“Fair enough.” I shrugged, turning back to listen to the police officer who had taken centre stage at the front of the room. Instead of listening to what he was saying, I focussed on his face, the lines that ran along his forehead when he raised his greying eyebrows. If he hadn’t gone bald, I was sure his hair would be the same shade of slate. A light stubble was beginning to appear across the officer’s chin, and I wondered whether that was simply growth from the morning or the day before.

Staring at his face, the haunted look in the darkness of his eyes caused me to think of Cassandra’s family. She was the oldest of two, with a younger brother who was still in primary school. I pictured her parents this morning, and tried to empathise with them, imagining the thoughts that would run through my own parents’ minds if it was me who hadn’t come home. Granted, I was older than Cassandra, and being an eighteen year old guy sometimes meant I didn’t come home at night, but the feelings would still be the same. That sense of loss and grief would be universal. Parents are not supposed to outlive their children, and when they do, I guessed you were left wondering what on earth it was that you did wrong.

In my mind, I could see an empty space at the dinner table. The look on her brother’s face when he was told that his sister wasn’t ever going to be coming back home. It wasn’t something anyone should ever have to go through, but the world was cruel, whichever way you looked at it. Sometimes, bad things happened to good people.

There was a kind of silence among the students that day that teachers often dreamed of, if only it had happened under better circumstances. I noticed people glancing sideways at their friends quickly, as if to check that they were in fact still in the room, still with us. In English that afternoon, only half of the class bothered to show up. I knew that a couple of the girls had gone to see the counsellor, Sarah, but for the others to be away didn’t make sense to me. Perhaps the girl hadn’t been as unremarkable as I had originally thought.

Tom was uncharacteristically quiet. He was usually the frontrunner in class disruption, always asking ridiculous questions, smirking when the teacher got annoyed or flustered if they didn’t know the answers. The first to come up with a comment that would make the class laugh, or gasp, or blush. The last to hand in any work or offer to lend a helping hand. Today, he kept his mouth firmly closed. I wondered if he sensed the emotions of those around him, even though he didn’t feel as they did, and knew to be tactful, if only for one day. But, then I remembered the time a girl in our registration group, Melissa, came to school distraught because her sister had been hit by a car on the way to school that morning. Tom had been relentless that day, and had even made a few jokes about Melissa’s sister. He had continued until Melissa had completely lost it, screeching that he was a monster and needed to be put down before running from the room in floods of tears.

And yet now, there were no jokes, no awfully timed puns, nothing. I wondered if he’d finally developed some tact, but quickly shoved that from my mind. Tom didn’t have tact, that was one of the things I liked about him. That which everyone would think but wouldn’t voice, Tom would say, even if the person he said it to didn’t want to hear it. He stood up for people if others were being needlessly harsh, too, and that was probably one of his more redeeming qualities. I nudged his elbow.

“You alright?”

He gazed at me liked I was a complete stranger, like he was looking at me for the first time. This was something Tom did quite regularly; that and ogle at people with such an intensity that they couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable. He had a theory that if you glared at the back of a person’s head for long enough, they would eventually feel eyes on them, and look for the source. He was forever doing this to my dog, Rolo, a chocolate Labrador that utterly adored my best friend. The silly thing would simply gawk back, until it was Tom that felt uncomfortable and had to look away. When we had first become friends a couple of years ago, his staring made me shift in my seat all the time. Nowadays I would stare coolly back into his moss green eyes and repeat my question.

“Fine.” He replied with a certainty that almost sounded forced, before suddenly perking up. “I’m just tired. I was awake for most of the night with this girl…” Trailing off, he left me to fill in the blanks, that regular smirk back on his face. This was the Tom I knew; up all night and sleeping most of the day with a constant grin, like he knew something you didn’t. Not the Tom that focussed on his schoolwork and didn’t utter a word to anyone. It crossed my mind that perhaps Cassandra’s death had affected him on some level, even if it only reminded him of his own mortality, or the things he had to live for.

“Sounds great.” I couldn’t quite inject as much enthusiasm into my reply as I wanted, but Tom didn’t really seem to notice. Whilst he seemed to have many conquests, and a different girl each night if you believed everything he told you, I wasn’t quite as skilled or experienced. He often told me that I placed too much emphasis on wanting a relationship, and in this day and age girls were just as avoidant of commitment as boys have always been. I didn’t think this was really true, but let him carry on telling me that this was the reason for my failures in love. It was much better, in my opinion, to wait for the right girl to come along, rather than actively try and find her in my bed, as Tom did.

