As Easy As Murder

24. pardon?

Back in the restraints of the dormitory, sitting on my bed, I realize It's been a full 2 weeks since I've been to Criminology. 

I'm curled up in a fuzzy grey blanket, warmth radiating through my bones, as I have a conversation with Mom on the old landline I plugged in, scolding her for not taking care of herself enough yet again, her 500th offense. 

"Mom, you have got to watch your sugar." I sigh, standing up, stretching tall, sun shining in the windows, my crop-top coming up to allow the airflow from the fan to cool off my belly. It's a Wednesday, the middle of the week, the balance day. 

I sigh as Mom's choppy voice comes through the phone, "I know, I know." I can hear her chomping, and I roll my eyes, hoping she can sense my annoyance through the phone lines. That my disapproval is traveling through them and into her bedroom, scolding her. 

"Speak of the devil, what are you eating right now?" I place a hand on my hip, suddenly feeling like the Mom of my Mom. 

"A healthy granola bar." 

"Really? Not an Oreo?" I raise an eyebrow, once again hoping she can see it through the phone. 

Silence. 

"It's just one." 

I sigh. We go back and forth but ultimately, the case of the Careless Diabetic Woman is not settled. I place down the phone and Loretta walks into the room, bowl of ramen in hand, curls tied into bushy pigtails. 

"Oh my god Averen, did I tell you I have this scrumptious professor? He's so-" She pauses. "Don't you have class right now?" She says through a mouth of noodles. 

I shrug, "Yeah, so?" 

She sighs and puts an arm around me. "Look, I know I'm not the best example. But you have got to take your ass to class. You're gonna fail. And I refuse to be the responsible one in this friendship so you better get it together." She gives me a rough pat and heads out, leaving me there flabbergasted. 

Loretta just schooled me. 

I think this is the end. 

I see the light. 

I throw on a mismatched outfit, knowing Kori won't be in class because he has a dentist appointment, so I don't need to wear one of my salty contradiction fits. I'm still holding the 'dress more respectable' grudge. The fire of Kori hatred burning in my veins still reignites once in a while. Then he looks at me, and the chocolate waterfall of his eyes puts it out. 

I sound pathetic. I might as well be sitting on a balcony picking petals off a daisy saying 'he loves me, he loves me not' and asking him to let down his hair. 

I throw my messenger bag over my shoulder and tuck in my laptop, setting off for yet another hour of Anthony's rambling and Professor Simon's perfection. 

I stop at the on campus coffee shop for the first time, only because I often forget it's existence, often opting for an energy drink from a vending machine. I step up to the counter, ordering and iced latte. 

Walking into class, I feel like a zombie. Professor Simon's is already talking. She gives me a little wave, waving me over to the front. I sigh, knowing what I'm in for, my sentence, my punishment. I stand there as the Hello song massacre's me,  40 heads there to watch my social murder. I stand there like roadkill, dead and bleeding out until the tragedy ends. 

The horror ends, and I make it to my seat. To my absolute membrane impairment, Kori is sitting in the front row, arms perfectly folded as always, feigning angelicness. I'm standing here, outfit of a insane homeless Bob Ross, while he sits there with his perfect ironed button-down. 

Anthony is chatting Ian's ear off, who he has essentially never left alone since day one, the two becoming an unconvential pair and some form of friends, while I am internally grateful for because he leaves the rest of us alone. 

"Class," Proffessor Simon's claps her hands, smiling widely. "I'd like to introduce you to someone." She gestures to the doorway. 

I follow the end of her pointer finger. A small girl is standing in the doorway, her silhouette casted on the wall behind her, high ponytail swinging as she inches into the room, having captured the attention of the lecture. 

Muffled chatter swivels through the room, and professor simon's shushes the perpatators, gesturing to the girl again, who has gained a phony smile so big she looks like s 6th grader showing off their teeth after freshly loosing their braces. "This is my stepdaughter, Felicity. She'll be joining us for a few weeks. I think she'll work well with us and I expect you all to treat her with kindness. Lici, sit wherever you'd like, sweetheart." 

She's stunning, waves of light brown tied into the swinging ponytail, ocean blue eyes capturing the sea, and yet also the night sky, her outfit a mix of 2000's and 90's, all of the guys eyes trailing exactly where you'd expect, just below the studded pink belt of her low rise jeans. 

