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[ikahimedi]

Killer on the Boat

"Have you caught a good one yet?" I asked, as I felt a tug on my fishing line.

"Come on, Aria, what do you expect? We'd be lucky to find two good fish in a week," Emmy replied.

I pulled up my fishing line. I looked at it, observing the tumor on its back with nearly no emotion. I saw fish like that all the time now, ever since the radioactivity from the bombs had spread to the lake just a few miles from camp. I held it behind my back and turned to Emmy.

"Guess where," I asked, starting a game we invented to guess where the next tumor on our fish would be. It made it a little easier to pretend like the infected animals weren't living, breathing creatures whose lives were affected by our actions.

"Mouth?" Emmy replied uncertainly.

I shook my head and brought out the fish. She gasped and wrung her delicate little fingers. I sighed. She could be so dramatic sometimes.  I turned away to stare at the waves for a while, then threw the fish back into the water, watching it sluggishly swim away. I turned back, and I saw the brim of a black cloak and felt the impact of hard, sturdy hands before I found myself falling through air, feeling the rush of wind between my fingers.

Somewhere in my subconscious, I thought, really?, just beginning to process what had just happened. Someone had tried to push me over the fishing boat into the water, theoretically to injure or kill me. Hah, I thought. I curved my body into a graceful dive and sliced through the air, disappearing into the deep water with barely a splash.

I had never been in this river before, mainly because of the sharp stones that never seemed to erode, and the whitewater rapids and small waterfalls that would pocket its otherwise smooth and calm surface. Thankfully, I landed in a calm spot, but I was drifting away fast.

 "Emmy!" I shouted.

"I'll throw you a live preserver!" she shouted back, almost too faint for me to hear. Even though I was in mortal danger, I found myself aware of  how amusingly theatrical the whole business was, just like those archaic 21st century movies mom liked. I caught the white ring and held on while Emmy tried to pull me back up and shouted for help.

Back on the ship, I sat in the sun and tried to dry my clothes the best I could before we had to head back to the forest. My mom would be worried if she found out if I had fallen into the water, even though the water itself wasn't radioactive. She was over concerned about these kinds of health issues even before the war started, and when it did, she whisked us away to a faraway neutral island that had been recently discovered to wait out the warfare. Little did she know that we would be one of the few hundred people left on the face of the Earth. Something like that had happened to almost everyone in camp. It was sad to see how much devastation World War III had caused. Emmy’s voice entered my conscious hearing as I resurfaced from my long-winded thoughts. "What even happened? You don’t seem like the type to fall off a boat,” she added hastily, as if she was afraid I’d take offense to her unsaid accusation.

“I think someone pushed me over the edge, but I’m really not sure. I think it was an accident,” I told her, trying not to give her any information that would cause her to jump to conclusions. I failed.

“There could be a killer on the loose! We have to find them before they can kill anyone else!” Emma squealed almost excitedly, forever the dark optimist. She could handle murderers in a small enclosed space with her, but not some ugly looking fish. Go figure. 

I didn’t bother contradicting her. It was better to go along with her assumptions. There were still a few hours of time before we had to go back to camp, we weren’t allowed to fish anymore today. It seemed like a good way to pass time, I figured. There was no one else on the deck at that time, so I began with a list of suspects.

“Who could have tried to push me off the boat for a personal motive?” I asked Emmy, since she had been here longer than I had and knew most of the people really well.

“Well, there’s Billy, and Valerie, and Dorin, and Brad, and that rude chef with a big knife, Trod-something,” she said, counting them off on her fingers.

“Anyone who was in the area at the time of the incident, or someone that I, oh, I don’t know, possibly ever interacted with me and had a reason to attempt murder?”

“Eh, no not really, unless you’re planning to suspect me. I was kinda busy thinking about that horrible fish you’d shown me, so I wasn’t paying that much attention to the other people on fishing duty,” she said sheepishly.

