• As I walked home form my part-time job, I ran over the day's events in my mind. I remembered that in the morning, before school had started, Markus had

    approached my best friend, Lauren. Markus had always been the popular guy, so it was inevitable that he'd like the popular girl of year ten. That would be

    Lauren: but she'd turned him down, walking back to her best girl friend, Jamie.

    "I think he's a bit of a dork," she'd said, loud enough for Markus to hear. I could see Markus visibly fuming on the other side of the room, and I must admit

    that I feel more than a little sorry for him. I'd never asked Lauren out, but I knew if I did, I'd get the same result.

    There was no way on Earth that I could have prepared myself for the sight I copped when I rounded the corner, and I've never quite been able to forget the

    terror of it. To make matters worse, it was October thirty-first: Halloween. It seems so odd that only minutes before I'd been looking forward to a night of

    horror films: maybe some murder mysteries.

    Who knew I'd be living it, instead?

    I stood at the mouth of the alleyway, my body frozen in shock of the sight before me. A few feet away lay a body, it's chest covered in a blooming red

    flower. A single word escaped my lips in a gasp:
    "Lauren."

    I sprinted the few steps to her side, and collapsed beside her body, shaking from head to foot. I pressed one hand to her chest in a feeble attempt to stop

    the flow of blood, the other searched at her wrists for a heartbeat in vain. I fumbled in my pocket for my mobile, finally dragging it out and dialing triple

    O. As I spoke, I stared at a blood-stained feather beside Lauren's body, which I pocketed. A voice came from the phone:
    "This is the emergency hotline. Which sercive do you need?" The woman sounded very calm: I guessed she'd done this many times before.
    "Police and ambulance, please." My voice shook.
    "One moment, please."
    There was a short silence, then:
    "This is the police. What is the matter?" said a gruff male voice.
    "My name is Evan white, I'm in the alleyway off Storm Road next to the grocery store. My friend's been killed."

    The police arrived what seemed like moments later, and what had been Lauren was carted off to the station. I was still in shock and kneeling beside the wet

    patch of concrete. Somebody helped me up and escorted me to a car at the alley mouth. The trip to the station passed in a blur, I was thinking everything

    over, but when we arrived I could hear voices all around me discussing the crime of the night.



    "So, who did it, Serg?" Constable Rodney asked, glancing meaningfully towards the vicinity of the seat I occupied. I'd already explained my story, but the

    Constable would not believe my version of the night's events. I could tell he was uptight because the ferensic scientists had matched the bullet found in

    Lauren's chest to his own pistol, despite him having a prefectly liable alibi of being in the office at the time. I would bet anything that he also didn't

    like the way his daughter Jamie was seated: she placed herself right beside me. I leaned away from her: she smelled of budgie droppings.

    "Well, if you ask me, Rod, I thi-" Sergant Goron began.
    "May I say something?" I interjected, standing up and letting the blanket around my shoulders fall away. I walked towards the pair, wobbling as my body was

    still slightly in shock.
    "That's the one," the Sergant finsihed, pointing directly at me. "Bound to be: he was found at the scene of the crime, and was upset because the girl had

    disagreed to go out with him. Simple as that."
    I paused in my struggle breifly, closing my eyes and pulling out the feather in my pocket.





    "What's this got to do with anything?" the Constable shouted, taking one angry step towards me.
    "If you'll calm down for a moment, I'll tell you. If you look closely at this feather, you'll see that it was green before Lauren's blood reached it," I

    said, surprisingly calmly.
    "So?"
    "There was also the incident this morning, with Markus. Who knows? It could have been him. He had reason enough: Lauren had turned him down, and he was

    always the sort to get jealous easy."
    "So it was this Markus boy?" the Constable asked sceptically.
    "Did I say that? No, it was not Markus. I went to his house yesterday, and he does not own a green-feathered bird, as he is allergic. This also means he

    couldn't have gotten the feather somewhere else. Lauren was never a fan of birds, so there was no way she'd have gotten it herself. We are also in the city:

    there aren't any birds with green feathers in this area, so it can't have been Markus who killed her, and dropped the feather."
    "Get on with it, kid," the Sergant butted in. "I'd like to get this over with as soon as possible.
    "Very well. I have, however, noticed something else. Tonight's events do in fact relate to the happenings of this morning. See, there is one person in the

    class who owns a green-feathered budgie, and that same person has always adored Markus. So, when Lauren turned Markus down, and then insulted him, that

    person got very upset with her."
    "Who would this be?" the Sergant replied.
    "She's sitting right there," I said, turning too quickly and overshooting my point's mark. I steadied myself and gestured towards the girl in the seat beside

    mine. "Jamie Rondey."

    "Jamie? My daughter?" the Constable shouted. "This is an outrage, blaming my daughter like this!"
    "I'm not blaming her: I'm saying that she literally did do it. She took your gun when she came to the station after school, obviously wearing gloves, then

    preoceeded home to feed her budgie and clean out its cage. That's when the feather got stuck on her clothes. She met Lauren in the alleyway while she was

    heading towards my work, as we'd all decided to meet there before our scary movie marathon. It was there that she shot her, and first checked to see that she

    was dead before running off to the station to replace the gun. It was here that she slipped up: when she checked Lauren's pulse, the feather fell off her

    clothes. I've been around to Jamie's place enough times to know the colour of her budgie's feathers, so I noticed it straight away. The same odour that I can

    smell coming off Jamie now was all around the alley, mixed in with the blood," I explained, all the while staring into Jamie's face for some sort of

    reaction. I soon got it.
    "Fine! I admit it: I killed her. But, she was always thinking she was all that, and more, and I couldn't stand it anymore. Especially after she instulted

    Markus like that. So I killed her," she exploded into tears, and her father stood, just staring at her.


    "You've let me down," was the last thing he said to her before the Sergant took her away.