Sam Rivers didn’t like the school he attended.

But unfortunately there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. It was his last year at Northwood Academy and he had spent so much time studying and doing hours worth of homework. Northwood was Sam’s only shot at getting into a good college. But the homework, the classes, the teachers, the expenses-none of that was why Sam considered leaving the school the summer before his final year. It was because of Helen.

He had never actually interacted with her but everyone knew Helen Schwartz. She was pretty, she was funny, and she was very popular. Helen’s father was a politician that often donated money to Northwood, and in turn Helen’s status was almost saintly. Despite her money and popularity, she was never unkind. She never gave anyone a reason to hate her and as a matter of fact, pretty much everyone had loved her. And that’s why it was so hard to guess why anyone had wanted to kill her.

Sam found her entangled in branches that had fallen close to the lake. Her legs were still submerged in the water and the baby blue dress she had been wearing was all torn and dirtied. She was lying on her back and her arms were twisted at strange angles. Sam had often seen Helen around school and remembered how pretty and full of life her blue eyes always were. They were wide open and glassy when Sam found her body, but that wasn’t what had disturbed him the most. Etched all over her pale skin were symbols that Sam didn’t even know the meaning of. 

No one knew how her body ended up where it did. When they extracted her body from the scene her body was still a little damp from being in the lake. But she hadn’t died from drowning. Her windpipes had been crushed by what they thought to be rope. 

It didn’t make sense to anyone. Helen had disappeared in the middle of the school year, so it shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise when she was found dead. But nothing added up. No one was arrested because the few suspects the police found had solid alibis, including Sam. The leads they had stopped at dead ends. Helen’s murder couldn’t be solved. 

Sam was supposed to attend counseling to cope with what he found but he stopped going. It wasn’t Helen’s death that scared him, it was who killed her. Or rather, the mystery of who did it.

Who killed Helen?