I sighed and buried my head in my hands. Well, this wasn’t actually a murder anyway, most likely, I tried to convince myself. But still, I conceded, if it was, this was a big problem for us all. I was pretty sure I had felt that push into the water, and the railings were quite high. My mind began to whir. There were plenty of people on this ship who might have had something against me, since we were all from different places which had been fighting against each other during the war. There were many people who hated each other for being part of the enemy country, maybe even to the point of murder. I was from America, and America had plenty of enemies, so many I could barely count them all. 

I decided to drop this theory for a while, and instead look at people I might have personally offended. I was relatively new here, so there weren’t that many enemies I had made, but there was this small group of girls that I had tried to befriend first coming here, but they were obviously the last people I should have tried to get along with. It was absolutely horrible. 

“What are you guys doing?” I had asked, watching them stare at the water.

“Oh, we’re just waiting.” they replied enigmatically.

“What are you waiting for?” I asked, trying to stay polite. 

They whispered amongst each other.

“Should we tell he-”

“No! What are we stupid?”

“Maybe we can do her next…”

They turned back to me, the leader of the group flipping her bright pink hair and clicking her heels.

“So we have this, like, thing, where we give someone a dare, and like, today it was Raya. Oh. My. God. She was so annoying I just couldn’t stand her face. We told her to go take a swim in the water, and she downright refused. To me. So we pushed her. It was so much fun.” She giggled girlishly. At that point, I tuned her out and looked at the other girls, who looked just as cruel and traitorous.

“Doesn’t she remind you of Raya? Such a wannabe,” one of them whispered.

My face burned, and I began to storm out. Just as I did, I felt Annoying Leader Girl’s obnoxiously hot pink nails dig into my back.

“Don’t you dare tell anyone else about this, or there’ll be hell to pay.” she said, glaring at me with such intensity I wanted to melt into a puddle of radioactive mush right there and then. I nodded, and she let go of my shoulder.

She flapped her hand, twisting her face into a disgusted expression for the amusement of her disciples, as if she was trying to get the dirty germs off. She flipped her hair and put on a wide smile, like a great white shark.

“Great. By the way, my name’s Sophie!” and went back to her clique.

Later I found out that Raya had nearly died, but some kind passengers had jumped in and dragged her to shore.

I crinkled my nose at the memory. 

“There is one person,” I told Emmy.

“How did you not remember this earlier?” Emmy asked in exasperation, leaning against the railing even though I had told her not to thousands of times. She loved being the dangerous, risk-taking detective, even if the only risk she was taking was leaning against a creaky railing.

“Well, it was as soon as I had come to camp, and right after getting off the boat, I saw you with that missing dog of yours and I  had forgotten about her until now,” I said, smiling at the memory. I had found Emmy at camp, right after I departed the ship and encountered the Special Sophie Society. She had been searching frantically for her pet dog, which we had eventually found soaking wet after a dip in the creek, clinging to a piece of driftwood and licking it as if it had the most expensive red wine splattered across it. 

“Fair enough,” she giggled, also, evidently, remembering the memory.

Her smile turned a bit wistful. She had to have the dog put down when he became too much to care for.

“So, do you think Sophie would have done it?” I asked her, trying to change the topic before she erupted into another fit of tears.

“I guess she could have been the murderer, but that would be no fun. Can’t we have a proper mystery for once? With clues, and a thrilling car chase? ” 

“First, we have to make sure it really is her. Don’t get your hopes down just yet,” I told her, not believing the words that were coming out of my mouth. Wow, she must have been rubbing off on me.

“WERE YOU THE ONE WHO PUSHED MY BEST FRIEND OVERBOARD, YOU MEANIE?” Emmy asked Sophie, leaning forward with her hands on her hips in just about the most imposing stance in the history of the world. Emmy could be terrifying if she wanted to be.

Sophie didn’t even bother to cower in fear. She checked her nails, cleaning out small specks of seaweed. 

“Ew. No. Why would I bother with, like, her?” shaking her head at the thought. She had obviously heard of my big ‘falling overboard’ story, almost everyone on board had.

Emmy brightened. She started to bounce on the balls of her toes, her hands clasped together. I tugged her down just as a maniacal grin began to spread on her face.

