Arson

I woke up to the screaming of my neighborhood and a loud, ear-piercing, siren coming from an unknown location. As I pulled back my blanket, a large black figure grabbed my hand and dragged me through the house and out to the street. Once outside I broke away from his tight grip and began to look for my family, "Mom, dad! Where are you guys?" Just then I heard a loud explosion and turned around to see my house burst into flames. I started to run back to see if they were still inside and I heard my little sister cry from her room so I ran to her room and grabbed her, determined to save my parents too I ran to their room.

Just as I went to open the door, my dad came out crying "They.. She's.. I couldn't do anything. They.. She's gone.." he wept.

I knew what he saw, but I needed to get us to safety, I grabbed his arm and ran back out to the street to wait for the firemen like the rest of the neighborhood. After they put out the fire, one of the firefighters came over to ask us if we were okay and to inform us about what they found.

"I hate to be the one to tell you, but I'm afraid your mom was killed in the fire. At least that's what the rest of the guys think, but I think otherwise. She didn't have any severe burns, I think it was something else that killed her but don't listen to me, I'm certainly not a doctor."

"I trust you more than the doctor though. I saw her body before I got us out, she was surrounded by bottles of whiskey and pills, were we really too much for her to handle? I thought she was finally getting better after her accident."

"Accident? Nevermind, you don't need to tell me, I didn't want to say anything but it appears to be a suicide but of course they won't listen to anything that I say."

The next day at school was horrible, everyone ran up to me asking if I was alright, asking about my mother, touching me. Why can't they just leave me alone? I don't need their sympathy, things happen in life and we need to just move on with life, we can't dwell on the past it will only haunt our thoughts at night. We need to move on and focus on the future, on what's coming the next day, the next assignment.

“Alice! You forgot your journal!” my math teacher said walking my direction.

“Damn it! If she read that journal I’m so screwed. She better not have.” I say to myself, walking back to retrieve it.

“You didn’t read it. Right? Tell me you didn't read it.”

“I didn’t open it."

"Okay good, thanks! Have a great weekend."

"Thank you, Alice, you too!"

Finally I was away from school, I hate getting detention but the teachers have it out for me, I swear. I decided I was going to take the long way home, there was an envelope in my locker today and I'm not in a hurry to read it. Once I got home I went to my room and put my backpack on my bed and opened it up, I started looking for the letter at the bottom of my backpack, as I grabbed it my heart dropped. I opened it up, afraid to read the inside. The letter was addressed to me, but I didn’t recognize the handwriting. Why would some stranger write me a letter? Especially one to hide so carefully, this better be important.

The outside read "Alice," I sighed as I opened up the letter..

“I know what you did; your little secret. If you don’t do exactly as I say then I will expose your dirty little secret. If you don’t believe me, look at the picture – Your identity has been compromised.”

I looked at the picture and it was a picture of me, standing over a dead body. At that moment it seemed as if everything slowed down, my heart stopped, my chest tightened and I couldn’t comprehend what just happened. They made it look as if I killed them, but I didn’t, I just wanted to see what happened to her, I didn’t know she was dead until I saw her. I carefully looked over the envelope, hoping they’d leave some indication as to where it came from, but nothing, not even

“They’re better than I thought..” I said to myself

I searched the envelope and picture hoping to find something that might be able to tell me who sent it, but there was nothing.

“I didn’t kill her, but how do I explain that to the police if they take it in? There’s no way to explain it without sounding suspicious, “I was just looking at it, I didn’t know what happened but I noticed she was dead so I tried to identify her cause of death and approximate time since I’m majoring in criminal science and this would be great practice” they would just assume I’m some crazy FBI wannabe” I thought to myself.