In the morning, I was shaken awake by Jake, who had gotten up early to prepare breakfast with Peter. Nelly and Mary were already at the table by the time I was done looking presentable enough for breakfast.

“Good morning sleepy head. Ready for today?” Peter said as he handed me a plate of blueberry waffles.

“What’s today?” I said yawning. I almost poured the whole bowl of chocolate chips on to my food but Jake had caught me in time.

“We were invited to Michelle’s birthday party.” Mary said energetically. I gave her a look before turning to Nelly.

“We were invited where?”

“Michelle’s place. She said she wanted to get to know my brother and his friends.” Nelly said, still looking at his food.

“Apparently everyone’s invited. She sent out an invitation to everybody in the grade and a couple of other people she knows.” Jake added in. He poured me a glass of apple juice.

“Are you going, Jake?” I asked him.

“Yeah, some friends of mine are going too and Michelle’s mom was friends with mine.”

“Mmm, I guess I will go too. Though I'm not too sure about what I’m going to wear.” This made everybody laugh at me.

***

When the time came for the party, we all arrived about an hour late. Mary went to socialise with some people that she was familiar with in the other grades and Nelly went to talk to the people from his crew. I walked around the party until I found Michelle.

“Happy birthday, Michelle.” I hugged her out of courtesy. She looked as if she was dressed like a whore with fishnet stockings, moussed up hair, an extremely short mini skirt – it was that short – and a bright green crop top. Let’s not forget the high heels that made the drunken girl even more unsteady on her feet.

“Glad you could make it Nelu. Your brother told me that you wouldn’t want to come to my birthday party because you never liked me.” She said trying to keep herself steady. “I’m glad you proved him wrong. He was getting a bit stuck up on the fact that he knew you so well. You should tell him that I don’t need his sex anymore. I’ve got someone else.”

Before I could say anything in response, Michelle picked herself up and walked away on wobbly legs. It seemed that my brother turned to her for quick sex. I shook my head and carried on my journey to finding someone to talk to. I bumped into many of Nelly’s friends and some people who just knew me as Nelly’s younger brother. Not that it bother me in the least, but I was amazed at what my brother said about me to his circle of friends. So far I had gathered that they thought of me as shy and spineless, so my attendance at the party came as a shock to them.

After an hour of insults and aimless wondering, I decided to get myself a drink and sit somewhere noisy. I grabbed a giant cup of god knows what that some random dude I have never seen before was giving out and went to go lay in a hammock by the pool. A cute girl came up to ten minutes into my relaxation period.

“Can I join you?” She was basically wearing nothing; it was just a boob tube kind of top and these really skimpy shorts things. “You looked kinda lonely.”

“Yes, you can join me. I’m not lonely, just waiting for some entertainment.” I didn’t bother to make an effort of sitting up so she just laid down next to me. She awkwardly turned on her side and threw her leg over mine.

“What if I’m your entertainment? What’s your name?” She whispered softly in my ear. The drink that I had made my brain stop functioning properly as I did not realise what this girl was implying. Or what I implied for a matter a fact.

“The name’s Carter. Nelu Carter.” I said in my best James Bond impersonation. She laughed loudly. “And I would love for you to entertain me tonight.”

“Well it would be my pleasure.” She managed to somehow get her body to straddle mine and lean down for a kiss. We kissed deeply for about a few seconds before she roughly pulled back.

“What are you doing, Nelu?” Jake voice was the next thing it heard instead of the girl.

“Hey, Jake, I never knew you were here.” I squinted my eyes so I could get a better look at him and smiled drunkenly. He had pulled the girl off me and was still holding her. “Can you please let go of my entertainment? I got her first.”

“Unbelievable.” He pushed her to the side and lifted me out of the hammock. I made a move to get out of his arms but he held on to me tighter. “Just stop moving.”

