1 When the party's over

Alcohol.

Music.

Drunk people drinking even more.

People dancing.

People doing both things.

What for some is a party atmosphere, for others, is a totally chaotic environment. That's high school fall dances, a complete waste of money and time. Despite all this, I was there, sitting in my chair, while the others were on the dance floor. Black Madonna was playing all over the room, not a song you usually hear at a party, but alcohol made them dance like crazy, regardless of the song.

"Lens, don't be dull and come dance too" Luna approaches the table I sat at. A laugh escapes from her mouth, my friend has drunk way too much.

"Why should I?" My facial expression has not changed, I still have the same face of annoyance and boredom. This is the expression I have at all the events that too many people attend. Honestly, I like to party, but only when I'm with my friends, or at most a few other people. Places with a lot of people overwhelm me, that's where my hatred of high school comes from.

"Because it's fun!"

"Our concepts of fun are very different" once having said that, Luna rolls her eyes with false annoyance and returns to the dance floor, where Trevor waits for her. I get back to what I was doing before.

Possibly all I've done since I came to the dance has been to eat and look at everyone with a face of contempt. I might be jealous of them because they're having a good time while I'm sitting here, crossing my arms, watching them all like a sourpuss.

Luna comes back to me, this time accompanied by Trevor. Before getting closer to me, they look at each other with approval. Luna surrounds the table from the right and Trevor from the left until they position one on my right side and the other on my left side. I wouldn't even try, but they do. They both grab me by the arms and try to get me up. I didn't think they'd make it, but they are two, and I'm only one.

"It's not worth it to be like this for him, he doesn't deserve to see you this way" the moment I hear the word "he" I throw a murderous look at Trevor, the least I want now is to hear my friends mention him.

With a shove, I get rid of his arms and I step out quickly. Before coming here I told myself that nothing and no one would ruin the night, apparently, it was me who did it. This dance was a pretext to drown my sorrows, although technically I did, with food, but I did. It took so little time not to think about it.

"Here friend, I've seen from miles away that you need one" a girl I don't even know approaches me and offers me a plastic glass filled with vodka. I look into her eyes, thinking. She smiles at me and without giving it any more thought, I accept the glass.

I go out to the schoolyard and my surprise, there are more people outside than I imagined. I go to a place away from the others and start drinking vodka. The moment I started to get dizzy I realized it was a bad idea to accept the glass. The girl looked innocent, but this isn't the first time I've had vodka, and I'm not that stupid not to realize that this glass is not filled just with vodka. Instead, I was stupid enough to accept a stranger's drink.

"Oh God" my head is spinning, I think I'm going to die.

I wake up on the floor, where I was expecting to find myself, but I'm not in the same place I passed out in, I'm in a classroom. A shriek escapes from my mouth as I realize that a lifeless body is beside me. I can't identify him since his head is turned to one side, his face is full of blood, just like the shirt on his suit. In a matter of seconds, I realize that my hands are red, and some areas of the top of my purple dress are dyed a dark color. All indications are that those stains were caused by blood, by his blood.

I approach him slowly. I do it crawling on the floor, I think if I try to get off the ground I'll fall again because my head keeps spinning. I grab him by the chin, which is also stained with blood, and I turn his head towards me. His dark brown hair combed to one side, his tiny honey-colored eyes half-opened, his thin, cold skin now full of blood. My heart starts pounding, about to come out of my chest. I can identify this guy. It's him, it's Eden Zak.

Panic gives me the strength I didn't have before to get off the ground. I'm going straight to the door to try to open it, but I can't, someone locked me in here with the body. I start hyperventilating, it's the first time I see a lifeless body full of blood. There's nothing I can do, he's very dead.

I decide to sit on the floor again, a little far from him. I embrace my knees and lean my head on them, staring in the direction of the corpse. I try to calm down and find a solution to all this, but I can't think of anything. I start to cry. A nervous breakdown takes hold of me. I get up again and head to the door. I start punching it, followed by kicks, I don't give up until my shoulders start hurting. I'm still emotionally unstable, and a fit of anger causes me to grab a chair and throw it into a window, creating an exit. Actually, I could have just opened it, as they were not blocked, but the emotions right now are very strong. I'm on the first floor, so nothing will happen to me if I jump out the window. I manage to do so, although I landed on the tiny pieces of glass, my blood-stained hands gush even more blood, despite this, I am on my way to seek help to the room where everyone is dancing happily, without the worry of having seen a corpse.

