The Dancer | Wattys2018 | COMPLETED

2 - The Faces

Her hands shook as she pushed open the door to the car.

"You'll be fine Madison." Her driver said, trying to persuade her to leave the safety of the car. She hadn't been to school for three weeks now. Not that she had any friends that would be there waiting for her.

Madison stuck to herself mostly. She had class mates, but not friends. It's not that nobody liked her - everyone absolutely loved her. She chose to seclude herself from everyone, mostly for the reason that she didn't want distractions in her life. Ballet was what she prided herself in, and she didn't want anybody or anything stopping her from pursuing it.

"Alright then. Pick me up at four, Alessio." She said nervously, stepping out. She was immediately hit by a cold gust of wind and she shivered.

The car drove off slowly, and she watched as it did. She turned back to the school gates and took a deep breath.

Today is just like any other day, she thought to herself as she walked inside.

She was being paranoid and she knew it, but she couldn't avoid trying to hide her face from all the faces looking at her, watching her. She could have sworn she heard them whispering her name, the names of her parents.

Maybe one of them had murdered her parents. A lot of the children had envied Madison, and the fact that she had dancers for parents. But they wouldn't kill them, would they?

Nobody knew about the hatch to the basement though. 

That was the strangest thing about the murder - how did the murderer know there was a hatch underneath her parents' bed that led to the basement, which had entry from a window?

***

She sat at a table by herself, biting down on her lower lip nervously. She had gotten all the way till lunch without crying. Everybody was acting fairly normal, with the few occasional, "Oh, you're that Madison Perelli?" comments.

In the three weeks of her staying away from school, Madison was investigated and then ruled out. Whoever murdered her parents knew about the hatch, and knew about the basement that lead to the hatch.

Madison had sold the house soon after the investigation cleared up, and rented out a small apartment for herself, close enough to the studio she danced at. 

Alessio, her driver, was the son of a good Italian friend of her parents who had offered to help her around since everything that had happened. So he had been taking care of her in the apartment, driving her around wherever she needed to be.

She had suspected him initially, but that suspicion soon died down when she learned he had never been into the state until two weeks ago. So he was crossed out too.

"Can I sit here?" A voice interrupted her train of thought.

Madison looked up to a face she recognised, enough to stay away from. She didn't want to be rude though. An Ashborne brother asking permission to sit next to her wasn't exactly in a day's routine.

"Sure."