This Book Kills

I had always hated exercise, but if I had known I might need to run in order to save my own life, I would have trained every day.

I could tell she was tired, frustrated, angry... And all that meant she had finally unlocked her imagination. If she'd shown this amount of creativity when we were writing the short story, who knew what sort of murder scene the killer would have had to copy.

But then again, private schools had scandals all the time and people still sent their kids to them. I guess it was mainly tradition: for people like Tommy it was a legacy - his father had come to this school, and his grandfather, and his great-great- grandfather. Okay, so maybe the scandals didn't usually involve murders. But Henry the Eighth had killed, like, two of his wives and the royal family had recovered fine.

Now that I had more than one friend, I found I didn't have a lot of time to myself - and, as it turned out, I quite liked the alone time.

Tuesdays didn't get enough credit for how incredibly crap they were as a day. With Mondays, sure the weekend was over and that sucked, but a brand-new week stretched ahead again, full of possibility.

Wednesdays meant the week was halfway over; Thursdays meant Friday was around the corner - Friday to Sunday were self-explanatory.

But Tuesdays? They were the worst. All the shiny sheen of Monday had worn off, to reveal that yes, this week would be just as long and boring as the last.

"Just because things are easy for you doesn't mean they're easy. Just because people are good to you doesn't mean they're good. You can't close your eyes and then claim ignorance - people who let bad stuff happen are just as bad as the people who do bad stuff."

"Sorry," I mumbled, trying to go around him. I don't know why I apologized to him - he was the one standing in my way. Force of habit, I suppose. Apologizing always seemed like the path of least resistance.

Her thin lips seemed to fall naturally down into a frown, like gravity was working extra hard on them.

I clenched my fists, forcing myself to stop. I had a habit of imagining doomsday scenarios, probably because of all the thrillers I read - great for writing stories, but not helpful when I just needed to listen to the conversation to find out what was happening.

People like Clem went through life knowing it owed them something, so that's how life treated them. People like me owed life something instead.

"And you're certain he loves you?" I asked. "There's that old saying - if he'll cheat with - you, he'll cheat on you."