I open the doors with a blow. The music sounded very loose in the background. It was the moment of the announcement of the kings of the dance. In front of the entire audience were Ever Zak and Viktor Arion, the couple that everyone had voted for as kings. Ever is a very beautiful girl, dark brown hair, honey-colored eyes, and impeccable skin, but what stands out most from her is her sweet and soft voice, if she becomes a singer, she has the success guaranteed. Viktor Arion is also handsome, but not as handsome as his girlfriend. He has gray-tinted hair, almond-shaped sky-blue eyes. Actually, I wouldn't say no if they invited me to a threesome. All eyes turn to me. Some people start screaming in horror at what they see.

"Eden..." I start to vocalize, the nerves prevented me from speaking. Ever makes its way through the audience when she hears the name of her twin brother.

"What's wrong with him?" she asks worriedly.

"He's dead, full of blood, I was..." before I could finish my sentence, she runs outside, on the way, her crown falls to the floor. I follow her, just like her boyfriend.

Ever starts circling the site, looking around, she does not know where to go, as she does not know where her brother is. In the face of her disorientation, I decide to go ahead and tell her where to go. We both run, as more people follow us behind. When we got to the incident site, we stopped in front of the door.

"It's locked, I tried to open it from the inside, but I couldn't" I inform her. But she doesn't listen to me, and she tries to open the door. She succeeds. A surprise expression is drawn on my face to see that she got it.

As soon as she walks through the door, Ever throws herself to the ground, crying, she holds her brother's head on her knees and takes his pulse. Her cries get louder when she realizes he's really dead. At the entrance of the classroom are Viktor, Luna, and Trevor watching the scene in horror.

"Raisa, what happened?" my friend asks me restlessly.

"I'm not sure. I fainted and woke up next to him" my breath is getting heavier and heavier.

"Call the police!" intervenes Ever desperate, her voice breaks in the last word.

Viktor picks up his cell phone and with his trembling hands dials the number. They take a few seconds to answer and when he tells them the situation, they warn us that they will arrive in less than 20 minutes.

"Was it you?" Ever asks, more than asking, she was screaming.

"No..." I answer somehow annoyed because she is distrusting me.

"Your damn hands are full of blood".

"That doesn't prove anything. You also have them full of blood" she looks at them and then looks at me mad again.

"You dumb hoe, can't you see I'm touching him now?" she screams indignantly. I know her brother is dead, and she is in shock, but she should take down a peg or two, nobody talks to me like that.

"Yeah... and I also did that before".

"How about we go outside and talk for a while, Lens?" Trevor interrupts us. I think if he hadn't stepped in, I'd have that crazy girl right now on top of me grabbing my hair.

Trevor holds my hand and pulls me out of the classroom. We stopped at the entrance to the building, he positions himself in front of me.

"Tell me, what's your freaking problem?" I don't know why, but today everyone is yelling at me.

"My friend, Chile, okay?" I answer, looking mad at him. "First of all, don't raise your voice at me again. And secondly, I don't have a problem, maybe you do".

"I thought you had a crush on Eden. Does his death affect you this little?" Trevor always has to be there to remind me of this kind of things.

"How hypocritical do you have to be to first tell me that he doesn't deserve my tears and now ask me if I'm not affected by his death?" now I'm the one screaming. "Yes, it has affected me, and a lot. I feel like I'm dying inside, I've been feeling this way since last week. But now, now that pain has turned into fucking hell".

A silence is generated between both of us. I had never before argued with him in such a way.

"And no, I'm not going to cry. I don't want them to see me like this. I know that if they see me crying they will take advantage of my vulnerability to do me more harm"

"But it is not good to force yourself not to cry" at last he decides to say something too.

"Trevor, we both know that as soon as I get home, I'm gonna go straight to bed and cry all night. It's gonna be that way for the rest of my existence. Do you know why? Because I have no reason to stop, I can't hate him, he was never to blame for what happened"

The police cut our discussion with their arrival. They ask us where the body is, it's then when we take them to the scene of the incident.

~

"September the 26th 2023, 9:47 am, case: the murder of Eden Zak, suspect 1: Raisa Lenston" a commissioner begins to speak after having hit the recording button of a cassette tape recorder.

