I'm Still Sadie

Campbell

CAMPBELL

I pondered the best way to murder someone. Strangling sounded oddly satisfying, but I had no clue how to kill someone that way. However, it did appeal to me because there would be no blood or gore involved.

Smothering my imposter self with a pillow also sounded good. It might have been the best way to go. I mean, there she was, sleeping in my bed. I could've just grabbed a pillow and stuck it in her dumb face and been done with it. All it took for me to kill someone was a pillow, didn't that mean that I was kinda screwed up? Certainly my brain had been fried from all the body switching or some shit.

That changed nothing, I still wanted to kill Imposter Sadie. I clenched a pillow from the bed with a tight grip and that caused my knuckles to turn white. The dark contrast of the nail polish on my fingernails stuck out dramatically. I never was one to wear nail polish, but Nell was.

The image of Nell behind bars entered my mind. I seriously doubted that Nell would be able to escape conviction from Imposter Sadie's death. If I committed the murder, she would have to pay the price. Okay, so I was selfish, but I wasn't selfish enough to let Nell live the rest of her life as a murderer. What would our families think?

It would be the headline to put Harmony on the map. It wasn't the fame that our town needed, but I'll admit that a teenage girl getting killed by her best friend would make an interesting story.

It's okay, I reassured myself. How horrific; I wanted to murder Imposter Sadie, but I just didn't want Nell to be responsible. So I couldn't let her take the blame, but I could certainly frame someone else. Who, you might ask? Well the answer became clear to me when the bushes rustled from outside my window. Immediately, I knew that it wasn't just some feral cat, this was my last body.

She was the perfect person to frame. Yesterday, she was low key harassing Nell and Imposter Sadie, so my family wouldn't have a difficult time buying her guilt.

I left Imposter Sadie to sleep and went outside to the bushes where I left that girl. As I came near, the rustling stopped and her arm stuck out and waved around like a flag. While she signaled her location to me, I stared at her fingertips, wondering how I could possibly manage to get her fingerprints on Imposter Sadie's body. It would involve a lot of touching, and I was not certain if that would end well. Who knows? Maybe this girl had her own agenda and wanted to frame me for murder.

"Need help there?" I asked.

"Yeah, yeah I do," the girl said, sounding distant, almost like she was embarrassed. What does she have to be embarrassed about? I wondered, Oh right, it's because she had just woken up in some bushes and was asking a stranger for help, that was pretty embarrassing.

I pulled on the girl's wrist with all my might. After nearly all my strength had depleted, the rest of her body finally resurfaced from her bushy prison.

"Thanks," she told me, panting heavily. Leaves and twigs decorated her coiled hair. She almost looked like a hippy of some sort, or a girl going to a music festival. The only thing I could settle on was that she didn't look nearly as nice as she did yesterday morning.

"Um, where am I?" she asked.

"Harmony, Iowa," I said with pride. Nowadays, it was so rare that I knew the answer to such a question. "To make a long story short, I kidnapped you and abandoned you in the bushes." I exolplained, smiling sweetly despite the cruel and true story I had just told. Smiling made it go over easier.

The girl looked a me with fear and took a few steps away from me. "What?" she mumbled more to herself than to me. "Please tell me that I just misheard you."