“ It could still be her,” I whispered.

She regained her common sense.

“Prove it.” she said, more of a statement than a plea.

“Well, you can ask, like, literally anyone with me. I was in the spa room all day long, getting myself a seaweed wrap.” she said, calling over a tall, dark haired girl as her witness.

I waved her away, turning to Emmy.

“We should go ask the workers,” I said. The spa was basically just a place where all the fancy rich kids, or some people looking to try something new,  would go to have their nails filed by some small children looking for a cent or two. The seaweed wrap Sophie was talking about involved covering your arms and legs with seaweed, staying like that for half a day, and then trying not to scream when you got it all off and saw how slimy everything was. I spoke, regretfully, from personal experience.

“Sure! Oh, this is going to be so much fun.” Emmy said, skipping towards the door. 

Sophie performed another extraordinarily flappy hair flip, exaggerated her rolling eyes, and left the room.

We picked our way through the hoards of people on board towards the main deck, where the chairs were set up for the day. Nobody seemed to mind the setup, since everything else was stinky and crowded anyways, and it was so heartwarming to see the small children smile brightly when somebody walked by.

I walked to some of the kids that I knew. I had never bothered to socialize with them too much, since they were so tiny and most of their time was used up massaging people’s legs, which I surely did not want to do.

“Hey, Robby!” I waved to him.

“Hi Aria! Hope you’re feeling better after that big fall!” he replied jovially.

So he knew. This would make the job a lot easier.

“Do you remember which customers you guys were serving around that time?” I asked him.

“Um, well, I only really remember Sophie, since she was being so annoying about her customer service,” he said, the loathing in his voice extremely obvious.

“That’s all I needed to know. Thanks!” I said, trying to conceal the frown on my face. 

If it wasn’t Sophie, then who was it?

“ATTENTION ALL PASSENGERS!!!!!!!!” the loudspeaker announced.

We all covered our ears.

“AHEM! Okay, I think that’s better now. Bring me my coke.” 

We cringed as his personal assistant dashed to a large box marked ‘Cap’s freezer’.

“People are reporting good fishing channels around this river. I’m going to be around here for as long as rations allow it. Word will be sent to your families, and NOBODY GETS OFF. We might want to do night shifts as well. EMMY, NO!” he said, preemptively answering Emmy’s volunteering hand.

All heads turned to Emmy.

She blushed and shrank down.

“Anyone who has been previously banned will NOT be allowed to fish on this expedition. The waters are extremely fast, and I don’t want a death on my hands.” he said.

Could he be the one who tried to push me overboard? Was he using reverse engineering now? I put him on my list of suspects.

Emmy leaned over my shoulder.

“Oohh, that’s a good one. And, he probably wants to kill everybody on this ship, pick them off, one by one, until he can venture to new lands all by himself and conquer the remaining population,” she whispered, jiggling her fingers near my face.

“Eh, why not.” I said. This whole thing was absurd anyways. Although, I didn’t suppose the captain would be so murderous.

He would keep himself a skeleton crew of servants.

I tried not to make any noise as I climbed up the stairs to the captain’s cabin. He was truly a horrible man, who didn’t truly care much about others and wanted to take as much advantage of his position as he could, taking all the prime food and electricity from our few solar grids to power the only iPad on the base, which, coincidentally, belonged to him. He was super self-obsessed, flashing a “handsome” grin at everyone he passed and wearing what he considered “fashionable”, but actually made him look like he was wearing a blanket of whale skin. He was only elected captain because fishing was essential and he was the sole person who vaguely knew how to work a boat. Of course, we could have fished ashore, but there were too many rocks and not enough opportunities or ground space, and the only fish stupid enough to wander around the jagged rocks were the radioactive ones.

I was extremely nervous about what I was going to say to the captain, so I began to rehearse it all in my head before I had to actually say anything. I considered starting off with regular conversation and then hinting at my accident, but the doorway appeared too soon and I began to consider stopping and turning back.

Emmy would have murdered me, so I forged forward.

The door was open, so I stepped through it nervously, hoping both that the captain was present so I could get this over with, and hoping he was somewhere else so I could have more time to overthink this.

