The Devil's Advocate

One

Unlike most of its residents, Cady Heron loves Sherwood, Illinois.

Growing up surrounded by nothing but animals and vegetation, with the grandeur of the African Savanna making her feel so small and alone, Cady used to dream about malls, high schools, fast food chains, obese people, and all of the other cool things her parents told her about America.

When Cady was 10 and her parents lost their research funding, meaning they had to pack the little belongings they had and go back to the United States, she was over the moon.

Cady was a little disappointed when she found out her parents had bought a house in a small town and not in the big city like she always dreamed of, but as it turns out, even a tiny town in the Midwest was more exciting than the days she spent cooped up in her tent, with no friends and no else to talk to but the wild animals her parents were studying.

From the moment she arrived, ten year old Cady was fascinated by everything: the pretty houses with green lawns and white picket fences, the skateboards, even the traffic lights, and the pavement streets were fascinating to her.

Cady's first years in Sherwood were amazing. The whimsical town had a little magic to it, though she seemed to be the only one who saw that; everybody else either didn't care about it, or couldn't wait to get the hell out, like Regina, Gretchen, and Karen, who were constantly talking about their plants to move to L. A or New York to become models once they graduate.

Things changed in her third year. The magic wore out. It was 2016, the year Cady entered 7th grade. The year Heather Chandler and Veronica Sawyer died.

The town changed after that. People stopped being as amicable with each other; they started locking their doors at night; kids don't play in the streets after dark anymore. It was as if a dark cloud had settled on top of the town after what happened, unwilling to go away, painting everything a dull, grey color.

From what Cady heard, from her teachers and her friends (especially the Plastics, they knew everything about everyone), nothing like that had happened before.

Sure, people had died, and the town was filled with old people, but no one had ever been murdered before. The fact that Heather and Veronica had been so young, just 17 years old, with their whole lives ahead of them, makes it all even more tragic.

No one knows what happened to Heather Chandler because she was never found. One September night, she entered her car, at around eleven p.m., and was never seen again. She was proclaimed dead after unsuccessful searches for her body, and the case was dropped.

Veronica disappeared a week after Heather, though she wasn't as hard to find. A lonely body in the woods, hanging from a black birch tree.

Inside her backpack was Heather's phone, filled with hundreds of texts and missed calls from her friends and loved ones; on her wrist was Heather Chandler's red scrunchie; on her pocket, a handwritten suicide note where she confessed everything.

Heather was murdered in cold blood by her best friend, and Veronica made clear on her note that they were never going to find her body.

It will forever be unknown whether she did it by guilt or by fear of going to jail, or just a way to say 'fuck you all' to the police and prove that she was the one in control, but what Veronica did to Heather drove her to her own death.

Correction: Cady used to love Sherwood.