She takes her seat right next to me, plopping down a MacBook, her ponytail falling perfectly over her shoulder. I smile at her, but she doesn't return the favour, and I feel like I've time-traveled back to grade school, placed back at the end of the mean girl's table, taunted and tired. Not that I ever let bullying get to me, infact, most of the time I just swung my backpack around and hit them with it. 

Of course that did land me in the principals one when one of the girls I did that to was 4'9 and I sent her flying 11 feet and she broke her ankle into smithereens. 1 month of detention and carrying the girls books around for her was the consequence I got, and I didn't regret it at all. 

Once I've snapped back to the present, I tune back into Professor Simon's voice, "I'd like to do another partners assignment, just a quick-in class thing. I don't want to take away from your fake case, which I am very impressed with all of your progresses in. 2 teams have already finished, and I've seen friendships form,  it's delightful." She sighs. "I'd like you to pair with the person beside you and pick a case that intrigues you out of this list of 5," She writes 5 cases on   board, each very well known and that took the world by storm, "Then explain it in your own words and how it makes you feel. It should be easy, this is middle school work, got it?" 

We all nod, and she sits down at her desk, typing sounds emitting from her laptop, mug of coffee steaming next to her, her floral print dress fitting her vibrant personality and vibe. 

I turn to Felicity, but she doesn't look at me. She's looking ahead at something. I follow her gaze and It leads me to Kori. Felicity pratically has stars in her eyes as she observes him, and a knife twists in my arterys, anger surging through my veins, but I know I can't do anything about it. We aren't official. We don't even talk besides the case and name calling. Yet, I couldn't hold my tongue. 

"Hey, we need to get started." It comes out sharp and icey cold. Her head whips around like an owl to look at me, ponytail whipping with it, her glare shooting lazers into my eyes. "Shh." She shushes me, then she the turns back to Kori, her eyes regaining their dreamy look. 

"Why are you staring at him?" I ask. 

"He's really cute. Hey, I know through the grapevinethat  you and him are messing around our whatever, but listen, I'm way more his type. I mean, look at him, he'd clearly be into someone with more class. You'd be better with..." She scans the room. "That guy." She points to a guy in the back who's index finger is knucke deep in his left nostril and I feel sick to my stomach, partly because he ate his findings, and partly because of what this witch just said to me, her ponytail radiating prissiness. 

"Pardon?" I say slowly, shocked to my corse, hands clenched in tight fists. She just walked in here and I already want to take her back to 1692 and accuse her of being a witch pubicly. 

"You heard me. Back off, and stay there. I'll make him mine, whether naturally or by force." 

"First of all, we are NOT messing around, and second of all, Kori likes people who can hold a decent conversation and have a morcel of intelligence, both behaviours you don't exhibit. Third of all, that is the creepiest thing I've ever hea-" 

She completely disregards and brushes me off, starting to talk about which case we should select, all while a fire is burning through the bridges of reason and sense in my brain, preparing to lash out and cause a scene in this lecture room, all while looking like I got confused and thought this was a Micheal's craft store. 

By the time class is over, I'm seething. 

So is Ian, because Anthony is showing him how he learned to do a ballerina twirl, which is actually him just walking in a circle and humming Swan Lake. 

Someone taps my shoulder, and I whip around, the angry words I held in preparing to pour off my tongue, the half-full ice coffee in my head ready to be thrown, "What?!"

It's Kori. He freezes and throws his hands up and chuckles. "Woah, what did I do?"

I sigh, shoulders sinking as I get off my high horse. I exit the room, heading down the hall, all while Kori follows me, "So, I think today we should take a look at the family member pages of the kit, learn more about the victims life and living invironment, past struggles, etcetera." 

"Yeah, whatever," I grumble as we go to his dorm like usual, but I suddenly feel territorial, an angry tigress, looking over my shoulder to unsure Little Miss Serial Killer isn't following us or hiding in a bush with binoculars with her creepiness. Maybe she's taking Criminal Justice to as lessons on how to be a good criminal and perfect her art. 

I sit down on Anthony's poofy pillow he lets me borrow when I come over, since Kori still hasn't let me break the no using furniture rule, dispite my pleads. He sits down with me, opening the kit. 

"Alright, let's start here," He looks up at me, sensing my anger. I cross my arms. "What's up with you? You're sitting there brooting like you lost a bet." 

