In the accompanying entry, where the keeps track of her progress in the investigation, she questions someone from the missing person's bureau about the procedures the police takes when faced with a high-risk missing person's case.

Andie's head injury, however, and the framing of Sal weren't done by Becca, but were instead the fault of a second culprit. Elliot Ward. He was the father of Pip's best friend Cara and her sister, who'd been Sal's friend, as well as a history teacher at the highschool her and Pip attended. When Andie found out he was helping Sal with college applications, she sought his help too so she wouldn't be separated from her boyfriend Sal. Since he wasn't her teacher, she resorted to persuading him into having a relationship with her, one she threatened to ruin his career over when he tried to end it. After a confrontation at his house, he pushed Andie and accidentally caused her head injury. Andie, bleeding, exited his house while he searched for first aid and disappeared. She would be left to die by her sister mere hours later.

Thinking he'd been the one to kill her when she wasn't found, Elliot blackmailed Sal's friends into taking away his alibi by lying about his whereabouts on the night Andie died. He then lured the boy into the woods and murdered him, faking a confession text and making it look like suicide. According to his narrative, Andie Bell's murderer had killed himself, wrecked with guilt. In reality, he died after Elliot Ward made him down an entire bottle of sleeping pills, while he held his hand and told him about Oxford, the boy's dream. One he never got to see.

Despite having solved the case, when Pip presents her EPQ it's deemed invalid to be turned in for a grade- she wasn't meant to accept outside help. However, she couldn't have done it without the aid and encouragement of Sal's brother, Ravi Singh. A grade makes no difference to her, though. What matters is that Andie Bell has been found and buried, and Sal Singh has been proven innocent. His memory will no longer be sullied by the mistakes and the judgement of those around him. In a way, Ravi Singh has gotten his brother back.

-The End-

By the start of the book, she's already finished reporting on the entirety of the Andie Bell case, the one she solved in the previous book, and is now covering the trial concerning the three allegations of rape and two counts of sexual assault that have been leveled against Max Hastings, who confessed to having raped Becca Bell in the previous instalment.

Pip finds he was following someone he thought was named Layla the night he disappeared, but "Layla" turned out to be a catfish, using Pip's classmate Stella Chapman's pictures to manipulate Jaime.

Layla knows they're investigating her account, somehow, and deactivates it. However, since she might have also been catfishing Pip's new history teacher, she decides to follow that lead next.

One of the men she looks into is Luke Eaton, local drug dealer, who reveals Jamie borrowed nine hundred pounds from him that he never paid back. Surprisingly, when he went to meet with who he thought was Layla, he encountered Jamie instead. Luke doesn't quite understand what Jamie said to him, but through looking it up and changing the spelling, Pip lands on the crucial piece of the puzzle.

Child Burnswick, the name the media gave the son of serial killer Scott Burnswick, after he was put in the witness protection program following his father's trial and subsequent prison sentence, after being released from his own, shorter sentence at 18, for being forced by his father to aid in the killings. Layla is looking for him.

Child Burnswick, who Pip tricks into meeting with her, turns out to be Stanley Forbes, a news reporter. Layla manipulated Jamie into trying to kill him for her after she discovered him, but Stanley fought him off, and had him locked in his downstairs bathroom out of fear of his secret being made known.

Pip finds this out when lures him into a farmhouse at the outskirts of town to confront him, while Ravi and Connor sneak into Stanley's house to find Jamie.

However, someone has followed Pip to the farmhouse. Someone who has been searching for Child Burnswick, and who Pip has led right to him. It's Charlie Green, her new neighbour- the mind behind Layla, while his wife was the voice.

Charlie's older sister, as it turns out, was Scott Burnswick's last victim, and he watched as Stanley lured her away from him and lead her right into his father's clutches. Ever since then, he's been seeking him out to get his revenge.

Stanley was only a child when the murders happened, and he served five years in prison for his involvement in them. But none of that matters to Charlie- he makes his own justice.

Pip does everything she can to prevent it, she really does. But there's nothing to be done- she's just a teenage girl, after all, and all she can do is watch as Stanley Forbes is shot five times.

Charlie lights the house on fire as he leaves, and Pip is forced to drag out Stanley's corpse, mourning both the lives he lived; the one he was finally content with, and the one he could never escape. The apple that can't fall all that far from the tree, the child believed to be just as terrible as his father.

Jamie Reynolds attends his small funeral along with Pip and a few others, weeks later. Nothing is just. Max Hastings won his trial, and, though Pip can hold her friend and one of his victims, Nat de Silva, as she cries, and she can make sure he knows what he did, he will never face justice. Him and Charlie Green roam free, while Stanley forbes is six feet under. His blood has soaked Pip's hands, and the gun will never leave her heart.

He kidnaps Pip while she's on her way to investigate her main subject, Daniel da Silva, and puts her in the boot of his car ti take her to a second location- Green Scene inc, his company, where he restrains her in duck tape and leaves her there, planning to return to kill her. However, Pip uses the time he's gone to manage to free herself and escape out of a window, encouraged by an imaginary version of her partner Ravi. While she runs, however, she realises the police won't believe her. They believe Jason Bell is a good man, and the "DT Killer" is in jail. They didn't believe her at the start, and she has no evidence; they won't believe her again. Angry, with the police and with Jason Bell and with justice, or the lack thereof; Pippa makes a choice.

She runs back toward Green Scene inc and, the hammer she used to escape in hand, bashes the Duck Tape Killer's head in.

