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Chapter 4

Investigation hung in the air of almost every conversation around town. Lines were drawn to connect Hallie’s murder with Jeremy’s and there was not a single doubt that the same person is behind them.

A new suspect floated into view and the new angle of perspective will be rivalry and jealousy. But the investigators couldn’t seem to trust their sources enough.

There had been a word going around the school about two weeks prior to the Hallie incident (according to the girls in Crausers City High who seem to have lived for gossiping about the lives of other people who also spread the news about Hallemy break-up which makes it all the more unreliable) that Jeremy is undergoing an anger management program because he wants her back and the only thing he can think of to make that possible is to apologize to her and promise that he’ll never hit her again and keep it.

But to Lily, Lauren, and Allen if these speculations were all true, it is a Romeo and Juliet tragedy where Newton’s first law applies. And the outside force is Rowena Beaveson or as everyone calls her in secrecy (okay, the gossipmongers), “The Rich Bitch” because she is rich and yes, she is a bitch and she felt like she had every right to be everybody’s boss and treat people like subordinates, and by subordinates, meaning like crap. She’d screamed names at people she’s annoyed at and took advantage of her friends, spread harmful stuff about them and hooked up with any boy she liked whether it be taken or not, or her friend’s boyfriend or not. But no one could say anything bad enough to break her position in her peer group. Not if you’re the girl whose family practically runs the school with all the money they could pay the officials.

Everyone envied the relationship of Hallie and Jeremy because despite all the trouble, they know that the two were solid rock (the relationship, not Hallie’s face). A lot of them didn’t even had it crossing in their minds that they will not remain split up for long, at least not until the incident.

There has also been a word going around that Hallie was hit several times before but they always were together whatever happened but they say the real reason for the split up is while Jeremy is under the anger management program that Rowena is also in, she pulled him into herself and it just so happens that one of Hallie’s closest friends is also in the building that time, saw them and told Hallie.

But though she and Rowena had their resemblance (except for the features on Rowena’s face that had been cosmetically changed), Jeremy loved her all too much to do that. He refused it and pushed her away and in fact close to hitting her if it wasn’t for the people who were approaching their way.

She always watched them like a vulture when they were together and mingled around football team with her eyes on Jeremy.

Putting the story altogether, in her frustration, she hired someone to kill for her but upon knowing that Jeremy still cannot be with her, she plotted to kill with her fatal attraction and ordered to kill him. She was even in the funeral of Jeremy. Still wearing her perfect lips whose smile are nothing like angelic, smeared with red lipstick, gigantic eyeglasses and a black coat, she walked slowly straight towards the open and glassless coffin, not minding the silence in which the thudding sound that her heels are making stood out and the eyes that are watching her closely, leaned down and whispered something undecipherable to the people who still watched her and kissed him in the cheek, leaving a bright red mark across his right, said “Goodbye, Honey” turned around, grinning with something that looked like satisfaction and slowly walked out the door the way she did.

Lily leaves the house to see her friend, Rowena (She’s one of the people Rowena listens to or she was one of the few people who can stand her attitude) and to accompany her to the mall and the tanning salon.

Rowena was not yet informed by the police that she is one of the suspects. But she knows the news that goes around about her being a murderer. What crap! She complained to the quiet Lily as she drove.

Three hours later, they turned to the street where Rowena’s mansion lies: Hertz Street.

When they reached the driveway, the security greeted her and Lily and she invited her inside for a snack.

But when Rowena went inside, Lily at her heels, they headed to the living room instead.

“Um… you said we’re going to have a snack,” Lily said confused.

“Did she ask you to eat snack?” Rowena answered as she turned to her also confused, “Okay, then.”

They finally headed for the kitchen and they sat on the counter with a can of diet Coke and some wheat crackers for Rowena and Pop Tarts for Lily. Rowena is model-thin. And she wants to keep it that way.

She stayed for half an hour there after she downed her Diet coke.

Her newly tanned skin shimmered.

Her legs separate and were bent as if jumping.

Her body turned to the right and dressed casual yet sophisticated with a short white skirt and a blue blouse paired with gold sandals.

Her arms are half bent and half spread.

Her golden blond hair spread like an inverted fan headdress around her head.

Her lips, perfect as ever but glossier showed no expression.

Her crystal blue eyes looked straight at the lights. And unfortunately, not from the camera but from the chandelier now swinging lightly in the wind of May.

Her body is sprawled across the center of the floor of the atrium, ready to be taken a picture of for a fashion magazine.

Her background was a splash of a shade of warm red.

But no.

The police are studying the site where her supposedly-pale-but-since-newly-tanned-it-wasn’t body lay.

All they found aside from her body was the pool of blood on her back. They took pictures.

They called her father but he wouldn’t be home for another hour.

Wait, wait. Something’s in here, says one of the female policewoman as she felt something on her flat stomach as she examined her body and the wounds on her back.

Then she pulled it out. It was a sheet of photo paper. A photo taken by a Polaroid camera. Glamour shot.

The truth is, no one could ever read what’s going on her mind. Sometimes, she’s mean to everyone, sometimes she’s neutral, and sometimes she’s nice (and not only when she needed to). But only a few people could understand that. Ever since her mom died when she was eight, she’s never the same. She had her mind occupied by different people. She had dissociative disorder. Her dad did everything he could to pull his home back together even if it’s only Rowena in it but he can’t. He had business meetings to attend to.

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