“Ah! If it isn’t for our very own on-board daredevil!” he exclaimed, spreading his arms wide and smiling to reveal his pearly whites.

“What?”

“That little stunt you pulled, jumping into the water. Oh, it was dangerous, but it reminds me just of how I used to act in the good old days,” he told me with a reminiscent smile on his face.

“Um…”

I slowly backed out of the room.

“So, you were here to see me?” he asked me, raising his eyebrows suspiciously.

“Yes,”

“Well then, what for?”

“I just wanted to check out an, um, an, um, estimate, of how long, um, we will be… staying here!” I said, hoping he wouldn’t see through my lie and also scanning his monologue on the announcer to check whether he had already given one.

“Oh, well, I’m not really sure, but I’m confident that we will find some good fish soon!” he said, and I practically melted with relief as my spine relaxed and I sauntered out of the room, feeling like the queen of the world.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the conversation I had just had, but it seemed that the captain absolutely did not want anyone to think that this was something intentional, since it would spoil the reputation of his boat. He also, apparently, thought I was five.

It could also just be that he thought I was feeling hot and wanted a dip in the lake. 

Obviously, the rumor had twisted quite a bit as it traveled throughout the boat.

Still, the captain was not to be taken lightly after today’s events.

I immediately went to Emmy and reported my findings. 

She decided to begin writing a book about our recent adventures. 

Of course, running around with Emmy wasn’t the only thing I did on the boat. When I returned to my room, I found one of my other friends waiting on my bed for me.

“Hi Aria!” she said. She was the ‘bright and bubbly’ kind of person, the person you’d go to for book recommendations and the kind of person who always got A++++s at school on every test. At least, for the moment. She changed her personality every week. Last week, it was ‘super sassy’ and I could barely stand her. 

“Glad we got past last week,” she said with a smile.

“I was definitely avoiding you on purpose,” I admitted.

“I know. TBH, I kind of hated myself. But hey, I picked out the personality,” she said, shrugging while I marveled at how far ‘TBH’ had come. Apparently, it was super common in the olden times, but now people only used it when they were being uber personal.

“Are you okay after your, like, fall on the boat?” she asked.

My eyes widened. Had Kelly been the one? I dismissed the thought, but it still haunted the back of my mind. If she could have done it, I reasoned, even Emmy could have been the murderer.

“Yeah. Just a bit rattled,” I added, to make it look like I wasn’t just trying to act tough.

“Cool. I just came by to see whether you wanted to go get some snacks. I can’t stand the thought of going to that horrible place alone.”

“Maybe later. I’m kind of busy right now,” I said. I didn’t want to involve her in our investigation, since the less people involved, the easier and faster solving the whole thing would be.

A while later, I decided that I should  go and check out the food rations with Emmy, to get a feel for how long we’d be here.

“Come on, I want to see if the captain really does have enough time to kill us all slowly and not have to return to shore until he’s satisfied,” I said to Emmy.

She smiled and ran to the supply room, which was supposed to be off-limits.

I was scared to death of being caught. I slowly tiptoed towards the third door on the hallway, wincing at every creak of the rotten old floorboards. A waiter made his way down the hall.

“Oh. My. God.”

“Why is there so much stuff?”

“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE AT THE HANDS OF THE CAPTAIN!!”

“How come they don’t give us any of the canned chicken?”

It was basically the two of us in an enormous, gargantuan, so-many-supplies-I-don’t-have-any-words room filled to the brim with non-perishable food.

We were doomed.

If, that is, the captain was evil. 

It all could also be a big mistake and some random person was actually the psychopathic murderer who thought I looked like a good practice suspect for a larger murder, like the murder of the president of a country nobody has ever heard of, like, Nauru or something. He was actually staying at our base, so that was a possible theory. I decided to drop the captain lead, since that just made me more depressed, but I didn’t cross it off my suspect list.

Emmy politely excused herself to the bathroom, where I heard a hoard of gagging sounds and fearful sobbing.