Once she's done it, she realises she can't explain it away as self defense, since she could've ran away, but chose not to. She made her own justice, and the courts won't defend her.

She does the only thing she can. She calls Ravi. Together, they devise a plan to fake Jason Bell's real time of death, moving it back by cooling his corpse down in the car and then heating it up again after a certain amount of time, to delay his rigor mortis. This gives them the opportunity to create an air-tight alibi for each of them. In Pip's place, they frame rapist Max Hastings.

It works almost perfectly, if it weren't for the small fact that Pip's headphones were found in Jason Bell's house by the police, even though she'd claimed to have no association with the man whatsoever- he'd taken them as his "trophy" when he'd kidnapped her, and she hadn't noticed. This directly links Pip to the case, putting her in danger of being found out. Ravi takes the fall for her, in a way, declaring to the police that he'd borrowed the headphones from Pip and spoken to Jason Bell, in his home, about his daughter Andie Bell and Salil Singh, his own brother. Though Pip is now in the clear and Max Hastings is taken into custody after the police find the planted evidence, she's forever at risk of the truth being found out. When she moves to study at Oxford, she cuts contact with Ravi for his own good and slowly pushes her family and friends away, so that none of them will get caught in the crossfire of her actions, should they ever come to light. It's the price of making justice, and she has no choice but to pay it.

A few years later, Max Hastings is sentenced to life in prison for the Murder of Jason Bell. That same day, Pip gets a text. It reads "Hey Sarge (The nickname Ravi gave her in Book 1), remember me?"

Louis visits the boy's family. His sisters are clever, and he advises them on how to get by.

The full, white moon watches over me, as the high-flying raven circles the night sky, and under their dimly lit gaze, in near-darkness, they bear witness to the way I dig my rusty shovel into the pliant earth below. With the heel of my worn down boot I nudge its blade deeper into the ground, and with a strain to my arms I haul it over my shoulder, tossing more dirt onto the pile I've formed behind me.

My knuckles are white, my palms red and splintered, through it's the anticipation that makes my grip tighter than it needs to be, rather than the effort of digging. After all, the soil at the foot of this tombstone, one engraved with my mother's maiden name, has been moved around recently, has been freshly dug, storing something freshly dead, before I came along. It allows the shovel to part it without much opposition, until the tip of my old tool knocks against hard, wooden. The sound echoes, and I know I've found what I was looking for.

I reach into the ditch I've just opened with shaking hands, and despite the uncomfortable dirt beneath my fingernails and the splinters digging into the dirty skin of my palms, I find the lid of the coffin and pry it open.

I look inside, and-

-The End-

The lights of the Starlight theater-- the spotlights, that would illuminate the performers if there were any-- flicker on.

At 2AM on a Tuesday, they shine a spotlight upon no one.

They flicker off again, then go back on abruptly.

They turn from blinding white to red, then to orange, and from orange to yellow and from yellow into green.

Then, they go dark. A minute passes, then two. The Starlight theater is shrouded in complete darkness once more.

Until, to the rhythm of a silent melody, one by one, each of the stage's lights go on. Precisely on cue. A phantom cue, an imaginary one, that no one is there to give.

And yet, to a deserted stage and a nonexistent audience, the lights alone perform 'The Barbecue Monologues' perfectly.

In the lighting booth, Ruth Fleming-- or rather, what's left of her-- methodically presses the buttons and moves the switches, like she's done a thousand times before. She does the whole show once, then thrice, every night.

She never sings.

-The End-

Additional context from the musical, with spoilers: In Nerdy Prudes, Ruth Fleming is murdered onstage in the theater, after hours. She's there with the rest of her high school's drama club, to rehearse the show they'll be putting on that year, the barbecue monologues. She runs lights for it, even though her real passion is singing and acting. However, she's too anxious to even talk to people, let alone perform. The only time she does, it's to an empty theater, when everyone working on the play is taking a break. She's the star of her own show, and the audience, her only audience? Her killer.

The sun beats down harsh white heat upon the beaches, warming the pale thin sand; neatly barren of any rock or sand, and perfectly uniform, not a crevice in sight. The sand is so flat, so welcoming to the sun's head that it burns the naked soles of my feet in its driest patches, the ones furthest away from the ocean's reach, from where the wet beige coats the floor, and dances, in pushes and pulls, with the sea.

The air is salty, however, and chill, cold, as any ocean breeze. It combs softly through the white in my hair, beaconing me towards it like a lover. Like a gentle caress, or a kiss.

My tired eyes, the colour of which I only recall sometimes vaguely, and others not at all; scan the lengths of the horizon; the still, blue seas, that end where the sky begins. And not quite, for here, where I stand timeless and alone, sea is sky and sky is sea. They are one; mirrored, embraced, intertwined. Life and death, space and time. Nothing, and all there is.

Their only distinction is the sprinkling of sun across the shores, sparkling dotted lines against the surface of the sea.

It, the sun, crowns the sky, right above my head; where I have no shadow and never have. From there, it has never moved. Neither have I, and I never will.

In my head, though, I run.

I race the lengths of the shoreline with feather-light feet, that are boundless and are free, finally, and they have been always, and forever.

Truth to be told, I can't quite recall what running is like, how it feels. It has been so long- how much, I do not know, for time has slipped through my fingers like the sand beneath my feet. Thin, and barely tangible; time is nothing, and I am no one, with joints that would surely break if I tried to run again, after for so long I have remained still.