“It was.” Tom mumbled without moving his eyes from the text in front of him on the desk. “You should try it sometime. Have some fun.”

I had been waiting for words to that effect, but they stung all the same. He always seemed to make it sound like he was concerned for me, and for my wellbeing, yet at the same time he managed to turn the whole thing into a joke at my expense. I didn’t mind that much; it just made some days with Tom more taxing than others. Many people asked me why I even bothered to spend time with him. But at the end of it all, he was still my best friend, and despite the drawbacks regarding his personality, one of the more popular people in the school.

Now, I didn’t bother answering him. There were more important things to think about today than whether or not I managed to sleep with some random girl. I wasn’t sure if it was the comment itself that made me irritated, or whether I was anxious because of Cassandra, but suddenly I just wanted to be at home with my family. Even though Tom didn’t get on particularly well with his own family, he was always welcome in mine.

Most days, while we went to school separately, we walked home together, always to my house for dinner. My parents were used to Tom’s arrival, and nowadays he was conspicuous by his absence. Even the dog looked for him when I came through the door in the evening, running not toward me, but past me, expecting a second pair of legs that very rarely didn’t appear. Eli still seemed to prefer me though, at least, and couldn’t put up with Tom at all. Like he didn’t trust the guy. I could understand. Tom was a marmite kind of person; you either loved him or you hated him.

As the day had gone on, both of our moods had improved considerably and I had even managed to drag my mind away from the image of Cassandra’s body lying broken in the woods behind the Community Centre, wondering if she had been alone, whether she had felt any pain. But like a moth to a flame, my mind settled inevitably back on the subject and I found the need to talk about it with someone.

“So, what do you think, Tom?”

“About what?” He looked at me again with his customary stare.

“Cassandra Skinner. About what happened to her.” If there was anyone who had heard something about anything that was remotely exciting it was Tom. He smiled that smile that told me he knew secrets I didn’t.

“Well, there’s all sorts of stories going around.” He began. “The one I’ve heard the most is that she killed herself. No-one knows why - she was always hopping from one place to another, you remember? Didn’t look like the kind of girl who wanted to kill herself.”

I nodded along, letting Tom tell me what he knew and adding a customary ‘uh-huh’ where it was necessary. He always delivered information like he was some kind of Sherlock Holmes, as if he was only just deducing these things as he told them to me. Sometimes he would ask me a question, partly to check I was paying attention, but it was also in some respect rhetorical, where he was simply thinking out loud.

“I remember. She ran into us a couple of times between classes. Nearly knocked you off your feet.”

“These other lines of inquiry that the police officer was talking about this morning in assembly can only really mean that they suspect foul play. Jem, you know, from English, he has a sister who was friends with Cassandra. Her name’s Leah or something. He told me today that Cassandra was found with both of her wrists slashed, and that’s why they originally suspected suicide. But they also found a stab wound to the stomach.”

Tom had all of my attention as he talked animatedly about the things he‘d been hearing. When I think back, the journey home was a complete blur. We set off from school, and suddenly we were opening the front gate to my house. I know the conversation happened somewhere along the way.

“So, she stabbed herself in the stomach first?” I asked, trying to prompt him.

“Maybe. That’s what some people seem to think; I heard a boy saying it in the canteen at lunch time. They’re saying that she was young, and maybe she thought that was the better way to go. Others are saying something completely different.” He looked at me then, and I’d never before nor ever since seen such a serious glint in his jade green eyes, piercing mine.

“What are they saying?” I practically whispered. He stopped dead in his tracks, pulling me with him as he looked conspiratorially about himself. I half-expected a stranger across the street to be glancing conspicuously in our direction and talking into a mobile phone, but we were alone. No-one was going to hear what Tom had to say.

“They’re saying she was murdered. They’re saying that someone stabbed her, and after watching her bleed out slowly on the ground, they felt sorry for her and slit her wrists to put her out of her misery. They’re saying that whoever killed her stood over her, and waited for the light to leave her eyes.”

We’d started to walk again, and my front gate suddenly appeared in the distance, a safe haven in a world full of evil and darkness and brutal violence. I suppressed a shudder as the gate creaked beneath my hands when it swung open. Tom didn’t try to continue, knowing full well that the conversation we had just been having was not something Eli should be hearing, or even my parents. I was going to have to tell them anyway, but I didn’t have to tell them the details. There was going to be a memorial for Cassandra on Wednesday afternoon after the funeral, where students, faculty and parents were all invited to pay tribute to the memory of a young girl’s life cut tragically short.

