Thirty Four

CHAPTE 34

Golden High School, 09:50.

The sound of the bathroom door knob being turned softly made Brittany, who had been sitting worriedly on her bed, turn around. She was waiting for Alicia, who had left a few moments ago to take a shower, but had not come out after an hour had passed.

"Alicia," Brittany murmured.

The blonde-haired girl opened her mouth wide and didn't seem to blink for a while. That was until Alicia's finger snapped out of her reverie.

Brittany let out a brief squeal before patting herself on both cheeks. "Oh my God, am I dreaming? Who is this girl in front of me?! Woohoo! Amazing! You look, you... Oh, my gosh, I almost stopped breathing," she said quickly.

The excitement in the room was caused by Alicia's physical transformation. The Brooklyn-born girl had dyed her hair jet black and straightened it--with Brittany's straightening iron--so her face looked very defined now. Plus, she wears short bangs now.

Her eyes had turned gray with soft lenses, while her eyebrows looked sharper because Alicia had shaved off a little of the lower side of her thick eyebrows.

"Calm down, Britt," Alicia said as she rubbed both sides of Brittany's shoulders.

"Gosh, why are you changing and surprising me all the time?"

Alicia chuckled amusedly. "Sorry for taking so long to borrow it," she said as she handed her best friend the straightener.

Brittany took a deep breath and quickly accepted the item. "Can you explain to me now, why your hair turned black and your eyes turned gray. Gosh, you're even starting to imitate Ace now!"

"Ace?"

"Yes." Brittany circled Alicia's body and continued, "You saw for yourself that that boy also changed his hair color to black. Are you two trying to imitate Nick or something?"

Alicia laughed in place. It was a laugh Brittany had never seen before. She cleared her throat softly and mumbled. "How do you think I look?"

Brittany leaned back and examined Alicia's body from top to bottom. It wasn't just her face that had changed. The girl's boyish style of dress was now transformed into a more feminine look with a white tanktop covered by a navy oversized jacket while the ripped jeans she used to wear were now a short black knee-length skirt.

"You look like..." Brittany paused her sentence and looked straight at Alicia. She was silent for a few moments, before the corners of Brittany's lips turned up. "Me! You look like me! This is awesome! We can share clothes from now on." Brittany turned around and went over to her wardrobe. "Maybe you can use my dresses or we can swap skirts from now on, oh, yeah, we can also--"

"Britt," Alicia cut in. So Brittany immediately turned around and gave Alicia that--as if asking what was wrong--expression. "I'm doing this as a disguise."

Brittany frowned. "Undercover?"

Alicia nodded and walked to her bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and Brittany began to follow her. Now the two faced each other sitting on their respective beds.

"I can no longer let the culprit get away, Britt." Alicia opened the choker necklace around her neck and showed Brittany the red line around her nape. "You can see it, right? This guy's not messing around. He really wants to finish me off." Alicia crossed her arms over her chest. "And to make matters worse, this guy also takes out anyone who gets in his way or suspects him."

"What do you mean, Alicia?"

"Britt, listen to me, I may not have known your boyfriend but I think it all started with him," Alicia said carefully.

Brittany bent her forehead even more deeply, because this topic of conversation was starting to confuse her. Really confused. "I don't understand," she said honestly.

"Did you know before that James was involved in drug or arms trafficking?"

Brittany shook her head weakly. "Did you know that there was someone who hated James so much, held such a grudge against him that they would even kill him?" Alicia added, and Brittany shook her head again. "It's all because the perpetrator probably did it so carefully and so close. You need to be very close in order to plunge a dull knife into the victim's chest and witness his suffering. So I guess that's the maxim the perpetrator used to finish the victim off."

Brittany got up and looked at Alicia enthusiastically. "If the culprit was so close, why was it so hard to get to him or her?"

Then the dark-haired girl got up and walked over to Brittany. "Because maybe he's not hiding in the dark. He's hiding his crimes in the light and he's making good use of that light." Alicia shrugged her shoulders. "Hasn't your girlfriend been followed since she left the room? That means, the perpetrator's intention to commit murder is very clear. He deliberately followed her as she began to panic and finished her off in the main hallway when it was quiet."

"I think he was... very desperate to do it," Brittany said.

"Yes, you're right." Alicia raised one eyebrow. "The perpetrator was desperate enough to kill his victim in a fairly public place, where someone might have seen them. But what's the truth? Even the surveillance camera didn't capture any images of the perpetrator and his potential victim. It went off as soon as I passed through the hallway and I'm sure it was intentional."

Brittany bit her lower lip in fear. "This is so horrible," she squeaked.

"She didn't do it by chance or under pressure, Britt," Alicia insisted. "She did it on purpose."

"'On purpose'?"

"The perpetrator chose the main hallway so that the body would be found quickly and the police would of course check the old CCTV cameras," Alicia said vehemently. "The perpetrator seems to know every corner of this dormitory by heart. He must have been inside the dormitory for the past few months and prepared all these surprises for me."

Brittany muttered. "So, you're saying James was bait to get to you?"

Alicia nodded in agreement. "But things started to go awry when Elena seemed to be covering something up and spilled the beans about the silver hairpin that only the person who found James first could see."

Brittany was silent for a moment before her face twisted into a look of admiration for Alicia. "You've never even talked this much before. That hospital has changed you, Alicia," she joked.

And the girl named Alicia just scowled in annoyance. "I'm being serious, Britt."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Brittany said with a half laugh. "So, what do you want to do now? With that different-looking hair and face, of course? You must be planning something, right?"

Alicia nodded. "Yes. I'm going to try to attract the attention of the perpetrator."

"Attract the attention of the perpetrator?" Brittany frowned in confusion and gave a quick shrug of her shoulders. "But, how?"

"I'm going on a date with Ace."