I cannot, I could not. My bones have stiffened, settled into heavy stones, and my limbs are thin as sticks. I am stuck, for all my body has long since given up on me. I do not know how long, and I would not know how to run once more; it is futile, for time is ghostly here, surreal.

I have been like the sand and the sun, still. Not for forever, but for as long as my mind can trace back my steps through life, and know, none remain; no steps, no moving feet. There is only the white hot sun that shan't move, and the silent sea. Only me, and my soles, burning numbly upon the sandy beach. And so it is and so it will be; every second, of which none exist, and every day, which does not into night change. Not as far as I know, at least.

-The End-

(Possible Epilogue: Egg)

• Act 1: Larvae

  -Act 1, Planned Scene 1: The Rooftop- Moth and Firefly meet. They circle around each other, intrigued. Something draws them together as much as it drives them apart.

• Investigation Log 0, by Elizabeth Aubert, Butterfly. Introduction to her and the Oakenholt High School ecosystem.

• Act 2: Chrysalises (Pupae)

  -Act 2, Planned Scene X: The Streets- Moth is kicked out, and housed by Firefly. However, their four shared walls have always been too small for FF are now even smaller for the both of them.

  -Act 2, Scene Y: The Sparkles. In which a friend group is strengthened.

  -Act 2, Planned Scene Z: The Ice Rink- The seed of a plan is planted. Happens around the end of Act 2

• Investigation Log 1, by E.A, Butterfly (and A.N, Dragonfly). A concerned but cautious approach into the habitats of the common Moth. In other words, Elizabeth keeps and eye on her brother, kind of. She tries.

• Act 3: Emergence

  - Act 3, Scene 2 or 3: The Station- The Spotlight Posse (unofficial name) figure out where to go fro here.

  -Act 3, Scene X: The Streets (Once again)- They're on the move, I guess.

• Investigation Log 2, by E.A, Butterfly (and A.N, Dragonfly). An in-depth investigation into the migratory patterns of firefly posses, and a brief look into the mating habits of dragonflies.

• Act 4: Flight

• Investigation Log 3, field research.

• Act 5: -

  
  

Characters:

Lenn Trevors, Firefly: The light itself, always too dim.

Sora Aubert, Moth: Eternally drawn to the light, the flame.

(About Sora and Lenn's relationship, written 24/09/24 but added here for context): Sora is the playwright- he's the mind, the words, the soul. He is the author, the voice.

Lenn is the actor- he's the sight to see, the leading man- he's the empty shell, the vessel, through which the story comes to life.

The story, the voice, flows from Sora's pen and is channeled into something greater by Lenn, who shapes it. They are pen and paper, lyric and song. Len will not be heard and Sora will not be known.

Throughout arcs 1 and 2, Sora grows to let Lenn read his writing, and it's him who encourages Sora to share it. He performs his scripts for him, because he longs to be someone else. , He is Sora's face, and Sora is his voice.

Elizabeth Aubert, Butterfly: All it takes is a flap of her wings.

Ariana Navarra, Dragonfly: The one without a chrysalis.

Azure Elyas, Ladybug: The pocket-sized predator.

Aidan Forrest, Cockroach: The one who just won't die.

Leonardo Toussaint, Queen Bee: The one they look to.

Sora slides his hand through the ice it lays upon, to intertwine their fingers together. Both their hands are freezing- they can barely feel anything at all, and yet, everything.

He's never felt more present, than he does in this moment, in these words.

"I'm dead," He repeats. "I died and I'm dead. I'm dead"

The words flood out of him, again and again; and its not a joke or a bit or hyperbole. More earnest than he's ever been, the words come out in a tidal wave, one that'd he'd been pushing back against, in a breath that he'd been holding; and that breath was a hurricane.

He feels something free up in his chest , feels the words float, spill, rather than climb and drag themselves up his throat, and fly out without any of the pushback he's used to. There was a gate in his throat, and now he barrels through it. For the first time, he feels the cold wind on his face, and the way his breaths come and go and how they whiten the air before him, and he feels Sora's cold fingers gripping his own and he grips them back, and he feels well and truly himself. He goes on and on about being dead, until it gets old and repetitive, and then he speaks of it some more.

"I’ve been dying since I was a kid, I think, when my father dressed me for school and he put my hair up in pigtails. That was all wrong and it was killing me. I’ve been dead for good since my mother died, I think. I think I died with her, and I’m clinging to her bones. I think I was put into the earth in every way but the one that counts" He inhales, welcoming the way the cold air pierces his lungs, and he soldiers on.

"I feel like I've been buried, even though I haven't. I've been knocking and knocking at the lid of an imaginary coffin for so long I thought it wasn't any noise at all, and I've been muffled by the figurative earth for so long I didn't know what my voice sounded like or how loud everyone else speaks. Or... or how bright the sun is, and how warm, and I've missed out on the birds and the stars because I'm dead and I'm dead even if I've got no grave."

Sora looks at him. With awe, yes,– he always does– but with something else too, something that’s wholly unabashed and that neither of them have the words for. It looks a little bit like adoration, like wonder, and almost like love. He's glowing, after all.

"Yeah" is all he finds it in him to say. They needn't anything more.

They lay upon the ice rink, hand in hand, shrouded in a long and content silence– heavy as their hearts, but oh so simple to bear, when in each other’s company. 

It’s just him and Sora and Sora and him; and an open casket funeral, where his own body is his grave. 

After a long moment of feeling his breaths come and go, sharp and cold, he gently turns his head in Sora’s direction, with a question floating to the surface of his mind. 

