𝐊𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄🔪🃏🥀

𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 3

Lucas surrendered, crossing his arms and leaning back on Dean's dresser as Quinn rested her head on his shoulder. I wiped my wet cheeks with the back of my hand, sniffling as I tried to pull myself back to the present. Across from me, Gianna was nodding slowly. She looked up at me, her long, fake eyelashes batting as she, too, blinked back tears. "Let's just focus on what we know..." She said, folding her hands together. "TJ left during halftime, we don't know where he went, and then we found him in the training room...like that." She grimaced and shivered while she thought of TJ's gory state.

"Did you see anyone else?" I focused on Dean, who asked the burning question as a beam of moonlight hit his chiseled face. He stared right into me, one blue eye in the light and one in the dark. "No," I shook my head. "It was just me, Gianna, Quinn, and TJ," suddenly I remembered the odd little piece of masking tape on the main door to the training room. "But, there was tape on the door, like someone was already in there before us."

Lucas suddenly groaned, his head lowering into his palm. "This is like a fucked-up Heathers remake and I hate it," he pulled off his Thief Creek Eagles beanie and Quinn began stroking his messy brown hair. "So, what, we're just gonna go through the rest of the year acting like we don't know anything about what happened to TJ?" he asked, looking up at me again. "What are you gonna tell your dad, Marley? I mean, you live with the Sheriff."

"And he doesn't like to get involved in my life, so I won't get involved in his." I declared, thinking of the way my dad always dismissed his work life and left me out of it. Even my mom wasn't lucky enough to hear the stories of the crimes and pettiness of Thief Creek. "There's nothing we left behind or did that could place us in the training room that night," I continued, remembering my PIN that I didn't have to enter.

"Hmm, I'm not so sure about that," I turned to see Gianna shaking her head at me. Her fingers rested on her chin and she sighed, gesturing towards Quinn and Lucas. "Did you hear her scream?" I shuddered as I remembered Quinn's earsplitting screech in the training room–the first thing she did when she saw TJ. I never thought about it until now, but Gianna was right–someone had to have heard her.

All of a sudden I heard a soft, mewing sound, and my eyes darted to the floor and met the wide, yellow ones of Dean's cat, Churchill. Next to his fluffy black body, the wooden bedroom door was cracked open just a slit from where he must've slid in. "Church!" Dean chirped, bending down and stroking the cat's head. "How did you get in here, you menace," the cat prodded his head into Dean's leg and raised its tail, and I saw a tuft of black fur fly off of his body as Dean continued to pet him.

"Oh God," Lucas said, his voice congested. "Here we go," and then he started sneezing, holding onto Dean's dresser with one hand as his allergies reacted to the furry companion. Dean chuckled and scooped Churchill in his arms. "Come on, gattino, time for you to go," The cat squirmed as Dean placed him outside, mewing as he tightly shut the bedroom door.

It was then that I realized I still had Lucas's phone in my pocket. It buzzed, and I took it out, glancing at a preview of a text from an unknown number. "Hey, Lucas, someone's texting you," I said, carefully handing his phone out to him. He narrowed his eyes at me as he took it with haste. "Who the hell is this?" he asked, tapping away at the screen. "Hey, I got one, too," I saw Quinn on her phone next to him, and I looked at my own cell to see that I, too, had a strange unread message on my screen. I turned to Jack, who affirmatively held up his phone as well, and Gianna, who nodded as she scrolled on hers. "It's some video," she said. "Did we all get the same one?"

"I got it, too," Dean said, his finger hovering over the screen of his cell. "Let's check it out." I joined the rest of the group in tapping on the eerie message, prompting my phone to open up a media player. The footage was dark and crackly, but I could make out the general landmarks of the training room. My heart raced as the video played on, and I was half expecting to see myself on camera. There was a low, raspy breathing sound for a few seconds, and then the camera flash shined directly on TJ's horrified face. "Holy shit, it's TJ!" Lucas exclaimed.