Between The Lies

Part Two: Samantha

PART TWO: SAMANTHA

I saw the bodies.

Disgusting.

Is it bad how the only thought that cropped into my mind as I looked down at their slaughtered figures was, Oh, no. Looks like you guys won’t be winning Prom King and Queen now?

So, someone had killed them. A little dramatic. But I can’t say I was particularly upset over the whole thing. They were competition. I wanted the crown. Me and Hugo were, and always will be, ‘Best Couple’ here at Martingale High. We don’t need drippy losers like Lloyd and Tiffany stealing our spotlight.

Give it a couple of weeks. The news about them will become old gossip. I’ll be back in the spotlight again. Guaranteed. I’ve got a killer story to share, some might say…

#

It was only two days before Prom that I found out. I’d skipped a period the month before, but you know how these things are: you give it another month and then you start worrying. But I was already a whole week overdue, so I grabbed a test from the drugstore on the way into school, hoping and praying it would come back negative.

I arrived twenty minutes too early and headed straight for the girls’ bathroom. It was empty, so I took the cubicle furthest from the door and pulled the little plastic stick out of its box. Two full glasses of orange juice, that morning, had prepared me for this. I sat down, did my business, and waited…

When the line onscreen turned blue, my head went all fluffy. I had to catch hold of the germ-infested toilet roll dispenser to steady myself. And when I heard the bathroom door open, my stomach rolled right over.

“So, you’re gonna go for it?”

“Oh, of course. We’ve already been voted in — might as well see if our good luck stretches any further.”

“Hmm, and it’d be nice to see someone else taking the spotlight, for a change…”

The two girls both laughed in unison, and I scowled from behind the cubicle door. Tiffany and Cassie. Losers, the both of them. Worse: the sort of losers who thought they were ‘cool’ all of a sudden, because puberty had just hit them and suddenly they had tits and boyfriends.

Or, at least, Tiffany did. She’d stolen Lloyd from Cassie, a few months back. Don’t ask me how Cassie put up with it so well; if she’d stolen my boyfriend I’d have murdered the bitch there and then.

Wait a sec. Does that remind you of anything…?

Just saying.

So, anyway, they both spread themselves out around the bathroom, toying with their hair and adjusting their makeup in the mirrors. I waited two minutes before realising they weren’t about to leave anytime soon. By then, my legs had regained feeling and the airiness had disappeared from my head. I stood up, pulling my black skirt back into place on my hips and reaching for my satchel. Before I left the cubicle, I tossed the pregnancy test in the direction of the wastebasket and inhaled a deep breath.

“Move,” I ordered haughtily, elbowing Tiffany’s bag out of the way and reaching between the two of them to wash my hands. I made sure to flick water in their direction when I shook my hands off.

“You don’t have to be so fucking rude,” Cassie muttered, rolling her eyes as she leaned closer to the mirror to apply her mascara.

I’ll do what I want, I thought, slamming into her side as I passed. She cried out as the tip of her mascara brush connected with her eyeball.