Cereal is a necessity to Connie Darwin, and so every day she goes down from her room of solitary and opens the fridge to find the milk. Then she pours her milk. Then she plops in the cereal and heads upstairs again. And the cycle repeats, until she finds her best friend, Clementine Lund, dead in her room, where she wasn't before. When her parents call her for a family meeting, she sees Clem again. And from then on, she starts using orange juice, because Connie needs those calories to get her energy up. When you find your friend dead, you don't panic. You investigate.
(Follows prompt 68: You saw her dead, but she is having dinner downstairs with your parents)
When Jane Madarang's neighbor Natalie kills herself and leaves behind cryptic instructions, it's up to Jane and her classmates to unearth deadly secrets.
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Natalie Driscoll is dead.
She threw herself out a window and left her neighbor Jane to unravel their town's darkest secrets. Following Natalie's instructions leads Jane to three other high school students who all have something to hide. The four of them must carry out Natalie's final errand while solving the mysteries written in her diary. But the secrets they unearth may be far more dangerous than what they ever imagined.
Content and/or trigger warning: This story contains scenes of suicide, violence and murder that may be triggering for some readers.
[[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]