A/N: This story is not in any way intended to be an accurate representation of any real disorder or condition.

I AM NOT A MURDERER.

I have never even considered taking a human life, and I’m so fucking mad that anyone thinks I would. I’m mad and I’m confused and scared and lonely. My heart hasn’t stopped beating like crazy since I found her. I can’t sleep. They think I killed her, and I don’t know if I have the energy or emotional stability to prove them wrong right now.

Two days ago, January 3rd of 2024, I found Summer Evans’ corpse face-down on her living room floor with a pocket knife in her back, and there was blood all over the carpet and the wolf necklace she always wore was snapped off on the floor next to her. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep without seeing that picture. It’s branded on the backs of my eyelids.

I had to walk in on my friend’s corpse, and now I’M getting blamed for it. And the worst part is that my other friends are being so weird about it. Don’t get me wrong, I know we all process grief differently, and I’m acting anything but normal myself, but Adrian and Celica are being…off.

I just lost one of my closest friends, and now it feels like I’ve lost all of them.

I think it was

I’m scared to even write down who I think it is, because I used to think we were friends. He’s anything but a murderer. And this could be totally unrelated to anything I know about. Believe it or not, I didn’t know Summer for all that long—maybe she had some enemies she never told me about.

But there are three reasons I think it was Adrian Krest.

1. He was jealous of Summer, and things were getting pretty tense. Not murder-you tense, but they liked the same girl (so did I, can’t blame him for that) and even though he told me he was over it, he might have let the competition get to his head.

2. He’s acting way too good-natured about all of this. I talked with him yesterday because God, I needed to talk to someone, and he was acting so normal that it honestly got kind of weird. I didn’t even have to tell him what happened to Summer—he already knew somehow—but he went on chatting like it wasn’t a big deal.

He’s a good guy, or so I thought. Brave, noble, selfless, all that, except the last few months he started to let some other things show too. He’s more shallow than I thought he was. I asked him why he liked Celica and he couldn’t give me a straight answer.

Oh, and 3. I RECOGNIZE THAT FUCKING POCKET KNIFE. The fancy one with the white dragon on the handle, only now that dragon is red with my friend’s blood. I gave Adrian that thing. And now it’ll only make my case worse.

As for Celica…she at least cried. She let me hold her and wipe the tears from her pretty blue eyes. But even then, it felt kind of empty.

Yes, I have feelings for Celica too, but did I fucking kill someone when I saw them kissing her????

I don’t know what to do. Should I run? Should I try to find concrete evidence against Adrian before he makes any to frame me? Should I investigate Summer’s past?

I’m not a murderer. I’m a college student and hopefully one day a romance author. My life finally started to make sense a couple months ago and now it’s all crashing down.

I’ve never felt this scared. I’ve never felt this alone. I feel like I’m going crazy.

-Hayley