It was almost 5pm, and my house was alive with noise, my brother screeching as he tried to catch the dog’s tail. The was a crash as Rolo careened into the table in the hallway and the lampshade fell to the floor. The sound of my mother chastising the pair of them brought a smile to my lips; a small one that faded quickly. After what Tom had just told me, it didn’t feel right to smile today. My dad folded the top of the paper down so that he could look at Tom and I as we walked through the door and dumped our bags in the entryway.

He was a very traditional dad, my father. The kind of man that went to work every day in his suit and tie, but as soon as he came home the slippers were on and the newspaper was out. If one day I came home to find that he had taken to smoking a pipe or something I probably wouldn’t even blink twice. His hair was dark and greying, but you couldn’t tell because of the short length, unless you were looking very closely. I’d always thought my dad had kind eyes, and this was reflected often in his demeanour. I can barely remember the last time he raised his voice. He much preferred to deliver discipline in the form of disappointment and stony silence. Even when he wasn’t annoyed, he rarely spoke. Though, from what I heard from his colleagues, when my father did choose to talk, everyone stopped to listen to what he had to say.

My mother was much the same in that respect. Apart from Eli screeching and Rolo howling with him, my house was a relatively quiet one, though not so much as it once had been. I knew my boundaries, and they respected my privacy. I was rarely asked what I was doing because I was the kind of person that just told them anyway. The first time Tom had come back to meet my parents, he had been shocked by how well we all got along with each other. In his house, the first thing you did was shout, he had explained. And if you didn’t get an answer, then you would shout louder until someone paid attention, desired or no.

Dinner was a simple affair, and much the same as usual. When I watched Eli, throwing his food about the table as though this was its original purpose in life, I wondered if I was ever that energetic as a child. Something told me I probably wasn’t. Rolo was having the time of his life, scurrying around the table hoovering up whatever food had found it’s way to the floor. Mum was pretending to be angry, but she couldn’t keep her face straight for long. Dad and Tom were laughing outright.

All I could think about was the Skinner family, sitting with one less family member at the table, trying to hide their grief from the younger children. Trying to explain what had happened. And my thoughts turned back to Cassandra once more, Tom’s whispered words reverberating about my mind like the ghost of an echo, a million miles away and yet still possible to decipher.

There were people in the world who killed others, I knew that. There were even people who killed children. Sick, psychotic people that regarded human life as worth next to nothing. I’d heard once that there were three motives for murder; money, anger and love. But I couldn’t understand why someone would want to fake someone else’s suicide - it didn’t quite fit into any of those categories. Either you meant to kill, or you didn’t. And if you didn’t, then surely you would call the police instead of leaving the body for some poor unsuspecting jogger to find. It was a heavy responsibility to take, ending another person’s life. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do something like that, no matter what.

I pushed myself away from the dinner table and mumbled my apologies as I headed for my room. Suddenly, I wasn’t felt very hungry anymore. My dad nodded at me wordlessly and let me go, and held a stilling hand up to my mother when she made to follow me. I understood that Tom would finish his food before he came to talk to me, and expected no less. I was sure he was aware what had caused my loss of appetite and would find me when he was ready.

Some time later, though I couldn’t be sure how long, my bedroom door squeaked open and I knew without glancing up that Tom had arrived. Silently he moved across and sat beside me on my bed. I kept my eyes shut, almost hoping that if I pretended I didn’t know he was there he would get the hint and leave. But he didn’t.

“You can’t keep thinking about it, Sam.” He muttered after a moment. “Something like that will eat you alive.”

“She won’t get out of my head. I keep wondering what it would be like if Eli was killed, or mum, or dad.”

“Well, you know they aren’t. You can hear Eli from here for Christ’s sake. The boy’s got a pair of lungs on him, that’s for sure.”

I had to laugh at that. It was true - if you wanted to know where my little brother was you only had to sit back and wait for him to make himself known with a scream or a shout. When he was younger, sometimes the neighbours would complain when he cried, he was so loud. We had hoped he might quieten down as he got older, but this didn’t seem to be the case.

“You’re right.” I replied after a couple of seconds. He clapped me on the back as he stood to switch on my games console.

“Of course I’m right. I’m always right.”

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Author guidance for This story

A new idea I had recently, I've been challenged to actually finish this so let's see how that goes...

Hope you guys like it, anyway. I've never really written in first person the whole time before properly.

updated Jan 16 by chazpez