The Key Chased the Blade

"John can't be the killer if it was his clothing that the banshee was washing," I said. Simon and I stopped playing the Wii. Simon had pulled out his notebook and his pen was by his side. He didn't touch it. "A killer wouldn't kill himself, would he?"

Simon bit his lip, and he tugged at his hair and I saw his brown birthmark on his forehead. He looked like he didn't want to talk about this. I knew why and I was both hurt and irritated.

"Simon, don't even worry about hurting my feelings, okay?" I asked. "I'm just going to pretend like he's not my brother now. You can say your ideas if it's going to help."

"I..." He sighed. "I was thinking that didn't explain why he had the rope in his closet. And it doesn't explain his panic and him escaping your house."

"I was thinking about that. That rope could've been old and was from his first prank; the one where he stuck a dead bird in his locker. This could've not be related to him at all. The murderer might've just liked that idea on killing people and took it from him. And he could've panicked because he thought he was going to get into trouble."

"That's a good point." Simon the took his pen and wrote that down. I thought for a second he could have just been humoring me to make me feel better, but I looked over and saw he'd actually written the idea. "But the murderer must've have been close to him to do that. And we don't even know much about that prank anyway. Who's locker was it? That might be important. And we knew that Sadie saw the prank happen, right? But why did she get mad and have a fight with Tyler about it?"

"She could've been trying to make Tyler stay away from John," I said. Something like that had happened before. In grade school I had a friend stop being my friend because her mom didn't like John. God. What a backstabber she was.

"I see what you mean." He scribbled some stuff. "We'll have to talk with the Marvin's about that. Do they have Facebooks?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, I'll put that on our To-Do-List. 'Talk with the Marvin's.'" He paused as he wrote that down. "Alright. Now we need to know who was close enough to John to copy his pranking stuff. Maybe there might be a connection with Sadie too."

"Well..." I thought for a moment. "There's Rhode, his girlfriend. And then there's his friends and ex-girlfriends." I rattled them off the top of my head. Simon listed them all. I was surprised his hand didn't cramp up. "But they're not related to Sadie in any way. At least I don't think so."

"We could at least stalk their Facebook profiles," Simon said and laughed.

"Yeah," I said. "Let's find if they have 'murdering people' in their interests."

Simon didn't laugh at my morbid joke. He swept imaginary dust from his paper. "Alrighty. So we have to find out who John pranked and why, and we need to know some more about Sadie, like where she went and how she got attacked. We also need to know John's relationship with Tyler. Do you think tomorrow we could go on Facebook?"

"Yeah, definitely," I said. But then I felt something cold wrap around my heart. "Um, Simon."

"Yes?" He looked up from his notebook.

"Do you think you're really going to die?"

A slow, sad smile crept up onto his face. "I don't know. I think if I was, I probably would have by now."

That was when I felt a shudder rack through my whole body, like a sob shaking through my bones and intestines and everything just waiting to come out of my mouth and make me cry. But it didn't come out. I couldn't trust myself to speak.

"We'll need to find John, too," Simon said. "Let's put that on our To-Do-List, also. He's in danger."

"Yeah." My voice wavered. "I'm going to have to slap him for causing all this trouble."

Simon smiled. It wasn't his stupid dorky smile. "Definitely. I say we just need to sleep on this for now and get ready tomorrow. I'm exhausted."

I nodded. But before I got up to head to bed, I leaned over and hugged Simon tightly. It startled him for a moment before he embraced me back. I held him so close I could feel his heart beating. I almost didn't want to let him go.

"Thank you," he said when we released.

"No, thank you," I said, and I got up and left for the guest room.