“I wonder how it’d feel like, if–” He hesitates. This is more than he’s spoken in what feels like forever, and he feels as though he’s run out of words. “If I wasn’t–” 

“If you were alive?” 

He doesn’t need his words, not as long as Sora has his own. He’s brilliant at speaking when he can’t, at filling up the silence and at knowing what he means to say. He might be the composer, but Sora has always been the playwright, and it shows. 

Once again, Sora has the right words for both of them. Not because they’re perfect, nor because they’re eloquent or profound or because there are ‘wrong’ words– but because they’re said by him. 

“Well,” He hums, mulling it over. He’s not sure, but he smiles. “Like right now, I hope”  

Sora’s eyes search the stars, as wondrous as always. They’re in his eyes too, thinks the boy laying beside him, as he turns to lay on his side. 

“Like you and I” 

He slides over to Sora, blonde hair sliding on the frozen rink, trailing behind him. The ice is cold on his neck but, shoulder to shoulder with Sora, he barely registers it.

He says. “Can it be like this forever?” and it’s less of a question and more of a wish.

Sora, the pen in his mind taking flight once more; soaring over the blank pages of a plan being newly-written, thought up in the book that's in his brain, kisses the top of his head. 

This version is an exploration of the old one with the same set scene and dialogue. It consists of a traditional script with handwritten annotations to add the prose. Because of the nature of the formatting, I couldn't find a way to accurately translate the annotations into a completely digital format, so I hope you can make out my handwriting.

This first page sets the stage for the next two, where the scene actually starts.

Your feet dangle off the edge of the rooftop, one leg slung over each side of the corner where the walls meet,  and softly kick your heels interchangeably– right, then left, then right again– against the worn out, old bricks that make up the outside of Oakenholt Public High School. 

You keep coming up here, time and time again, and sit right at the edge. You peer down at the flat ground below you, at least four stories down. They really should have a railing installed, you think, even though it makes sense why they haven't– no one is supposed to come up here, ever. Maybe the janitor, or the repair crew. Definitely not you– it's off limits to students. Nothing is truly off limits, though, once you learn what time the old rusty locks are open, and when you've known your whole life how to walk without making a sound, and disappear into a crowd. 

You're not afraid of getting caught, really. It's not like anyone makes a habit of looking up as they walk out of the school- or looking at you at all. No one would spot your beat up red converse dangling from high above, softly hitting the orange brick wall.  

You, however, do make a habit of looking down. Four stories below, the parking lot stretches out, sprinkled with the occasional colourful car. You're high enough above your humble town that you can see the tiled rooftops, the green oak canopies that shade the main road. It leads into the highway, and far, far away from Oakenholt. 

It might just be high enough for the fall to kill you, if you landed on your head. If you don't, you might do nothing but leave yourself without working legs for the rest of your life. Not what you want. And, even if you did die, you'd feel it. It's not high enough for you to faint before the inevitable crash against the concrete; and the way down is much scarier than the impact. 

The more you look at it, the further the ground seems to get away from you- and then it springs back up, as your eyes refuse to settle between focused and blurry, dazed. You watch as the students pour out of the front doors in a colourful blur of hair and rucksacks, while the ringing on the bell marks the end of another school day. Another you've skipped half of. 

If you jumped now, you'd be sure to crush someone. Would that cushion your fall, or kill you both? You're not going to find out. Even though it would be so, so easy to. You won’t. 

Your hands are settled around the edge of the wall, gripping it with white knuckles. Even though you're relaxed, you really are, and nowhere near falling. They're your hands, right? Without letting go, you look at them closely, instead of at the ground. 

They're your hands, with nails adorned with chipped red nail polish and your index finger bandaged up– They're yours, papercuts, chewed-up nails and all. You stare at them, and they're not. 

You can move them, you can scratch the brick wall underneath your fingertips and drive your palms into the rough concrete roof. You can tighten or loosen your grip. But they're not really your hands, in the way that counts. You don't know what way that is. Maybe it's wanting to jump, but your hands are not letting go. 

Surely your eyes are yours, as is your mind and the rest of your body. Or as it should be. Your legs and your arms and your chest and whatever moves or doesn't, and whatever is keeping you from diving headfirst into a mass of existing students, feels nothing like it's part of you. 

Your body is on autopilot, your mind on hold, while you're in the backseat. No– someone else is center-stage, lead actor in your life's play, and you're waiting in the wings. 

Maybe you always have been. 

There's a faint noise backstage– or, is it coming from within the crowd? You can't quite tell, but it's lifted just above the incessant ringing of the bell, the firm echo that buzzes over and over in your head, that is muffled. You hear it like you hear everything else- with the sensation that there's cotton stuffing your empty ears. 

His voice, however, breaks through, just loud enough to bypass the fuzzy, sizzling static in your ears– is it still the bell? He says your name, though it isn't, not really. That's the lead role, and you are backstage. He sounds frustrated.  

You turn your head, just enough to see him out of the corner of your eye. His own are obstructed by shaggy bangs that fall over the top half of his face. From in between the thick strands of hair, you catch a glimpse of his eyes. They're blue-gray, darker under the cloudy sky than they might've been otherwise. They might just be grey, actually, because blue eyes are like the sea, like the ever expanding skies; yet his are cold as ice. 

Afterwards, when he has left, you won't be able to recall anything else about him. Just two cold blue-grey eyes, winter breeze and falling snow. It was autumn, and he's the frost come too soon– icy, unwelcome and abrupt. You had hated him on sight. 

