Chapter 99 – Sudden Confessions – Erica Henson

Currently there was a fairly large meeting taking place inside of Mrs. Pierce’s classroom. Mrs. Pierce ordered all the fighting students caught by the SCA to be brought inside for questioning. When Jackie was told what was happening she intercepted the large group in the hallway and asked everyone to go into Mrs. Pierce’s room. Apparently Jackie didn’t want this fight to become common knowledge and wanted to have this conversation out of the public eye. Mrs. Pierce, one of the more uptight teachers at our school, was against doing things off the records like this. When Ms. Sampson reminded her that a few of the PTA were still on campus, Mrs. Pierce capitulated and agreed to hold the meeting in her empty classroom.

Inside this classroom were groups of people that would normally never be caught dead together. Mrs. Pierce and Jackie were the only teachers in the room, and it was no secret that they weren’t exactly friends. Black Brittney and Naomi had been summoned after Jackie learned which groups were behind this fight. There was a mix of bruised girls from both groups in varying states of attentiveness. The SCA that were involved in stopping the fight were also present. All of the members of the student council were in the room with the exception of Sam, who went home early. I was standing against the wall with the student council members. Only the girls that took part in the fight were seated in desks.

Jackie was rubbing her forehead in irritation and muttering something incomprehensible under her breath. She was standing at the front of the classroom, trying to organize herself before deciding on what to say. She looked between the seated students with an angry look on her face and opened her mouth to speak.

“Alright, this is how this is going to go.” Jackie said, “None of this happened.”

Mrs. Pierce readjusted her glasses.

“You can’t just…” Mrs. Pierce interjected.

“While the spirit week event is going on we can’t afford to deal with this.” Jackie said. “I thought I made this clear earlier. There are too many parents on campus and if they hear about this they’ll be in an uproar. This event has finally got things calmed down. I don’t need things to boomerang back into stress mode.”

“So you’re going to bury this?” Mrs. Pierce asked in disbelief.

Jackie turned her stern look away from the seated girls and over to Mrs. Pierce who was sitting at her own desk.

“Are you volunteering to be the one that has to put up with their nagging voices for the next few weeks?” Jackie asked. “The principal is still out of commission and I’m practically doing his job on top of mine. I’ve finally cleared some things off my plate and you want to throw me back to the wolves?”

“This isn’t about your circumstances.” Mrs. Pierce said. “As teachers we have an integral duty to handle this like adults. There are consequences for breaking the rules. These troublemakers are the usual suspects that are always causing issues during school hours. You’re suggesting we let them get away with a brawl on school grounds?”

“I didn’t say we were letting them get away with it.” Jackie said. “I just said we can’t deal with it right now.”

Jackie turned to look at Naomi.

“Naomi… Why are you always doing your best to test my patience?” Jackie asked and then looked over to Brittney, “Brittney, didn’t you just get suspended not too long ago? Are you pushing to break some sort of record?”

This was obviously rhetorical because she didn’t wait for a response before continuing.

“I want someone to tell me how this all started.” Jackie said.

A few girls tried to piece together a story about an inter-group conflict that had been going on between them. However, the opposing group took offense to the other’s retelling of the story. Soon a choir of voices was trying to speak over each other to try telling their version of the events leading up to this. That choir of voices descended into shouting. The shouting descended into a petty arguing match.

“Alright! Alright!” Jackie shouted over all of them while raising a hand, “Suddenly I decided that I don’t care. The important thing is that this won’t happen again. Naomi, you and your friends don’t go anywhere near Brittney. Brittney, you’ll do the same with Naomi and her friends. You two can follow simple rules like that, can’t you?”

Black Brittney and Naomi exchanged uneasy glares. In the end they both turned to Jackie and nodded uncertainly. Jackie wasn’t convinced but obviously didn’t want to argue things further. Like she said, there were other things at stake right now. Mrs. Pierce huffed indignantly off to the side. She had a history of being tough on students that acted out in her classes. While sweeping things aside was easy for Jackie, it was difficult for a more hardline administrator like Mrs. Pierce. Jackie looked between Naomi and Brittney again.

