All nine students of Magnus High are standing together in a circle when the redhead's phone chimes. Alissa slides her phone out and sees a series of messages from HEL.
"Guys," Alissa says, her voice soft. "I've got a bunch of messages from HEL," she taps on the notifications.
"Wait what?" says Lucas, "out of all of us, this psycho decided to message the new chick?"
She looks at him confused.
She reads out, "'There's a brick kept near the chain link fence around the basketball court. A bolt cutter will be dug underneath where the brick is. Take it out and cut the chains, then enter the campus. Then wait for my further orders.'"
"Wait, cutting the fence is not enough. We'll have to—" Aman is interrupted.
"Tear it apart," Cody says flatly.
Alissa slides her phone in the back of her jeans, "How do we get to the basketball court?"
"It's behind the main building," Kevin points towards the massive building they're all standing in front of. "Follow me."
They all walk around the main building which in itself is a journey. Snowflakes start to fall from the sky as they pass a life size statue of Marcus Aurelius astride his horse, who Sarah recognises from her history class. Kevin and Cody don't.
Snow slithers its way down a tree making a faint sound as it falls. However, Aman jumps over the sudden sound of the lump of snow making impact with the snow below.
"Pussy," Lucas cackles.
"God, I'm scared as hell," Aman mutters to himself.
"So am I," Alissa gives him a faint smile.
As they walk past the stone facade of the main building, they all see an upright rectangular block of white marble set over a platform nearby. The art council—the council Alissa wanted to join—had engraved more figurines of angels and cupids like the ones on the main building and outlined them with black. The moonlight casts a soft glow on the engraved images, the lower part of the block being hardly visible.
But at the lower right corner, Alissa sees what others don't. An angel with frayed wings and her mouth stitched shut. Tears running down her cheeks.
Sometimes, being observant is a tragedy.
"Aman," they shake hands.
That's when Aman made a friend for life.
***
The basketball court was surrounded with a chainlink fence with concertina coils mounted on top, like it was a prison more than a school. They were all inside the school campus already, but all the buildings in the campus were locked. "I guess there's a secret way inside the school," Cody says.
Holly knows the secret way inside that Cody is talking about. She knows all the storerooms where no one goes, and different ways in and out of the school. That's how she manages to smoke during breaks.
Cody sets the brick aside. The spot where the brick was kept was clearly uneven and and the soil was spread all around it. He runs his hand through it, "Recently dug," says Cody.
"Makes sense if you think about it," Derek says. "The basketball team practices here all night. Sometimes even after midnight; so he couldn't really do much of his shady shit here when school was on. Now that the vacations are going on, he got the chance."
Cody nods, focused as he digs for the bolt cutter.
"We're going to need two people to tear this apart. I'm one," Kevin says.
YOU ARE READING
Alissa
Mystery / Thriller"Years from now, Kevin Sterling will wake up in the middle of the night, think back to this exact moment and everything else that followed, down a prozac and go back to sleep with the lights on." If a stranger threatened you into coming to school in...