In a voice like sliding magnets, like hot glass being blown, he says "You're not supposed to be up here." 

Before that, all he'd said was what he thought to be your name– and "okay" when you'd told him it wasn't so. That, it had sounded like ice water. You would soon learn he had a million voices, depending on what it was he wished to say. 

He laughs, so you know his heart is light, and when he laughs it echoes like the wind's howls. In your chest, it reverberates, though it's nothing more than a chuckle. It makes a home inside you, where you feel it long after it's ended. It shakes, chills you, for you hate his laugh, and him. 

You stare at him blankly. Under your gaze, he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jacket. It might've been denim, or it might not, but it was definitely blue. 

The silence between the two of you stretches to be embarrassingly long before you realise he's expecting a reply. 

You don't want to give him one– you do it anyway. He should jump.

"Yeah" You cannot bear to look at him. Your gaze moves almost involuntarily– and as if it were a primal instinct– away from him and back to the town's landscape, and the setting sun. You agree. It's imperative for your survival that you avoid him. He who can't seem to pry his eyes away from you. 

"The door's always unlocked" You muse, not expecting him to hear it. You almost wish you hadn't said it; you don't want to make conversation with him. He does. Though finally his gaze shifts away from you to peer at the door, so small wins. 

"That'd be my doing" He shrugs, moving to stand next to you. You, who is a gargoyle perched atop a highschool-like cathedral, do not welcome his presence at your side. There shouldn't be enough room on your perch for two gargoyles. It’s wrong and it’s unsightly. 

He doesn't seem to care for your arbitrary ruleset, and sits beside you on the ledge. Rather than be repulsed, than tell him to crouch on the three corners that remain gargoyle-less, you find that his shoulder feels not close enough to yours as you'd like it to be. 

Once again, you are struck with that familiar sense of loneliness that only exists when someone is near you. When they're around, but just distant enough that you'd prefer they not be there at all. It'd be less isolating. It makes you all too aware of your heart and his, and how neither of you know each other's name, and how you can see each other in passing, but never understand. You're not quite see through, but translucent still. 

You wish you knew him. If not, you wish he would jump, and save you the trouble. 

That is, until he continues to talk; you will learn soon enough that he finds the comfort in the sound of his own voice that you do in the silence of your thoughts. Much unlike you, he is not someone who makes it hard to be known.

He's explaining something or other about picking a lock, about when the staff leaves the white door unguarded, and about how you could pick it easily as well, if you tried. 

While he does, he fidgets with the gravel that makes up the rooftop's floor. He rolls a loose stone between his fingers. You watch, spellbound with intrigue and hatred and something you cannot explain, as he flicks it off the ledge. He needs to leave. You need him to leave, though you don't want him to. The silence now, the missed chance, might be worse. 

You watch the pebble of gravel fall to the now empty concrete below, and think, fleetingly, that it should be him. He should jump. He doesn't; he talks and talks, filling the silence that once enveloped you both, that ate you alive. 

You think that, should he jump, you might go with him. While he talks, you nod along. He does it so easily. Green, you watch him and you listen, and you hate him. 

You hate him, and you wish he would talk forever.

He makes no attempt at conversation with Colt, sheriff of the mining town of Cattlebanks, where the land is too arid for pastures and the air is, ironically, too hot to raise any cattle besides horses. Twenty emigrations away from becoming a ghost town, there'd been slim pickings for the position.

And so young sheriff Colt, whose nickname persists despite having considerably bulked up since his teenage years, rides the black beauty alongside a dull conductor and thirty aristocrats, with his gaze fixed on the landscape outside.

Sheriff Colt is a man of broad shoulders, few words, and even broader brows, under which lay keen eyes that restlessly scan the orange plains as they roll by. A thick-brinned hat shields his face from the sun, and flatten strands of chin-lenght hair, sweat-slicked and copper-coloured. With rough skinned hands he scratches the feeble hairs on his chin, a youthful attempt at a beard, and at appearing older than his years.

The landscape slithers, distorted by the heat. And yet, the sheriff's focus is unwavering, steel and stone. He waits. For them to reach their destination, for a threat, or for anything he might need to respond to-- as if he would know what to do.

I especially like the way this series manages tone; how it brings Pip and the other character's humanity to the forefront with quips, jokes, and lighthearted moments while simultaneously knowing how to treat its subject matter with the seriousness it deserves and add tension when it needs to. While the character of Pip and the book's writing style stay consistent, there's a contrast made with the scenes in which she interacts with her family, where you can almost believe her life is completely mundane and Little Kilton is as average as it seems, versus the secrets she unveils and the challenges she faces during her investigation, which feel much more dire. This contrast even affects Pip herself as the series progresses, making her feel like she has to keep her personal life completely separate from the investigations-- she sees how soft and kind her family is, and how dangerous what she's dealing with is-- but she's never quite able to.

In this, you can appreciate how much Little Kilton truly feels like a classic small town in a realistic way-- sans the murders, of course. The town is littered with recurring small side characters, locations, and names that gives you a sense of how small the town is, and makes it feel realistic, lived-in. This contributes to the crime aspect as well, as it allows Pip to make the most out of every lead she gets.

As a main character, Pip is endearing from the start. She's awkward and quite relatable, while also maintaining her own quirks and ways of thinking that make her come to life. She's got a distinct sense of justice and a way of speaking and acting that is uniquely her, yet never feels like the writer is forcibly trying to make her 'different' or make her stand out unnaturally. She has flaws, like any good character, but there's never an action of hers that feels unexplained. Even in her worst moments, the author makes you feel for Pip.

