The Secrets we Keep Chapter 7: It’s all fun and games, until someone gets hurt

by Briyahna Rice, staff reporter

Everything was quiet, eerily quiet. Not a flicker of noise could be heard as Lena sat on her bed with the lights shining dimly in her bedroom. She sat on her bed with her legs drawn up to her chest, staring into space with an expression that was a cross between vapid thought and intense contemplation. Disposing of the body was alot easier than she had thought it would be. It was just a matter of piling mountains of dirt over the blood that stained the concrete and dragging Levin’s lifeless corpse  and stashing him under a bunch of garbage bags that were piled up behind the adult store. The best part of it all was that not a single person was around to witness the crude disposal of the body.

After all was said and done, all Lena had to do was wipe the dirt from her jeans, the sweat from her forehead, and go about the rest of the night. Throughout the disposal, Lizabeth hadn’t uttered a single word, due to the fact that Lena did what she did of her own volition. Lizabeth was just the driving force that pushed her forward.

On the bus ride home, Lena tried to close her eyes for a few minutes of sleep, but was bombarded with random bits and pieces of the act she’d committed. From the cyanide ambush to the fatal stabbing. All of it flashing across her mind at lightspeed, and by the time she opened her eyes, her head felt groggy. Outside, the sun had long since set and everything was shrouded in the darkness of night. By the time she got home, it was 5:00 and the street lights on her block were flickering with life. No one was in her house when she walked in the door. Her father was at work, and her uncle and grandmother were out doing God only know what. It wasn’t surprising in the least to Lena.

As if it were a normal day getting home from school, she dragged her feet up the stairs, discarded her books on the floor, and flung her body on the bed. But it wasn’t a normal day, and by same time tomorrow, the whole high school would know it too.  In her mind what she did was justified based on the dark agenda that Levine held beneath the guise of a caring assistant high school principal, but in her heart she knew that sooner or later she would have to accept the consequences of her actions.

“It’s all fun in games until someone gets hurt.” she muttered to herself.

“The same could be said for Levine, couldn’t it? You saw it too, how his lust was constantly clouding his eyes,”  said Lizabeth.

In response to this, Lena could only roll her eyes up to the ceiling.  Could she really feel regret over  doing something that goes against man made laws, knowing that the person whose life she ended was an out and out danger to the people around him? But on the other hand, she’s was a danger as well.

“Be that as it may, Karma, if not God’s divine wrath will fall back to us and bite us in rear end,” Lena said out loud.

But Lizabeth still held no remorse and didn’t even pretend to balk at the depth of her, of their crime.

“Not if we just grit our teeth, bite our tongues, and put on that same introvert, and indifferent mask that we’ve always worn and we’ll be home free,” said Lizabeth.

Any normal person would have protested without thought, or even rambled on about what was right and what was wrong concerning the circumstances, but Lena did not have the pleasure of calling herself normal.

So she took the end of  Lizabeth’s conversation as her cue to untangle her headphones and let her mind stew in a pot simmering with melancholy  hard rock music. This particular song was unbelievably on point with what was going on in her life at the current moment.

Famous Last Words: The Show must go On

I must accept these consequences for my actions

when all I did was what the world told me I should do

And do anything for my dreams, if only I knew

the cost of my dreams, AKA, you, would be you

I’m dead now!

The flash of a memory stained with Levine’s blood crossed  over her eyes and caused Lena to grasp her temple in the midst of sudden migraine, but the music continued to play through her ear drums.

The nightmare

is slowly taking over

All that’s happened

It is enabling him

to take exactly what he wants

until he gets what he desires

we’ll be at his whim.

Lena couldn’t properly focus on the lyrics as her mind began to swim and bob in a black sea of distant memories and convincing voices telling her to kill Levine and repeat the act in different scenarios each one more horrific than the last, until the only reprieve that Lena could find was in the cold sleep that embraced her.

Close to three hours later, she awoke to a pitch black room and a dead iPod battery. Looking at the time on the cable box next to her TV, it read 6:41 pm, and she had gotten home at 4:15 in the afternoon. With nothing else to do, and knowing that her house was probably empty, Lena stepped out of her room, and navigated her way down the dark staircase and toward the front door, making her way outside. The weather was no different from what it was in the afternoon. A perfect mix of cold wind layered by unusually warm air. Despite the earliness of the evening, the street lights were on, and the roads of Lena’s neighbor were completely dead.  She walked in the middle of the street and made her way out into the public streets, where many late night establishments were still open. There were still people walking the streets and the ones she passed by were wearing smiles as they traveled in groups or blissfully occupying themselves with whatever was on their cell phones, if they were alone.

It was an all too familiar sight for a high school student such as herself, but in due time, the familiar scenery will be dyed with shades of curiosity, confusion, exposure, shock, and finally fear. All of which would take place back at school of course. This was a sight that would be all too familiar with a killer who just got away with another crime, scot free.  In her own right, Lena would be happy that the student body, let alone the administration, was painfully oblivious to the fact that they had a closet sexual predator, roaming the hallways, was now getting a major wakeup call. Not to mention the possibility of her being  his next conquest was just as gratifying, she could call it could be called self defense.

But now they would all receive a punch in the face, at the existence of a killer within their supposedly safe environment. And the thought of this made Lizabeth quiver with excitement. Try as they might, with their security double-ups, hard and soft lockdown drills, and personnel ID checks, it wouldn’t be enough to stop the maelstrom of fear that she had spread and all without breaking a sweat. The very thought, brought a ghost of a smile to Lena’s lips, as she turned to walk away from the street crossing she was standing in front of, and began to walk back home.