One

Sorcianna is one of my closest friends, but she's pretty much the most mysterious. For one thing no one's ever seen her relatives. No one. No parents, no siblings, no caregivers, nothing. She claims her parents' work requires them to travel a lot, but it's pretty obvious that something's up. At least it is to me. No members of the school board have ever looked into this, which is probably a good thing.

Not just for her, but for me as well.

To make a long story short, a few years ago my mother ran off to Hollywood to become a star. She dumped me at the Senior Highrise (where children aren't allowed to live) to stay with my grandmother. Let's just say, if the school board members did look into the students' living situations, Grams would probably be evicted, and we would have to move down to Hollywood to live with my mother. Living away from my friends and with Lady Lana is the kind of condition I could do without.

Anyhow, normally if a friend of mine turns out to have no parents or any kind of caregiver, well, I get involved. At least I did with my friend Holly. But where Holly used to live by the riverbed in a cardboard box, Sorci lives in a house. It's got electricity, running water, and most of your average basic comforts. She also seems taken care of, so I've never had any need to get nosey. Not to mention, I might lose her as a friend if I do.

She showed up in the middle of homeroom one day, with nothing but a name. No background, no information about family or where she lived. Just a name. Sorcianna Ziegless. Mrs. Ambler assigned Marissa to help Sorcianna out the first day she was here, so Marissa introduced us, and we've been friends since. It's not like no one else tries to be friends. Mostly boys. See, Sorci's really pretty. She's willowy, curvy, petite, and shapely all at once, if you know what I mean. She's got floor length black hair, (don't ask me how she got it that long) white, porcelain-like skin, and big black eyes. So, yeah, she's real pretty. But she's also super secretive. I mean, only after we swore repeatedly not to tell anyone would she show us where she lived. She seems to want nothing to do with boys.

Sorci lives in a big Victorian house; the kind I always assumed was deserted. I don't know how long Sorci's lived there; it looks no different now than it did before she moved.

Anyway, basically my friends, Dot, Marissa, Holly, and I are the only one's who know about her situation, and she is pretty adamant that it stays that way. She threatens us that 'If we tell anyone she'll…' She hasn't come out and said what she'll do, but you can tell, she's dead serious. And at first she was real unfriendly, but we've managed to get her to warm up a bit, and now she's pretty cool. Still secretive, though. Which is why it came as a bit of a shock, when one day at lunch, Marissa asks, "Sorci, are you an orphan?"

It came out kinda hesitant, but Sorci just gives Marissa a small smile and says "If you mean in the sense that my parents aren't alive, then, yes."

We all just blink for a minute.

"When did your parents die?" Dot asks.

"When I was eight," Sorci replies sadly. Then she looks at me and says, "Is it really better to have loved and lost, then it is to have never been loved at all?"

I give a small smile at that. I mean, can you imagine Dot, Holly, or Marissa saying that? Not unless they were quoting from Shakespeare or something.

But as I thought about what she said, it made sense. I mean, I've always complained that I had a pretty crummy family. I live with my grandmother, my mother lives a thousand miles away in Hollywood, and I don't even know who my dad is. But thinking about this made me wonder. Wouldn't it be better, not to know who your dad is, than to know and really live with him, only to have him snatched away?

I guess while I was engrossed in my thoughts the subject had changed, because I hear Sorci's lilting voice drifting through, like she was far away, or something.

"C'mon, Sammy, help me out here!"

I look at her, "Sorry?"

She shakes her head, and Holly snickers "Some winning endorsement, huh?"

Dot sighs, "While you were off in la la land, we were discussing Sorci's obvious infatuation with Jeremie Belpois."

"I don't like him like that, seriously!" Sorci protested.

I didn't particularly want to get dragged into that, but it was kinda hard to deny. Jeremie showed up soon after Sorci did, but since he's in all honors classes, I don't know him that well. What I do know is that he's tiny, and a genius. He's a year younger than me, and if you listen to Sorci, you'd think he could graduate from Berkeley, the way she goes on about him. I don't get what she ever saw in him. He small, for one thing. He'd have trouble looking an eight-year-old in the eye. And real fragile to, like a puff of wind could blow him over. And pale. Not white, like Sorci, but real pale, as if he hadn't eaten for weeks.

Really, the one thing I could see that would make a girl like him would be his eyes. They're big. Really big. Marissa and I joke that he wears glasses because they don't make contact lenses big enough to cover them. They're also blue. Startlingly blue. Bright blue.

So, yeah, he's got real pretty eyes, but I don't think that's why him and Sorci are friends. It's strange. She's said that she's never met him before he came to the school. He knows nothing about Sorci's past, or where she lives, or her family, or… anything. He just seemed to take a liking to her and her to him.

"Uh, I don't think Sorci likes Jeremie," I say, still trying to figure out how the conversation went from her parents to Jeremie so quickly.

"Gee, thanks Sammy," Sorci snorts, rolling her eyes. "I'll remember that, next time you need me to stick up for you."

Marissa rolls her eyes, "Well," she says, smirking. "Did you find out what he wanted yesterday?"

Sorci raises an eyebrow. "Did he ask for me?"

"Nah," Marissa pops a French fry into her mouth. "He stopped by your place yesterday."

You could have cut the silence with a knife. Sorci's white skin got paler, and her big eyes got bigger. When she finally speaks, her words are dripping with fury, "He stopped by my house?" She hisses at Marissa.

Marissa tries to backtrack, "Well maybe not, I-I was on my way to the mall and saw him knocking on your door, and calling your name, but maybe he was doing something else and it just happened to sound like your name from across the street and…" she sputters to a stop. "I didn't tell," she says.

"Me neither."

"It wasn't me."

"Don't look at me."

While we're all stating our innocence, Sorci's just staring past us, a look of horror and rage on her face. She stands up and stalks off to find Jeremie, but you can tell, it isn't to find out what it is he wanted to tell her. She's mad. I've thought before that Sorci would be a stupid person to seriously tick off. I mean, it's not like she's violently unstable, but she can be a bit rash, and when she is, she's more then less violent. She's got a couple suspensions and a whole lot of detentions under her belt.

"Wow," Holly whispers. "I wouldn't want to be Jeremie. Wonder how he found out."

I was more worried about him than I let on. Sorci's strong and Jeremie's a bit of a wimp. He'd probably get a concussion if she slapped him.

"There they go." Marissa points, and I see Sorci dragging a nervous looking Jeremie out of the cafeteria. They walk a bit before Sorci pulls open a janitor's closet door and pulls Jeremie in.

"Do you think she'll lock him in there, until he promises not to tell?" Dot suggests, peering over my shoulder.

Marissa shrugged, "Whatever, Jeremie obviously likes Sorci, he'll probably promise in no time."

A minute later, Sorci darts out of the closet, looking freaked. She glances from side to side, then tears away.

I wait a few minutes, before deciding to check if Jeremie's okay. So I excuse myself and head over to the closet. When I try the handle, I find it unlocked, so I go in. It's dark so I click the little light on. It doesn't help much, but soon my eyes have adjusted. But when they did, I was wishing they hadn't.

There, lying on the floor in front of my, was Jeremie Belpois. Lying on his back, eyes closed, in a pool of blood, with the hilt of a knife, buried in his chest.