“If either of you fails to live up to this then you’ll be suspended for far longer than a week. On top of that, I’ll write about your histories of violent behavior on your records. Believe me when I say that you don’t want that when you’re so close to graduation. Walk the line and don’t cause any more problems from here on out.”

The two of them nodded. Jackie gave a questioning look over to Mrs. Pierce and she nodded her agreement. Jackie looked over the rest of the seated girls.

“That goes for the rest of you, too. Get on my nerves and I’ll make sure you regret doing so. Now, unless someone has something else that they’d like to say…”

“I have something to say!” I quickly volunteered.

All eyes in the room turned on me as I stepped away from the student council members near the far corner of the room.

“Erica…?” Jackie asked curiously, “Do you have something to say about all this?”

“Actually, it isn’t about this exactly. I figure now is a good time as any to tell people about something important. I think the last spirit day event tomorrow may be at risk. I want to get the word out while people are willing to listen. May I…?”

Jackie shrugged and waved her hand carelessly.

“Sure, whatever you have to say come on up and say it. It can’t hurt to let everyone know what we need to be looking out for.”

I walked over to the front of the room nervously. What I had to say was actually more serious than what Jackie suspected. I was planning to confess and tell everyone about a secret that I had been burdening for a while now. It was only recently that I found the strength to come forward about this because now I had something important with me in the bag that I was carrying at my side. Now, with Val and her SCA finally taking me seriously, I was in a good position to lay out the problem to everyone.

“As you all know, I’ve been watching the Society of Sisters closely for the past couple of weeks.” I said to preempt my explanation.

“Oh god,” Jackie said tiredly, “What are they up to now?”

"What I have to say isn't about what they're doing. It's about who they're working with." I said. "You see, I've kept something secret that I think needs to come out now that I'm more certain about what's going on."

The dramatic change in my tone seemed to be appreciated by the audience because everyone in the room looked at me with much more interest than before. Jackie, more than anyone else, looked thrown off by my entire speech.

"Everyone knows that I was with Ms. Logan when she died." I said. "What they don't know, is that I was also with Vivian Hale when she died too."

There were gasps and whispers around the room at the implication of my involvement in two local murders. Mrs. Pierce sat straight up in her seat and gave me a cold look. The members of the student council and SCA exchanged curious looks between each other and then back at me. Jackie's jaw was pratically on the floor upon hearing this. She shook her head in confusion.

"No, no, that can't be right..." She said. "Do you know what day that happened on? That was on the same night that..."

"That you left town, I know." I said, "I didn't go to a friend's house that night. I took a cab and I went across town."

Jackie looked like she had been struck across the face upon hearing this confession.

"W-what…?" She managed to stammer out.

"I didn't know that I was going to meet Vivian Hale that night." I said. "I received an anonymous message from someone claiming to know more about how Ms. Logan died. Since I felt like I couldn't do much back when Ms. Logan died I took it upon myself to try learning the truth behind her murder. Only, when I got there I didn't meet with some sort of informant. I met with Vivian Hale on the last night that she was still alive."

No one said a thing. The classroom was in stark silence now that they were wrapped up in my story. Jackie looked to be waiting for me to continue instead of questioning the fact that I snuck out that night.

"Vivian thought that I was there to ambush her and threatened me at first. When she learned that I had been misled in the same way she was, she agreed to calm down and talk to me. We were going up to her room to talk when I once again came face to face with the murderer that killed Ms. Logan."

I pulled the mask out of my bag and raised it above my head.

"This is the mask of the Killing Cat." I said while presenting it to everyone in the room.

Jackie's skin went pale white when she saw the mouth stitching on the mask's face. Naomi and the members of the student council all seemed to have the same wide-eyed dumstruck expression on their faces.

"I only managed to recover this mask because it was given to one of the members of the Society of Sisters. It took some convincing, but that member agreed to sell it to me after I kept bothering her about it. I think the Killing Cat discarded this particular mask to throw me off. However, this is the same mask that was worn on the nights that she killed Ms. Logan and Vivian Hale."

"If that's true then why didn't you go to the police with this?" Mrs. Pierce asked demandingly. "This isn't something that a girl your age should be handling. You should've worked with the police the night that Miss Hale was killed. From what I've heard on the news they were led to Miss Hale's body on an anonymous call. Was that you?"

