Chapter 2

It was Kay who was the first to know that Lisa was dead. She wasn't breathing and she had no pulse. The dark puddle under her head? Blood. It's still there. They've been scrubbing at it for days, but it's not going to be gone anytime soon. It's serving as a reminder of what happened to Lisa. Whenever I look at it I feel sick to my stomach.

Everyone only found out about it on the next day, Tuesday. That was when a police car came to school. We all heard the siren. We all ran to the windows to peek out. Kay and I fought for a place between all the people, just in time to see Brett Mason get arrested and taken by the police. His face was as white as sheet. He looked as pale as Lisa had been when he killed her.

Then the next bad thing happened.

Kay and I were played with Amanda and her gang again because we wanted to try and get Lisa's image out of our heads. We tossed the ball around and for a while I actually managed to forget about seeing Lisa. Eliza Watford caught the ball and threw it to the next person. Too quickly. It hit Myra Simms hard in the face.

There was a sickening crack and Myra fell backwards, holding her hands to her face. It didn't stop the river of blood that was now streaming down her nose, though. Kay and I wasted no time staring and screaming, we ran to her and picked her up and half-carried her to Mr Keene, who was on yard duty. All he had to do was take one look at her before hoisting her up and carrying her to the school nurse.

We didn't see her for days after that. Not in school anyway. Her nose was so badly broken she found it hard to even breath. Now she's got a lump on her nose (obviously) and she's got the worse sinus in the world. She's pretty down because she really liked her nose. But she's alright now. She's had worse things happen to her.

*

It was on Wednesday when we found out what was really going on. What the sick and twisted things really meant. Nothing had gone wrong in school -thank goodness- and Kay and I were so relieved when we finally managed to get through the gates. But when we got to the public library, that was when we got to the bottom of all of it.

We were actually doing research for History and I was browsing the shelves for anything on Romans And How They Lived. And that's when I found it.

I was pulling out one of the big, fat encyclopedias that looks promisingly boring when this small book fell out of the shelf. I hadn't even noticed it before, probably because it was squashed on to a shelf full of huge fat bursting-to-the-seams-with-useless-information books. I picked up the small book and juggled the encyclopedia in my other hand. The book was hard-covered and bound in leather, with a gold spine. It didn't have a title. It had this sort of curly pattern on the front, done in black. I satred at it for a while, then took it with the encyclopedia back to where Kay was sitting.

'What's that?' whispered Kay when I plonked the encyclopedia down on the table and sat down next to her with the book in my hand.
'No idea,' I whispered back. 'I found it on the encyclo shelf. Thought it looked interesting.' I opened it and we started to read.