Shoot to Kill

Chapter One

As usual, I sat in the backseat of a red Tacoma with my brother Sam and his two friends as we drove down 2nd Street towards school. Yes, I am used to being in a car full of boys, thank you very much. But what’s unusual is that it’s our last day of school, which means we are on a rare rally/minimum-day schedule, and we all gather in the gym one last time to congratulate the seniors, wish everyone a happy summer, blah blah blah. Okay, even my brother—who’s already been to these rallies twice—doesn’t even know what happens; but he told me he doesn’t remember because it’s so much fun and it becomes a blur. Freaky.  

Thinking about the rally, I went on my Twitter page and tweeted: 

“Four more hours until I get to cheer at the End-of-the-Year rally! :) This has been an AMAZING year!” 

But a minute after I finished, I found a nightmare at the very top of my Twitter page; look at what Mikayla Neufeld has to say about me now. Like anyone listens to you, Mikayla. Ever since she’s been clinging to my friend,Tori, she has been posting rude comments all over our Facebook walls and Twitter pages. We all thought that someday we would see the end of it, but there isn’t a sign of stopping now. The only reason she clings to Tori is that Tori is cooler than she is, and Mikayla wants to be the popular girl here at Enochs High School; but here’s the reality: everyone knows her name, but nobody pays attention to her. I accidentally scoff loud enough for Sam to hear me in the front passenger seat. 

“Problem, sis?” he asks without even a glance at me.

“It’s just Mikayla again,” I reply. “Listen to this: ‘Hey everyone: Peppy Little Lyric gets to cheer for us at the rally! Get a clue Lyric, your attitude makes me want to shoot myself’.” 

“That bitch is just jealous because she’s not you.”

“Thanks for the compliment, Sam, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call her a bitch. No one deserves to be called that.”

“Fine, then. That wannabe redneck is just—”

“Still too far, Sam.”

“Damn it, Lyric!” he yelled as the truck turned into the school parking lot. “What else am I supposed to say? I suppose you can come up with something to say about her.”

“There are lots of them! There’s…there…um…” I pondered over it until Sam’s friend finally found a parking spot. “Okay, fine, she’s a bitch.”

“Thank you!”

Everyone started piling out of the truck the second it was put into park.  All four of us started walking towards the New Gym to get into the school. I could tell that one of Sam’s friends was trying to sneak a peak of my spankies. Perv. I casually pulled my skirt down so he would have no chance of looking. 

As I walked into my first class (English, yuck!), there were people looking on their phones and glancing at me at the same time. Looks like people saw what Mikayla had to say about the rally. As I quietly sat down, Tori sprinted towards me and took a seat next to me. 

“Did you see what Nutty Neufeld tweeted?” she asked as she pulled out her phone to show me.

“I know already: I was tweeting about the rally, and, like, two seconds later, she blasts me with sarcasm and a suicidal thought about my perkiness.” I check on Twitter again; I couldn’t see the tweet on top anymore, because the whole page was now filled with Tyler Nash’s recent tweets. I scroll down the page to find that evil tweet, staring at me, with Mikayla’s sour signature scowl on her avatar. 

That bitch.

“Alright, now,” Mrs. Galinee’s piercing voice bellowed as it came into the classroom. “Can all conversations please come to a halt? Put all your cell phones away.” Everyone turned off their phones and put them in their backpacks and pockets. “Thank you. Now, as most of you are concerned, this is the last day of school before summer break—”

Crazy kids we were, as soon as we heard the words “summer break”, we were cheering so loudly, we could’ve started a riot, but, as Mrs. Galinee always is, she stops us before we could. When everyone was quiet, she continued.

“Even though this is the last day of the school year, I figure we should learn something—”

Crazy kids we were, as soon as we heard the word “learn”, we groaned like we were in pain; I think a couple of kids fell off their stools from over exaggerating their frustration. Once again, when everyone was quiet, Mrs. Galinee continued.

“However, I think my last lesson for you should be an interesting one. It is about how status is portrayed in murder stories.”

Mrs. Galinee paused in case some one wanted to cheer or protest, but there was only silence. A rare occasion in my opinion. 

“May I get two volunteers?” she asked. Once again, silence. This was going to be the slowest class. Ever. “Okay, then. How about Tori and Heather?” 

This was about to get interesting. Both of them were popular cheerleaders, two of my best friends. I watched as both of the girls walked gracefully towards the front of the room and the rest of the class “oooed” with anticipation. I wonder what kind of weird scheme Mrs. Galinee has up her sleeve. 

“For right now, Heather, you will have a low social status.”

“You’re off the cheerleading team now, Heather!” Nate yelled to her. The whole class burst with laughter. Even though Nate may be a grimmer wide receiver on the field, he was a clown in class and outside of school. I winked and gave a thumbs-up to both of my friends, who were scared out of their minds.   

“While Tori shall remain the popular cheerleader that she already is. Now, when you have two people of different financial, social, or sexual status, the person with the lower status often gets so jealous of the person with the higher status and ends up murdering them. Tori, your torture is over, have a seat.” Tori sat down at the desk next to me. “Now, the killer may or may not have killed this victim—that is up to coroners and evidence during trials—but the public can easily judge if a person really did kill a person depending on if he or she has a higher or lower status than the victim. In this case, the public will easily think that this person did commit the crime and that person might even have a mental illness from their low status. And this is all because of the power of reputations. Therefore, reputations can help you, but they can also hurt you. Now, class, because Heather has a reputation of being poor or unsocial, what do you think motivated her to kill Tori, a richer or more social girl?”

I was too busy catching up on Tumblr to hear the conversations as a whole, but I remember so people saying, “because she has an illness”, “she was jealous”, “she hated her for being herself”, and “she was threatening her”. Then, I remember a movie that I used to watch when I was, like, twelve. It was about this underprivileged girl from a religious family named Angela who wanted to be friends with a cruel, wealthy, popular cheerleader, but the girl kept bullying her, and out of the impulse Angela killed her. So, if I were to pay attention to the class, I probably would’ve said, “because the popular girl was bullying her”. Maybe I should stop participating in all of those anti-bullying campaigns; they are just clogging my head faster than my shower drain. 

Suddenly, my iPhone vibrated. It was a text from my other friend Sammie, who was sitting across the room.

Sammie: Maybe you should be cautious of Mikayla. She could kill you. ;) 

I whipped my head towards her direction and gave her a “Really?” look. She just looked at me, with an innocent look on her perfect face, shrugged her shoulders, and grinned. It looked like a dark, deadly grin that others would find harmless. But I knew Sammie more than most people did. 

Lyric: She’s crazy, but not crazy enough to kill me. 

Author's Note: The girl to the right is a picture of Tori. I hope to have a picture of Lyric in the next chapter, and consequently other characters in the following chapters, but due to personal reasons I will not upload a picture of Mikayla. I hope to update soon!