"It was me." I confirmed. "A lot of people probably realize by now that Jackie and I live together. It isn't really a secret anymore. I couldn't go to the police without implicating her and further cementing her as the primary suspect. I think that was part of what the Killing Cat had planned for me."

Mrs. Pierce shook her head.

"A student shouldn't be living with an unrelated teacher in the first place!" Mrs. Pierce said. "The vice principal has brought this conflict upon herself by housing you. As your guardian this should be her burden to bear, not yours."

"It's not like that." I said in Jackie's defense. "She helped me when I ran away from home. I..."

"That mask," Jackie interrupted. "Erica, hand it here."

Jackie walked over and took it from me before I could even properly respond. She held the mask with both hands and stared at it intensely.

"You say this killer calls herself the Killing Cat?" Jackie asked.

"Yes," I said, "She also goes by Nyx. Nyx uses a doll in the shape of a black cat in order to communicate with people. I brought this up because I found that same doll in a video meeting with the Society of Sisters. She is urging them to vandalize the school, but I don't know how. I think it'll happen tomorrow."

Jackie looked away from the mask long enough to look at all the girls in the room. They too were focused on the mask as if it were some ancient artifact of untold value.

"Everyone get out of here." Jackie said. "I need to think about things. This meeting is over. If anyone has information on this 'Killing Cat' person, bring it to me and I'll pardon you for this transgression and all others like it in the past. You’re dismissed."

Slowly, the crowd got up and started filing out of the classroom. Mrs. Pierce gave Jackie a questioning look, but decided that she’d leave with the rest of the crowd. Only the student council remained in the classroom with me and Jackie. The first one to approach was Holly. She had a sad look on her face. She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a hug.

“You’ve been bottling this up for a long time now, haven’t you?” Holly asked. “I’m glad you were finally able to talk about it. I hope this means you can start to feel better from here on out.”

I returned her hug warmly.

“Thank you. It was the reason that I was so happy that you came over that day. Talking to you lifted a lot of weight off of my shoulders.”

“I wished you would’ve mentioned this before!” Jackie hissed venomously. “This is a huge deal! From what it sounds like you’re saying, the murderer lured both you and Vivian out and you were lucky to escape with your life, is that true?”

“I don’t know if it was luck.” I said. “Nyx… I mean… The murderer was clearly after Vivian. Other than that though, yes, you’re right. It was dangerous and I still regret being there that night. I stand by what I said though. I couldn’t do anything for Ms. Logan and wanted to see if I could help identify the killer.”

“I don’t think that makes me feel any better. You put yourself at serious risk.” Jackie said. “If this killer wanted to use you to get to me then you’d be an obvious target. Earlier I was just worried about the police giving me trouble, but this cuts deeper. Tell me, what else do you know about this ‘Killing Cat’?”

“I’m confident that she’s a girl that goes to our school. She makes her own throwing knives and has some experience with poisons or drugs. Actually, I’m still not clear about that part. Her weapon proficiency is nothing to take lightly, despite her crudely made weapons. Whoever she is, she came prepared to kill Vivian that night.”

“It’s just a good thing that you came through all that unscathed.” Holly said. “You should listen to her and play it safe. Let us handle the Society of Sisters. If they’re planning something like you expect tomorrow then just keep your distance from it. The SCA is here to handle things anyways.”

Lilith nodded in agreement.

“For what it’s worth, I’ve been trying to keep an eye out on their group too. It’s just that I’ve been busy lately.” Lilith said. “We won’t be very busy now that spirit week is almost over. You can afford to step back from here.”

I looked over at Val who was watching the exchange quietly. She probably still had mixed feelings about talking to me but I wanted to know her opinion.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

Val just shrugged and folded her arms.

“Like Holly said, the SCA will hold things down where the staff can’t.” Val said. “Besides, it’s hard to imagine you getting hurt from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It hasn’t happened before and fate seems to be on your side. As slimy as you are, you’re actually quite good at slithering your way out of serious trouble. I’m not worried about you.”

I cracked a half-smile.

“Thanks… I think…” I said.