"Miss Lenston, could you tell us everything that happened on the day of the incident?" the same commissioner asks me.

"I went to the high school fall dance with my friends. I was inside the ballroom for about 2 hours, but I don't like places that are about to collapse, they stress me out. So I decided to go outside, along the way a girl stopped me and gave me a glass of alcohol. It was later that I realized that that drink was carrying something, as I fainted. When I woke up, I was locked in a classroom with Eden's body"

"What you're trying to say, is that you were under the influence of a drug?" the other commissioner asks.

"Yes, I think" at my gesture of doubt, the two commissioners look at each other.

"But you had blood on your hands and dress".

Before I can say anything, a woman walks into the room I'm being questioned in. She's wearing a science gown, so I'm assuming this is a female doctor who has examined the blood that some men took as a sample from my hands and my dress.

"Here are the blood results. The blood on her hands belongs to both the suspect and Eden. However, the blood on the dress is only Eden's" she informs them.

"It was you, you killed my son!" one of the commissioners, Eden's father, jumps out of the chair and points his index finger at me.

"Don't jump to the wrong conclusions so quickly, we're still not sure" the other commissioner gets in the way. "She just told us that there's a chance she might have been under the influence of some sedative, could you do a test?" This time he is addressing the lady in front of us.

The doctor nodded and approached me to collect a sample of my saliva with something like an ear swab, which she carried with her for some strange reason. Then she goes to her lab ready to test my saliva. Until then I stayed in the office where I had been being interrogated.

A few bangs are heard outside the office a quarter of an hour later. Eden's father leaps out of the chair to see that the doctor has come back with the results. All this time he's been looking at me badly. Good thing I'm not able to read minds because I'm sure if I could and I would have, I'd be crying right now or laughing, I'm not sure.

"The evidence shows that the suspect was drugged," she says, without even saying hello.

"Or she got high" the comment of Mr. Zak could not miss. I rolled my eyes. There are very unbearable people in this world.

"So back to what I was saying" the doctor takes the floor again. "It is GHB, or also called liquid ecstasy. It is a very common drug among young people, it is colorless and odorless, which makes it easier to place in a drink without the consumer noticing. It usually produces both high euphoria and hallucinations, but each body is a world. So it wouldn't surprise me that the girl has not experienced either of those things, but rather their side effects such as nausea, dizziness, vomiting".

"Okay, thank you very much, Dorothy" the good cop thanks her, the other one stays quiet.

"Before I go, I'd like to comment on something. I doubt she was the one who drugged herself, this drug mixed with alcoholic beverages in most cases is deadly"

"Maybe she wanted to kill herself" I don't know if he's joking or not, but suicide is a very serious thing. This man is out of his mind, for every one of his interventions, I get ear cancer.

"Do you realize the only smart thing you've said this whole morning has been hello?" I ask ironically. "I think suicide is a really serious topic for you to be talking about it that way. Besides, if according to you I wanted to kill myself, why do you think I killed Eden then? Your reasoning is simply inconsistent"

Now the arrogant policeman plays the offended one. How hypocritical does he have to be, to be playing the victim?

"I was just leaving, here I leave you the documents about the drug," Dorothy says goodbye.

Just as the doctor leaves the office, the good commissioners stand up and stare at me.

"Thank you very much for your cooperation, we will continue to investigate, in case we discover something we will let you know".

With this said, I leave the station. Although not before dedicating a mocking smile to Eden's father. I feel terrible about Eden's death, but his father is one of the most unbearable people I know.

My Aunt Alena and my Uncle Danil, my mother's siblings, were waiting for me at the door of the house. My mother passed away a few years ago because of the lack of justice in this city. She was a single mother and my "father" was just a sperm donor, literally.

"Raisa!" she cries out my name when she sees me appear, she comes to me and hugs me. "Don't worry, we know it wasn't you".

I stay silent, it's as if the fear I had before about people seeing me cry over Eden's death has returned, as has my desire to cry.

Despite being lunchtime, I'm not hungry, all I want to do now is go to my room and not leave it. This worries my uncle and my aunt, however, I know deep down they understand me, that's the good thing about having young uncles, that they understand what you're going through. The whole afternoon I spend it crying and ignoring all the calls and messages that come to my cell phone.

When the party's over, I can stop lying that I don't feel anything, I can stop pretending I'm strong. When the party is over, I take off my mask, exposing my vulnerability and my flaws.