Anonymous Writers (Book #2)

Part II - The Begining of the Rumor

After lunch, Nessa made a short trip to her room to get a few Toblerone pyramids. Throughout the next few annoying classes, her concentration level was as low as the chance of an avalanche in the month of June - and by the end of the classes, her lips were smeared with chocolate.
She also went for her habitual soccer practice - something that she generally didn't do, but had started since she had gotten into the team so that she could match the standards of the senior players.
And, also so she could make up for the foot injury she had had on Halloween.
Though technically, Nessa's 'soccer practice' could be easily replaced by 'aggressively trying to kick football holes in the net' and 'showing off cool soccer moves and gymnastic stunts whenever someone passed by'.
The coach eyed her antics for 2 seconds, yawned in boredom and then resumed to what anyone would prefer doing over watching Vanessa Orville "play soccer".
By the end of the evening though, Nessa had kicked her soccerball over to the woods and was doing sloppy cartwheels in a line.
That night, she dreamed of wearing 18th century clothes and having a snow fight with zombies, until the zombies had all somehow dislocated their body parts and had their kneecaps in their eye sockets.
The next day passed with the same boring monotonous quality in it, and so did the day after that one. On Thursday though (which was a surprisingly cold day), there was a pretty strange - by which, Nessa means TERRIBLE!! - occurrence.
All the students had settled themselves in the English class, yet the teacher was delayed due to some reason. Nessa was sitting with Edmund; after the night of the Halloween party, they had become quite good friends - despite the fact that Nessa hated anyone related to Titania Cross.
They were planning this game of nonsense, where Person A said a word (or more than 1 word), and Person B was supposed to say some word(s) within a 1 second time gap, that was not related to the word that Person A said. So, their conversation went something like:
Edmund: banana cake
Nessa: wax crayons
Nessa: shark tooth
Edmund: copper wire
Edmund: rainbow unicorn
Nessa: fish salad
Nessa: panda's eggs
Edmund: wait, what?! Pandas don't lay eggs.
Nessa: you're out!!
Edmund: no, I'm not. Pandas just don't lay eggs.
Nessa: that doesn't matter. It's a game of nonsense, and your inability to answer means that you've lost the game.
Edmund: whatever. Harry Potter.
Nessa: baby food.
Nessa: soccer match
Edmund: oh, speaking of which Nathan mentioned something about an upcoming soccer match yesterday.
Nessa: really?!
Edmund: are you.....seriously crushing on him? You even forgot to point out that I lost the game again.
Nessa: Now, now, don't change the topic, Edmund. Why don't you continue on the soccer match you just mentioned a while ago?
Edmund: Nathan Davis wasn't completely sure, but he said that there might be an upcoming match. Don't get too excited though.
Nessa: you do realise that you are asking the impossible of me, don't you? I am so ready to kick some asses right now.
Edmund: I should've never told you about it.
Nessa: regret as you may. I'll hunt Nathan down as soon as we are done with English.
A girl beside them said "I can't believe this Edmund. You are betraying your girlfriend with someone she totally loathes."
Nessa challenged the speaker with a glare.
Further, somewhere a girl whispered something to her companions. One of the companions whirled around at Nessa and cried out accusingly "You killed your best friend?!"
Some boy from the other end of the room stood up and yelled promptly "I know! I know! I knew it much before everybody else, but I wasn't too sure."
Another kid said "Of course it's true."
Someone else asked "What was the poor girl's name? Natalie, wasn't it? Natalie what?"
"Natalie Verona! I'm sure of it!"
"I heard Vanessa drowned her."
"She very well might've. I don't doubt."
"Natalie probably died thinking that her friend will help, but I bet Vanessa didn't help. Of course she didn't."
"We've got a psychotic murderer amidst us!"
"When did the girl get murdered?"
"I am changing my school this very year."
"Why do you think Vanessa killed her friend?"
"Isn't that obvious? Is she not the kind of girl who could totally be associated with such a thing?"
Voices filled the entire room; it was getting difficult to even breathe. The same words echoed all around the room, light, numb, too painful, too meaningful. Nessa finally got up the table, and shouted "I didn't kill her!"
This got everyone's attention; the children stared at her for a moment in silence, before Nessa walked out of the class and ran back to her room.
Honestly, it was different when she put on herself the guilt of not being able to save Natalie - of being one of the reasons for her death. But when the entire school believed that she had murdered Natalie Verona . . . .dear god, life was going to be miserable!