“Whatever, mom.” I laid still in his arms as he carried me out the back door of Michelle’s raging party. Jake smelled of something sweet and when he put me in a car I could tell it was his by the same sweet smell.

“I’m taking you home.”

“No, let’s go somewhere else.” I was still feeling out of it but since I didn’t finish the whole glass I was still capable of some lucid thoughts.

“You are almost near drunk. Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t take you home?”

“You owe me for my shooting range victory.” I said slowly.

“You are unbelievable.” Jake started the car and his smooth driving lulled me to sleep.

***

“Wake up, Nelu.” Jake was sitting on the edge of the bed I was sleeping on. My head felt like a jack-hammer was pounding away at it and my throat was dry.

“God, where am I?” I said as Jake handed me a glass of water and some pills. “Thanks.”

“You are in my house.”

“How did I get here?” I got up out of the bed and Jake handed me a bag of toiletries.

“I brought you here after you almost got drunk at Michelle’s party last night.”

“I only remember having one glass.”

“You light-weight. “ Jake laughed at me as he opened the door to the adjacent bathroom.

After a good hangover breakfast and sometime with Jake’s cousin – who was staying over for the day – Jake drove me back home to find a passed out Mary and Nelly on the living room floor.

I woke each of them up and went to get a meal ready for them. When they were proper looking, I gave them some headache pills and left them alone.

***

“Come in.” There was a light knock on my door. It was an hour after I had come back from Jake’s place and I was finishing homework due for Monday. Nelly stuck his head around the door.

“I have a question.” He said as her timidly walked into my room and sat on my bed. It was very not like him to do anything timidly.

“Shoot.” I put down my pen and turned to face him.

“How do you know that you are in love with Jake?”

“What makes you think that I’m in love with Jake?” I asked slowly. His question had caught me off guard and I wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Stop asking stupid questions.” Nelly said rolling his eyes. The old Nelly was back. “I’m talking about how do you know that he’s the one for you?”

“I don’t. I normally just go with the flow, but you must keep in mind that Jake is my first.” I said sheepishly. “Why would you ask that, anyway?

“Well I think I’m in love with Mary.” This had stopped me flat. I looked at my brother and didn’t know what to say. This caused a lot of problems then.

“Well that’s great. It’s about time you chose a person to date. Yesterday Michelle told me to tell you that she didn’t need you to have sex with her anymore.” I laughed lightly to make light of the situation and bring peace to my brother’s mind.

“I’m glad that you think it’s great, Lu.” He smiled before checking his watch. “The guys wanted me to help clean up Michelle’s house and backyard for her more formal birthday celebration Monday after school, so I’m gonna head out now.”

“Sure, go get your hands dirty.” I said still smiling.

“Afterwards I think I’m just going to see Mary.” His smile got brighter. He left me alone to ponder the mess he had gotten us in. We weren’t here to make friends and sleep around; we were here to kill Mary-Anne Richard.

I spent the next three hours trying to decide whether or not I was going to end up killing Mary. There was no way around it. If I didn’t kill her then we would be kicked out of the institution and it wasn’t like we had anywhere to go. On the other hand if I did decide to kill Mary then Nelly might hate me forever for killing the first girl he fell in love with.

I had finally decided that I would do what came first, so if she happened too get me at the wrong moment then I would kill her or maybe she would be luckier.

I opened the secret compartment of my desk drawer and took out my Glock gun. It was the gun I was supposed to use to kill Mary. Gen 4 Glock 17, a common weapon that would make it harder for police to track the killer especially if almost everybody owned one and worse if this was the gun from the shooting range. I had switched it out with my own gun and would switch it back if I ever came around to killing Mary.

My bedroom door open and Mary waltzed in. She paused when she saw the gun but I didn’t give her any time to react. I aimed the gun at her head.

“Please come in and close the door behind. Don’t try running or screaming. You know how good a shot I am.” She stepped into the room fully and closed the door. It seemed that Mary wasn’t lucky after all.