It's a similar case with the rest of the characters-- they come to life easily, with just enough realism to be believable people whose thought processes we don't need explained, since we spend the series' in Pip's point of view, but each with a distinct personality and at least some level of depth-- even those you're meant to despise. They're all easy to imagine as real people.

Something that stands out to me is how real everything that happens to or around Pip seems. It's clear the author has done her fair share of research, since none of the crimes or investigations Pip is involved with, as well as her theories, seem too far fetched.

Additionally, it respects what I believe to be a very important rule of crime fiction-- that the reader is given all the pieces to be able to solve the crime alongside the protagonist. Some books, shows, or films focused on detectives will withhold information from their audience until it is time for the solution to be revealed, so that the detective will appear smarter, since the audience could never have figured it out for themselves. How could they, when they were missing a key piece of information that was gathered or deduced off-screen. I find this greatly diminishes my enjoyment of such series. When reading murder mysteries, half the fun is trying to piece the crime together alongside the protagonist. What's the point if the series actively prevents you from doing that? I'm sure they can still be enjoyable this way, but I find my awe at the intelligence of the main character to be greatly diminished when I realise that they needed the story to aid them in being cleverer than me. On the flipside, when you have all the same clues the protagonist has, it's much more impressive when they're able to solve the crime, because maybe they only did it by approaching it from an angle that you never would've thought of. (Or you also manage to solve it, in which case you gain the satisfaction of a well-done mystery).

Pip is a character whose inteligence and dedication you constantly marvel at, without the need for her to be aided by the plot or the story-- while she is also allowed to make mistakes and follow red herrings, something I appreciate. Throughout my reading experience, I always felt like I was right beside Pip as she faced the secrets of Little Kilton.

These mysteries are, in themselves, expertly woven, and many times stem from the personal flaws or failings of the characters involved. Each mystery is so much more than it seems, and so is each person involved.

I also want to point out how this series doesn't shy away from the very real topics of racism, misogyny, and classism, and how these affect both our day-to-day lives, and the justice system and its verdicts. There's a great deal done to bring light to injustices such as racial profiling, rape and the culture surrounding it, which often times allows abusers to get away scott-free, and the many failings of the police. It brings a level of nuance that I haven't seen in many other crime series, and that I'm very thankful to see handled well in this one.

Overall, I went into this series with low expectations, presuming it would be another classic murder mystery with a flawless genius as a protagonist and a clear, black and white stance about what is good and what is evil. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by a nuanced story that surprised me at every turn and always gave me something to think about outside of it. It's very much worth a read and I sincerely hope you get the chance to check it out for yourself.

The simple fact of the matter is, I am dead, and she is alive.

Peering down at the white of my skin, and my shoes as they drag through the trodden path of dirt, I lurk behind her. Her, who spins around to face me, pep always in her step. Her whom I drag behind like a ball and chain.

She who I should leave be, so she is then able to fly like she was meant to, be free like she ought to, without me.

Instead, she picks me up, holds my hand in hers, and her eyes are a mirror of my own. Her eyes are my colour and my sorrow, my pain. And she thanks me- when she thanks me, for being there for her despite it all, how could I have the heart to disagree. It might be her who is dead and me who lives.

How could I say that I ought to leave- for her sake, I would say, but it wouldn't be so. For my own comfort, for less of feeling that next to her I've no body and am nothing. But how could I not be, when she looks so dearly upon me? How could I not be, when I see in her gaze a twin flame, another star orbiting the blackened sky. If I she is much to me, everything, would I be much as well?

I love her, and to do so is not to leave. To do so is to love myself, as not to disagree with her, with the thing she does as easily as she breathes. As easily as she loves me she must love herself, because to be best friends is to believe in ourselves, for it is each other's will.

I don't know where I'd get the money for Broadway tickets, don't ask, it's irrelevant. They were probably cheaper back then regardless and in 1991 a brand new musical couldn't have been that expensive.

With going back in time, anything too drastic would change the course of history forever, and who knows where we'd end up. However, one more person watching a musical for the two hours of its duration and then going back home to 2025 can't hurt.

If I did seek to do some good in the world, however, I'd go to 2013-14 approximately and stop Rob Marshall and everyone on the production team from from making, let alone releasing the abomination that is the "Into the Woods" movie adaptation. This is a movie that fails so spectacularly at even resembling the tone, feel, moral, or even the very sound of the musical that it shouldn't even bear the same name. It doesn't even deserve to have ever been thought up, let alone fully produced. It does a complete disservice to the musical it's adapting by misunderstanding everything it aims to do, and, frankly it would've been less of a disrespect to Stephen Sondheim if the director were to piss on his grave.

I would also kill lead actor James Corden if I got the chance.

The old withering cypress, which knocks against the ground, which falls, plummets, to the forest floor. And it doesn't, not really, for thee is no one around to hear it, not a soul, and so there is not a soul for the tree to have, not a thing for it to be.

There is nothing and no one, no one and nothing- no sound and no tree, no wind and no fall, for there is no one who would lend it an ear.

She has walked, perhaps rather stupidly, past the fortezza's open, strangely desolate front gates and down the wide, thinning path, veering eventually into the cypress forests that surround it on both sides.

With the falling night comes a shroud of darkness to the forest, a depth to the shadows cast by the treeline and an eery silence that slithers up Lucrezia's back like a wily snake, and whispers in her ear to leave.

