On The Fifth Day

Day Two

The day before had been a mess. It took a while at the police station, and a lot of convincing for them to believe my story. In the end, they were able to pull traffic cam footage and find out that the driver had brown hair and not blonde hair like me. Of course, they weren't able to get her face and they couldn't charge her. I thought that was stupid. All those people that supposedly had witnessed the accident, and no one was able to identify her? They were stupid if you asked me. Especially the man claiming that I had killed his father in a hit-and-run couldn't even tell the hair color of the driver.

Even though I was technically in the clear, I was shook to the bone. I was in class the next day, staring ahead at the board. My mind was not processing anything. I felt like Iwas in shock. I was just flesh and bone jumbled together. My brain was just a jumble of nerves and neurons and whatever else I didn't pay that much attention to anatomy in science or biology or whatever. I don't feel like a person. I felt like something other, something disconnected and discombobulate.

A note flew across my desk, all wrinkled and squished together. I hesitantly looked down at itI looked up at my English teacher. She was talking to the board, trying to teach the Spark Notes version of a book she knew none of us would ever read. She had a pointer and everything. It was purple and had a white finger that was closed except for the pointer finger, a literal printer. It was  stupid.

Anyway, I carefully unwrapped the note . It just read 'murderer'. All the blood drained from my face as I looked around. All my classmates' faces remained stony. There is no way to tell who had sent it to my desk and why. Cold shot through my veins. It was like ice was floating through my entire body and getting stuck in my heart so blood couldn't go through. We're lungs still filtering air? Was my chest just moving up and down with my breath? Was my heart still pumping? No no no no this could not be happening. How did people find out? It wasn't even me. After questioning, the police rover it wasn't me. And I even filed a police report that someone had stolen my car and they said they would try to find the person, but I doubted it. No one could give them a description of her. I knew who it was because I saw her. I saw her take the car, but they had nothing to pin her to the accident. I had no clear evidence of her because I was the only one who saw her. My friends were going to testify for me, like best friends do, but the police wouldn't just take their word for it sadly. Because under pressure, Paige caved in and said she didn't technically see her but knew it was her. I loved my friends, but they were stupid.

My hands were balled in my lap. I was seething  with anger, both from Paigeand Lindsay. Lindsay for stealing my car and hitting someone with it and then framing me. Paige for ruining the case.

I tried to breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. It was funny that such a simple task was so hard to do. Just breathe in and breathe out, I told myself. It would all be okay. Because I would find that loser Lindsay and I would make her pay. I squeezed my eyes shut, and then I heard a sharp rap against my desk. I open my eyes to see Mrs. Jones staring down at me.

"Do you like sleeping in my class?"

I opened my eyes and shook my head. It was so difficult to explain what happened. She was a mean, ugly teacher. And by ugly, I meant literally . She was old and wrinkled. She had the ugliest shade of red in her hair with the ugliest short bob you had ever seen. She was ugly as a teacher, the kind that had the worst personality and would fail you if you so much as uttered a word of disgrace in her class. No one in the school liked her. I wasn't even sure her kids liked her. She had a lot of them, she always talked about them, super annoying. But I had never been on her naughty list. Not until this day, anyway.

I smiled up at her and shook my head. Quotation mark "No, Mrs. Jones. Sometimes I just think better with my eyes closed."

It wasn't sarcastic, it was just the first thing I thought to say. It was genuine. But she scowled at me.