Liv out would do nothing but potentially make it come across as if Kynlee was trying to cover for her or cover something up.

     A thought suddenly came to mind while Judy wrote something else down. "I completely forgot to mention it, but I got calls from a blocked number five times last night when I was at the tattoo shop. Then, I got two calls from a blocked number while I was running to the high school. I answered them both and heard nothing but heavy breathing. I hung up. I don't know if that could be related or..." she trailed off, switching from tapping her foot to bouncing her knee.

     Furrowing her eyebrows, the Sheriff sat up a little taller. "Seven total calls from a blocked number?"

     "Mm-hmm. Here." Kynlee drew her phone out of her back pocket and unlocked it. Quickly, she pulled up the call log. "They lasted a few seconds."

     Judy clicked on each individual call, jotting down the timestamps and duration times. "Interesting," she muttered, forehead creasing. "Well, thank you for showing me. Do you mind if I hand your phone over to one of our techs to see if they can find the source of the calls?"

     "Sure," the black-haired girl said, unsure if anything would come from the police looking into those calls. It seemed highly unlikely that it was related to Tara's attack, but crazier things had happened.

     "Is there a passcode on the phone?" the blonde clicked on the screen to look at the calls again, bringing up the screensaver. The photo was flipped on its side and she tilted the device to get a better look. It was a greyscale picture of Kynlee and Andi Manral blowing out candles on a Lapras-shaped cake at the girl's sixth birthday party. Lapras was known as being Kynlee's favorite Pokémon species in the Nintendo and Game Freak's Pokémon franchise. The image warmed Judy's heart.

     Kynlee felt her cheeks flush and she was thankful for the dimly lit room. "Uh, yeah," she cleared her throat, aware that the woman across from her would probably recognize the code. "It's ninety-one-two-thousand-and-three."

     The number combination stood for September first, two-thousand-and-three— Chad and Mindy's birthday.

     And Judy knew that a few seconds after she processed the information. For the sake of not embarrassing her son's friend, she chose to only nod. "I'll make sure this gets back to you later tonight or tomorrow morning. Is that okay?" she clicked the phone off, setting it aside.

     "Yeah!" Kynlee replied, then a reminder came to mind. "Do you mind if I text Chad? I just wanna let him know that I won't have my phone on me in case something comes up. We're hanging out later."

     Nodding, the Sheriff gave her another smile. "'Course, go ahead. I think we're done, anywho. Thank you for your time, kiddo." She slid the device back over.

     Kynlee returned the smile, picking up her phone. "'Course, Sheriff. Anything to help catch this fuckface." At the choice of name, she received a disapproving stare. "Listen, this pinche pendejo attacked the sweetest person on Earth. They deserve to be fucking called rude shit."

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❝ you were on my 𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒅 all the 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆. . .
𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 out a 𝒇𝒖𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 for 𝒕𝒘𝒐. . .

what i'd 𝒅𝒐 in a room 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒂𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆, only 𝒎𝒆 and 𝒚𝒐𝒖! ❞

╭⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀╮

¿Qué? ━━ What?
Pinche pendejo ━━ Fucking asshole

╰⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀╯

     judy hicks is underrated. she deserves more appreciation. i will be incorporating her a little more than the movies did. that's my mother.

     i am absolutely in love with kynlee's relationships with the other characters of the movie. i know she hasn't had many scenes or interactions with liv or amber, but there will be more in later chapters! especially with amber. there's a lot to unpack there.

     i hope everyone enjoyed the chapter!

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˒⠀𝑹𝑬𝑴𝑰𝑵𝑫𝑬𝑹. . . ▬⠀⤸

Thank you all for taking the time out of your day to comment on this story. It means a lot and helps the story be spread to a broader audience &&& allows me to grow as an author. All I ask is that people vote on each chapter, please. As a creator, it takes time to write and develop stories. So please, vote on every chapter. It means a lot more than I could ever express.

Don't forget to vote & comment!

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˒⠀𝑪𝑶𝑷𝒀𝑹𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻. . . ▬⠀⤸

❝ All Rights Reserved.
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electronic or mechanical methods,
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