She closes her eyes for a brief moment, before deciding it is, in fact, scarier than keeping them open, and for a second is struck by a fear; of dying out here, at the mercy of whatever lurks between the trees, and this fear is so great that it almost manages to overtake the other, ever-present, fear, the one she's been holding down and trying to drown since she set foot past the gate; of what her husband Alfonso will say, will do, when she returns from having left without her guard, as the question now becomes one of if she will return at all.

It is difficult to remain anxious over either of these things, however, when, as her bright eyes scan her surroundings in search of the way back, she takes in how calm the forest is, how undisturbed. Amongst the blades of grass, crickets and cicadas chirp, and the green of the canopy, which does not whisper for a lack of wind to shake it, is muddier amongst the pinks and oranges the sky begins to take on. Lucrezia, as she spots a wily squirrel scurrying up a tree, fidgets with her shaky hands, so overcome with the familiar need to hold a paintbrush in between them, to immortalize the moment in a wooden tablet and, with her cat's fur brush, keep it to herself that she forgets her fear, leaving behind the scared girl in favour of the artist, hungry for her craft.

And then, as she maps the scenery with her eyes, sketching the painting in her mind, she is startled by a different sort of noise, one foreign to the woods of the fortezza, but familiar to her heart. Hurried little footsteps, so light and so distinctly girlish that she, for a moment and quite abruptly, is taken back to the halls of the palazzo where she grew up, to her sisters Isabella and Maria, God rest her soul, running playfully away from her. However, as she's latent to realise, these footsteps run towards her- or rather, close by, in her direction, until they stop rather abruptly.

She turns around just in time to see the little girl hit the ground, face first. Before any wariness of strangers she's been taught has the mere chance to set in, she's rushing to help her, this mirage of her sister, who upon closer inspection is a real, breathing girl, who, sans her height and approximate weight, looks nothing like her Isabella or her Maria ever did. Her hair is dark and tightly cured, wildly framing her head like a bushy black halo, and her skin is just a shade lighter than the road beneath their feet, the dirt now splashed across her face.

Her eyes, however, are a distinct shade she thinks is light pink- but it must be the reflection of the sky, for eyes that pink would be impossible, just as impossible as the eery sharpness of her canine teeth.

We're then sent back to the past, to the song "High School is Killing me" where we meet Pete, a lanky, stereotypical nerd in glasses and a bow tie, and Steph, the mayor's daughter, and a girl much cooler than him asking him to help her cheat on their biology test. It takes some convincing, but once he agrees, they get caught by Grace Chasity right as they're exchanging exam papers.

Grace Chasity is an overbearing girl dressed in pastel colours who won't hesitate to impose her moral and religious beliefs onto everyone else, believing genuinely that she's helping them. She snitches on Steph and Pete, which lands them in detention together. Here, Steph finds out she doesn't mind this nerd's company all that much. In fact, he's pretty funny. Mid way through their conversation, however, Pete sees someone approach, and bolts.

This someone is Max Jagërman, Hatchetfield High's biggest bully, who'll definitely pick on Pete even more than he does already for breaking his status quo by daring to talk to Steph. We see him pick on another nerd, Richie, in the hallway, and after that run into Grace, who is protesting the school dance. He flirts with Grace overbearingly, even when she turns him down because she's "only eighteen" and "[She is] only one man's girl, Max, and his name is Jesus Christ". Having said this, she leaves to continue protesting the dance, leaving Max to declare to his friends that he will conquer her, because "forbidden fruit, it's always the sweetest".

We're then taken out of high school and into Steph's home, where her father, Mayor Lauter, punishes her for getting caught cheating by confiscating her phone until her grades go up. Desperate, she calls Pete on a payphone while he's in the library with his friends, Ruth and Richie. They tell Pete not to get his hopes up at first, but as soon as Steph asks him to meet up at an italian restaurant to help her study, they pester him, amazed that he managed to score "a date" with her.

Once he arrives at the restaurant though, having hyped himself up through his insecurities to meet with Steph, Max Jagërman finds him in the parking lot, and beats him up for thinking he can stand up to him, and the status quo.

Meanwhile, Grace struggles to cope with her feelings of attraction towards Max, which she's horrified by, because it means she isn't "pure" or "chaste" like she's supposed to be.

The next day at school, Steph searches for Pete, thinking he stood her up, and drags Ruth and Richie to look for him in the boys' bathrooms, where he's healing his black eye from the previous night. Steph is infuriated, refusing to accept that this is what the nerds have to deal with just because Max has a god complex and they dared to be themselves, but because he's the star quarterback, the school won't do anything about it. That's when Grace walks in, with a plan to get back at him.

The plan consists of luring Max into the old Waylon place, a supposed haunted house that Grace's dad is the realtor of, with the promise of a party and, once he's there, scare him into peeing his pants and film it. However, the prank goes wrong when Max tries to fight the "ghosts" (Who are Pete and Ruth in costume) and when the truth is revealed, Max is touched by the "gesture" rather than angry. He celebrates the nerds, saying this is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for him. The happiness is short lived, however, because as soon as Max stands up on a weaker part of the house's floor, the floorboards crack under his weight and send him tumbling down the stairs, which break, and a plank of wood ends up lodged in his chest. In his dying moments, Max switches up on the nerds again, and swears that they will pay, that nerdy prudes must die.

Horrified at the thought of going to jail, the nerds, championed by Grace, follow her directions to dismember and hide Max's body under the house's floorboards.

