Chapter One:

55 5 3
                                    

Stephanie Martin was your average teenage mean girl. She was the head cheerleader, dated the captain of the football team, went to parties, was popular, and oh yes was the meanest girl in Battle Ground High School. All the girls as far as I was concerned adored her and hated her at the same time because she was never bothered nor bullied by anyone she was also the most ruthless being and got everything she wanted. She got the car she wanted, the guys she wanted, the grades she wanted, everything. She never worked for anything because everything was just handed to her. Well, until it wasn't.

***
The start of our freshman year last year went like any other school year where you meet your friends, find your classes, and count down the days until winter break, then spring break, then summer. But little did I know, that year would be the year where the moments that lead up to what happened to Stephanie would be the key to solving her case.

Everything seemed fine after winter break. Which makes sense because everyone just came back from the holidays but after spring break, is when my best friend Kamrin and I started noticing that Stephanie seemed off.

Kamrin and I sort of became a part of Stephanie's so-called "friend group" of mean girls. Even though we weren't mean girls ourselves we still got roped in because we were pretty much the brains of the operation and she thought we were pretty enough to play the part in her plan to be the Alpha and Omega of our high school which she almost got away with.

Almost.

Stephanie seemed to have the perfect life, but I still feel like she was hiding something from us. Which was interesting because I was like her inside man where she would tell me everything and anything. But after spring break, that all changed.

That's when she started to spiral.

She stopped taking care of herself. Her thick brown hair was thinning, she had bags under her eyes as if she hadn't slept for days, and she looked paranoid. Her eyes would dart around the room like at any moment something terrible was going to happen.

I had no idea what was going on and neither did Kamrin.

When we would mention her boyfriend Ronnie, who was captain of the football team, she would tense up, brush it off and change the subject. She seemed to be having problems with Ronnie and not just me and Kamrin could see that. It's as if something happened over spring break that I couldn't figure out at the time.

She eventually broke up with him and he started showing up to school late. And Stephanie looked a bit more like herself but still seemed off.

I was also in a relationship at the time with my boyfriend Toby but, Stephanie always needed me whenever I finally got to spend some time with him and once I finally fixed her problems and thought I might just have a little bit of time with him I would have to do homework, watch my brothers, or deal with one of Riley or Stacy's problems and would never get any time with him. So after dealing with too much pressure on me I broke up with him because I wanted to give him the time he deserved not punch him to the side all the time.

Now Stacy is a very sweet person and is very kind to everyone but she is a try-hard and tries to be liked by everyone but, who doesn't. She just tries her best to make everyone happy. While Riley on the hand is selfish, annoying, and just a plain bitch. It seems as if her mindset was that she needed to fend for herself all the time and that everyone around her was going stab her in the back or something.

After all that fun drama, it was finally time for summer break. Everyone was excited and already planning parties and hangouts that were going to happen. Well, everyone except Stephanie. She was quiet. Which was surprising since she was typically the one that was always talking and running her mouth a mile a minute about these things. But this time, she was quiet.

A few weeks go by and nobody in our friend group had heard anything from Stephanie and Ronnie said

"She probably just wants attention. You should just leave her alone Lily plus, she did stuff like this all the time."

And Kamrin agreed with him on that, so I decided to leave everything as is and go have a fun time with everyone at the river like we do every summer and we had a great time. Everything was going smoothly after that. No drama from Stephanie, Stacy seemed happier, Riley was actually being nice for once, and Ronnie and I we're actually getting along, which was nice.

Until just about a week before school started.

I get a call from Kamrin and she's completely in shock. I remember how shaken her voice sounded when she said

"Lily, she's gone. Stephanie is gone."

I froze.

Nothing ever happens like this where we live and now, a girl from our school. MY school is missing. And nobody knows why she went missing, where she is, or if she's alright.

I remember not being able to sleep that night. I was still in shock about what Kamrin had told me. The thing that bothering me the most was, who did it?

Everyone who was friends with her well, more like "friends" with her didn't like her. Even though we would hang out with her none of us were really friends with Stephanie. She just roped us all in, one by one, she would constantly blackmail us if we tried to get her off our case or if we wanted her to just leave us alone. But even so, someone did it. My guess  was that it was someone Stephanie was a ruthless bitch to, someone who had much more than their pride or ego crushed under humiliatingly degrading high heel, someone who despised her so much they wanted her gone. For good.

***

Who Killed Stephanie Martin? (#1 The Who Killed Series)Where stories live. Discover now