I left upstairs to see what I could do. I heard the bathroom door open, but I decided to give Emmy some alone time. 

Stretching out on a lounge chair, I opened my newest book savoring the feel of a fresh new page.

I started on page one.

I was on page 467 when I heard a scream echo in the distance.

I raced to the dining room, where the sound seemed to have originated. Where was Emmy when I needed her? I could totally use her mood lightening commentary right now,  since my brain was already cooking up worst-case scenarios for everything. 

The boat was generally a quiet place, and there was never any commotion, save for the recent events and the Special Sophie Society disaster.

My feet skid on the old wood as I screeched to a halt in the doorway of the mess hall. They tried to maintain the dignity of the little food we had to eat, but nobody really bothered to keep decorum. It was a disaster, people talking to each other so loudly that I could barely hear myself think, some old, moldy food on the ground being carried away by a team of ants, and small children spilling water everywhere. I tried to identify who had screeched, but I couldn’t figure it out.

Then I saw the cluster of people around a young boy in a bright blue shirt.

He seemed to be telling everyone about something horrible that had just happened. He was around eight, just four years younger than I was.

I walked closer to the huddle.

“And then, that mean kid over there-”

“Which mean kid?” I interrupted.

“That one.” he said, pointing to the kitchen.

He frowned.

“Huh, she’s gone.” he said. He swiveled his head around, reminding me uncomfortably of a snowy owl with his blond hair whipping around, but couldn’t seem to spot her.

“That’s okay, tell me if you see her again,” I said.

I gave him a go on motion.

“Yeah, okay, so, then she came up to me and,” he shuddered, “she had a big fat butcher’s knife and she had me cornered while I was on kitchen volunteering duty, and then she tried to carve me up like a big fat hunk of beef. I screamed as loud as I could, ducked under her, and bolted. I heard a loud clatter, so I think she might have dropped the knife and fled from the scene as well,” he said. He sounded pretty smart, but this was concerning news. I now knew that this killer was a girl, and I didn’t even know if the murder attempts were by the same people or representatives of some evil cult. The worrying part was, this was clearly not a mistake. Someone had truly evil intent in their hearts. The killer would strike again soon, I knew it, but I didn’t know how soon. 

“Did you get a good look at her face?” I asked, hoping desperately that he did. 

“Kind of ish?” he said.

I sighed.

Suddenly, Emmy came up to the group. I ran over and hugged her.

“Okay, come on. The murderer struck again!” I whispered into her ear.

Suddenly, I caught a glimpse of Kelly in the background.

I let go of Emmy and tried to turn to talk to her, but she turned sharply and exited.

She was really looking suspicious now. 

“I have a friend named Kelly, I think she might have done something. I haven’t been spending that much time with her recently, and maybe she had a grudge against the little kid or something,” I said to her, already leading the way to Kelly’s cabin.

“I don’t think-” Emmy said, looking uncharacteristically embarrassed.

“Yes you do. Come on,” I whined, tugging her sleeve.

We pushed the door open and found her crying on the bed.

“See what I mean?” Emmy whispered.

Kelly looked up.

“Just go away.” 

We obliged.

“Wait, why did we just rule her out like that?” Emmy asked as she followed me down the hall.

“Ah, see, but we didn’t just rule her out,” I told her smugly.

I took an assured right turn and arrived at what I thought was the right cabin area.

“I’ve been asking around a bit while you were in the shower, and I think this could  help us come further in our investigation.”

I opened the door and saw the young boy again sitting on his UFO-themed bed.

“Hi!” he said.

“I didn’t catch your name in the dining hall earlier, I just wanted to ask a few questions about what had happened. I think that someone might have tried to push me overboard too.” I said.

“Oh. My name’s Evan,” he said, not sure how to continue.

“Okay, I’ll take it from here. What color was the girl’s hair?” Emmy asked.

“I couldn’t really see. She had a black hoodie on, and her face was kind of shadowed.”

“Was she really tall, or super short, or what?” I broke in.

“Well, she was pretty average sized, kind of around you guys’ height”

Emmy stood a bit taller.

