The Mystery Of Eastbrooks High

Chapter Twenty: One Of Us

THE FIVE OF THEM WERE LOCKED UP IN A HOLDING CELL.

Norah glanced at the small glass square shielding them from outside the police station as the other three processed the new information. All of them were sprawled out on the floor in a circle; Emma's head was in Norah's lap, and Norah was leaning into Austin's side, her head resting on his shoulder. Austin's head was on top of hers, and Sabrina had her head on his lap. Jace's head was nestled on the pillow on top of Norah's shins, and they all formed a weird circle in the middle of the floor on the holding cell.

Norah was absently playing with the fiery red strands of Sabrina's hair, waiting as Emma, Austin and Sabrina took in the new information: Dheeraj's fingerprints were found on the paper discovered beneath Callisto's fingers. That information had shocked her out of her haze, and judging by the way the others looked, the same thing was happening to them too.

Norah's eyes went to the small glass square etched onto the door again, and all she could see was a blur of police uniforms huddled together. The police were facing a lot of pressure: the need to crack the case increased, and they had to ensure that the book club members were safe too. The moment the book club members arrived at the police station, they divided them up into teams instead of putting all of them together and increasing the risk since it was clear that one of the book club members were involved.

The police gave them the option of choosing the people they wanted to team up with– and all of them chose their closest friends in the bookclub. Though the bookclub became a tight-knit group in the past days, they had their own friend groups. Cole, Aiden and Callisto were super close, and now only two of them were left in that group. Norah saw two police escort them to different rooms for interviews: currently, the suspicion was mostly on the two of them and Divya.

Cole and Aiden were the ones who found Callisto. Norah heard one of the officers voice their concerns: Callisto wouldn't open the back gate that had been locked inside unless someone she trusted came. And Cole and Aiden were her best friends: they were the ones she trusted the most; she'd open the gate without any resistance or doubt if they were the ones who came.

Something else she'd heard during the chaos was that Cole and Aiden did have a call with Callisto, and apparently, she had convinced them not to come to her house and that she'd be leaving the treehouse in a few minutes but they'd gotten worried when she didn't reply to their calls or texts. Their concern had been if she'd fallen asleep on the treehouse, and they wanted to wake her up and take her back into the safety of her house.

They'd arrived at her house fifteen minutes later, and found her dead. They called the police at 1:30 AM.

It had been pretty late by the time they all went home. It had been 12:30 by the time Norah got back home. It had been late by the time the others had gotten home too: the first question the police asked everyone collectively after all of them arrived at the police station.

"This is fucking with my head," Emma finally said, breaking the silence. "I still can't believe one of us has a hand in this. All these days, all the time we spent together, one of us was lying. Horribly. Faking their sadness," Sabrina said, tears welling up in her eyes. "And while they acted normally with us, they were probably strategising how to isolate and kill."

"It can't be Divya. Even if her brother really is involved, I refuse to believe it's Divya," Norah said, shaking her head with a determined look on her face. As if she was ready to argue with anyone who said anything else. Austin's eyes flicked to meet hers, a question in his eyes beneath all the hurt and sadness. "I just know it," Norah said again. "We were friends with her from a long time. I saw how her brother's disappearance crippled her. I saw how it affected her, how she had hope in the beginning and how that hope slowly disappeared, the realization killing her. I could feel her sadness, I knew how she felt, because the same thing happened with Noah after a year," her voice broke at her twin brother's name. "If she knew her brother was alive, she would behave or feel differently. But I saw the grief in her eyes everytime I saw her. It's not her, she'd never do this."