Loosen

I knew I was the reason he died. I struggled to breathe. Someone accidentally glanced my way, and I flinched. My behavior probably made me look like the prime suspect. I turned around, shaking my head to clear the thoughts that whirled too fast. I bumped into other students moving the opposite way. I didn't want to listen to their worried chatter; I knew enough. I had locked eyes with the killer from the very beginning. I knew he was a serial killer, but the thought of Chris—the guy he looked up to—suddenly attacking him and turning into a werewolf, the memory of him just hanging in his room... it must have been traumatizing up to his last breath. I keep my hands from shuddering. But before I could take another step, someone clamped a grip on my elbow. “No.” I tried to pry away from his grasp, but he wouldn't let me go. I looked around, desperately searching for help, but everyone was preoccupied with the case of Chris’s sudden “suicide,” which I knew was a slaughter masked as