“Chillax, he doesn’t mean it’s one of us,” I said to her.

“Plus,” I added, “Kelly is super-short. There is no way he could confuse someone our size with her. And, I really doubt that she owns any ‘hoodies’. They’re so antique.”

“Who knows?” Emmy shrugged.

“Do you think you can remember anything else that might help identify her?” I said, turning back to Evan.

“No… But are you guys trying to find the killer? Could I help?” he asked eagerly. Someone had read a few too many mystery books.

“Aren’t you worried they might strike again?” I asked him.

“Exactly! We have to catch them before they do!” he exclaimed, still excited.

I sighed. There would be no convincing this child.

“Okay, fine. But you can’t do anything dangerous, and you have to tell me,” Emmy glared at me, “-us, everything, okay?”

“Sure! Sometimes, I don’t brush my teeth at night,” he whispered.

I did a facepalm.

“Oh, like the-the-um, sure, yeah, um, okay,” he muttered.

“Mhm. So, now, let’s get started. Emmy, I want you to go to the captain again and see how he reacts to Evan’s near-death. Evan, I want you to go and make me a list of everyone that hates you, and I will go and visit all of Sophie’s friends, to see what they say to all this nonsense,”

I was so excited I was almost trembling. I’d have to start a diary soon. My life was getting so eventful, just like the audiobooks I loved to listen to.

Evan trudged off to his desk, while Emmy slowly extracted herself from the dent she made in his bed, and I marched off to my room.

First off:

Ava.

She was easily the most evil of all of Sophie’s gang. 

She. was. Absolutely. HORRIBLE.

She was the one in the purple sequin vest, that one girl at school that just thinks she owns the world.

That one girl who pretends to be her friend and then pushes the brainiac with glasses into the mud and then asks about its corrosive properties to human skin.

Her.

I walked down to the spa, where she was getting her nails glitterized, also known as putting-dirt-on-top-of-sea-gunk-on-top-of-your-nails.

“Hey Aria!” she said in a sing-songy voice as she used her free hand to adjust her immaculate ponytail.

I glared at her.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I am after the fall?” I said in a flat voice.

“Well, you’re here, so you must be okay,” she tried innocently.

“Aren’t you curious how it happened?” I asked her.

“Why would I care?” she sounded genuinely confused now.

“Oh, I think you would if I told you someone pushed me in,”

“What?! Oh, and now you think I did it, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Well, I didn’t. You can ask Sophie. We were all in the spa at that time, except for Mia.”

“And I believe what you say. Totally.”

“Go ask!” she nearly yelled, sounding exasperated.

“Okay, okay, chill,” I said, on the defensive now.

I knew she would expect me to go verify all this, since Sophie must have told them about my investigation and inquiries around here.

It should be fine, I figured.

I could ask around later.

But for now, she’d given me a lead.

“Emmy?” I called. I had already looked for her in the captain’s cabin and in her room, and now I was stuck wandering the deck and hallways.

“EMMY!” I shouted after a few more calls. I was beginning to get worried, and with a killer on the loose, who knew what could have happened to her. I wanted to tell her my latest theory.

Sophie had mentioned that Mia wasn’t with the Sophie Society at the time of my fall, and all I had to do now was ask around some more to see where she was when Evan was attacked. I ran to her cabin. She wasn’t there either. I went to the bathroom on each floor, checking under the stalls and peering around the walls at the rusty sinks. Nothing.

My heart began to race. She wasn’t in any of her usual hiding spots.

I ran around, asking everyone if they’d seen her. Maybe she was above deck, but that was one of the worst places to be with the fishy scent that she had always hated.

She was so scared of the murderer, the fact that we might be stuck here forever. And then, she goes missing? Something didn’t add up, and I was afraid it was staring me right in the face.

I rushed to Mia’s room.

I found a knife, a pool of blood, a lifeless body on the floor.

I screamed as the knife was pressed against my throat.

And then I was  fall

    ing

  in

to

      the

    void.

I woke to find Emmy staring at me concernedly.

I slapped her across the face.

“Shoot,” she muttered.