"I'm not!" I snap. 

He raises an eyebrow, and I sigh, acknowledging that I fully just proved his point, "That girl who joined class, Felicity, she's a bitch, she's super catty, and she's really arrogant, she thinks she can have you, and-" I freeze. His eyes widen, his mouth curling into a smirk, his hands tucked tightly into his Khaki's, "You don't want someone else to have me, Averen?" 

"NO! I-, I mean, well," I hold up the kit, "Let's just do this, okay? Forget it, I never said anything." 

So we did. We flipped to the next page of where we're at. 4 phone numbers were written down in shakey blue ink, names listed next to them, and their relation to Molly. We squint our eyes, confused by the nature of the numbers. 

"No way, they hired actors for us to call?" I grab my phone, getting ready to dial them. 

He facepalms, "They're probably artificial intellligence, Averen." 

"Just say AI, you smart alec." I hiss. I cringe at my own dumbness, and hand him my phone, in no state to talk to a stranger. He starts dialing the first number, which is the Mom. We wait as it rings, and I bite my nails, for so many different reasons. The automated number picks up, and Kori asks the first one of the questions we agreed on to ask. 

The voice is very realistic, a soft-spoken woman. An ambience is heard in the back. The AI is very advanced, even responding with the according emotion. However, the voice is laced with a layer of confusion, like she can't understand something. It slowly turns into agitation, then anger, and before we know it the AI is enraged, and we start to question what the hell is on the other end of the line. 

"ROT IN HELL." It harshly yells through the phone at us, before we ended the call. We look at each other, both of our eyes wide. I shut down my phone, tucking it into my pocket, a bit shaken up by whatever that experience was. 

"Well, this has been an interesting morning," He mutters under his breath. "I find out you don't hate me afterall, then I get cussed out by an AI.""I do too hate you." I cross my arms tightly, kicking him with my combat boot. He doesn't shove back like usual though. 

"Look, I'm sorry that Felicity girl, hurt your little feewings," He teases, his lips puffing into a comical pout. I roll my eyes. 

Then, he does the thing I least expected. Something I'd never fathom. Something that had crossed by mind, something that had kept me awake in the form of pre-sleep fantasies, fantasies that annoy me so badly, considering how Kori came to be in my life in the first place. 

He hugged me. 

He pulled me against his chest. It was not unironic, and he was being sarcastic, but for some reason I didn't kick around or shove him or push him away. I laid there against his chest. And he didn't push me off either. We just sat there. 

And then I remembered my outfit. My rat's nest hair. And my weird divorced dad flip-flops. 

"I gotta go," I stand up, gathering my belongings and putting back Anthony's poofy pillow. "And what happened to your dentist appointment." 

"I decided I didn't want to miss class and rescheduled it, and, wait, we still have to call the other numb-" 

I laugh at the novelty of him postponing an appointment just to sit in a lecture with Anthony, Ian, and nose-picker guy, not to mention miss John Wayne Gacey over here, because she certainly acts like a clown and is most definitely a serial killer, "Bye!" 

The minute I leave the room, my smile drops. 

What the hell was that?

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I stomp around the dorm room, kicking things and ranting, while Loretta sits there smirking and laughing at my rage. 

"I'M SUCH AN IDIOT, ETTI. I GOT BUTTERFLIES. I LET MYSELF GET BUTTERFLYS." I screech, while Loretta tips over from laughing so hard. 

"I FELL FOR HIM!" I fall to my knees dramatically, keeling over like I've been shot and have 2 minutes to live, which is what it feels like. 

Loretta gathers herself and smirks, taking a handful from the bowl of popcorn inbetween her legs, devouring it, "I predicted this movie." She winks. 

I kick the Blondie poster in absolute fury, then fall to the ground holding my toe, causing Loretta to start choking on the popcorn. 

I have to hobble over while simultaniously holding my throbbing toe, and slap Loretta in the back with the force of a WWE wrestler. She spits out the popcorn, and I allow myself to collapse back onto the floor. 

Laying there, staring up at the ceiling, I feel like a full-blown idiot. 

I tilt my head up, looking out the window, half-expecting to see Felicity there spying on me. Oh, wait, no, she wouldn't spend her time on someone who lacks class such as myself. She must only target people who wear sweater vests. 

I sigh, massaging my toe.

Everything hurts. 

Including my heart.