For the next two weeks after Max's disappearance, things seem to be looking up for everybody. It's not just that the nerds aren't treated horribly without Max to frontman the bullying, but Max's own friends are relieved that he's not making them be mean to the nerds anymore. Everything is, as Pete says when Steph asks him out to the big football game "objectively better" despite the guilt of what they've done. That's what makes it such a jarring moment when, while Richie is about to go on the field as the school mascot during the game, he hears Max's voice-- and learns that somehow, Max is back as a vengeful ghost.

The rest of the main characters only discover the news of Richie's death after being called into the principal's office the next day, where they'd gone thinking the police, who are investigating the school, were questioning them about Max. While they're there, however, relieved that they haven't been found out but horrified that Richie is dead, another cop walks in, and informs the detective that they've just found Max's body as well.

The news are reporting a mysterious killer on the loose, and a curfew on the town is put in place until the murderer is found. While Grace thinks of a way to lead the police away from them, and the nerds' current theory is that someone knows what they did and is avenging Max, Ruth is busy running lights for the school's musical production.

While the actors take five, she goes down to the stage to fix a light. Standing under the spotlight inspires her, however, and, unaffected by her anxiety because she's performing for no one but herself, sings "Just For Once". This song is from the fictional musical within NPMD, and it's about a dejected middle aged mother frustrated with her current life and her wasted potential, a reflection of what Ruth thinks her own future will look like if she never gets the courage to actually be the actress she dreams of being. She never gets to find out though, because Max's ghost finds her alone on the stage. Moments later, her drama teacher finds her body.

Shortly after, with no news of Ruth's death, Grace goes to the police station with a fake story about who committed the murders-- she pins them on people she didn't see, on a van that had a bumper sticker of their rival town's football team, the Clivesdale Chemists. She says they killed Max, the star quarterback and Richie, the mascot, in an effort to make Hatchetfield High lose the big game, and says the detective should investigate all of Clivesdale, just to be safe. However, she's caught in her lie when the detective lets her know her story doesn't account for the murder of Ruth Fleming, and this is how Grace finds out, and is on the run from the police, who know she's involved with the murders.

She runs away in her pink bicycle to find Steph and Pete, who've met in a coffee shop and wound up having an argument about their feelings for each other-- as they're both in denial. They both freak out when Grace tells them about Ruth, but not much more than she does. Grace plans to run away to Canada with the cop's gun, which she stole, but Steph takes the gun from her hands and tries to calm her down. There's no time though, because the police are after them.

Before the cops can get to them, however, Steph's father does. In the back of his chauffeured car, he explains to them that the previous owners of the Waylon house were cultists, who meddled with dark magic, and that they put a spell on the house so that nothing truly dies there-- and that's why Max is reborn as a ghost, a demon, or whatever. An entity of vengeful rage that can touch them, but that they can't touch, and the only way to defeat him is to make a deal with the very gods the Waylons worshipped.

To do so, they need to dig up the Black Book, which is buried in Witchwood Forest. The mayor takes them there, but Max finds them just as they manage to get the book. He kills Mayor Lauter and his secretary, and the remaining nerds finally get a good look at who- or what, actually, has been killing their friends.

On the run from Max, they're taken in by detective Shapiro, who is convinced they're behind the three murders, and while Grace very poorly tries to explain the situation, Max crashes the the car, and the nerds run away to one of five places, five Black Altars built by the Waylons, where they can perform the summoning ritual.

The closest one is Hatchetfield High, so they lay the book out on the gym floor and read the incantation. It summons a group of eldritch beings known as the Lords in Black, and they're willing to kill Max, but only in exchange for the thing they cherish most.

The main Lord in Black, Wiggly, hints at Steph having to kill Pete-- he's what she cherishes most, and she urges him to give up what he cherishes instead. But it's no use, because what Pete cherises most is Steph. One of them has to die, and Pete decides to be the one to do it. In what will be his final moments, kneeling on the football field with Steph pointing the gun at his head, Pete asks Steph if, if things were different, would she go to homecoming with him? She replies "I'd like that, Pete" and the gun goes off.

At the last second, Max intercepts the bullet-- because killing nerds is his job. He zeroes in on Steph first, but moves to break Pete's arm when he tries to defend her. He's about to kill Pete, and then Steph, and then it will all be over for them and for all the nerds in the world Max promises to terminate,

My only complaints arise with the nature of the genre since, as a horror story, it doesn't give the characters death's the weight on the other characters that I think they deserved-- Pete doesn't really have time to mourn his friends, or Stephanie to mourn her father.

Another symptom of the horror-comedy genre is how un-seriously Max's harassment towards Grace is treated. Yes, the dialogue is comedic, but we don't get a moment to sit down and let the fact that Max is constantly coming onto Grace, who is explicitly shown to be uncomfortable with and against that despite her superficial attraction to him, sink in, feels wrong. It doesn't help that in the end, she has to either lose her virginity to Max or let her and/or her friends be killed by him. It's framed in a mostly comedic way, but we can see by the end that the event twists Grace, and she wants revenge on every dude who even remotely likes her, not just those who harass her. Partially because of her christian ideals and her belief that she's God's pupil meant to fix humanity, but also partially because she doesn't feel safe anymore, and I wish that second reason was more acknowledged, and Grace's experience kept comedic, sure, but like the rest of the show balances comedy and seriousness, be allowed to acknowledge how harrowing it must be for her to go through.