I got away with murder.

I slept in for 15 minutes after my alarm went off this morning.

An assembly in the cafeteria of my high school was just ending and the crowd of students was heading for their classes. Some things about my school were different than when I schooled there. For instance, there was a mall-type store in the cafeteria. In the bustle of the crowd, no one at the store noticed me looting a backpack's worth of products.

My next class was actually a meeting for this club that would have been classified as a religious cult if anyone had been paying attention. The cult leader/teacher was my theater director, Tom. The table took up most of the tiny classroom, so kids were crowded tightly into the standing room only between table and wall.

The knowledge that I had strangled the fictitious older brother of a real classmate slowly came back to me and I started to fill with paranoia. It was somehow comforting that I did not remember doing it. But still... people don't get away with murder, right? I guess we probably don't hear about it if they do. The classroom conversation became a murmer while I pondered.

The kid next to me smiled and whispered and offered me a piece of gum. I had always appreciated this kid in school, but had never gotten to know him. And now, if they find that damn body, I'll never get the chance. There was some reason why I killed the guy, I was sure of it. I consider myself to be fairly rational, and I think I can trust myself to murder people only when absolutely necessary.

This part is so silly, I'm not sure why I'm including it. At snacktime, one of my classmates pulled out an oversize pair of men's briefs wrapped in plastic. It was gimmicky packaging for a bunch of assorted flavors of fruit leather. A 'panty pack' someone called it. They all grabbed excitedly for the snacks.

A man came into the room. All the blood went to my head - I was sure they had found the body. He looked right at me and tried to edge into the crowd, but couldn't force his way through. Instead, he gave a small stack of papers to the teacher and left.

After checking the papers, our teacher reminded us all that we had to get parental permission to go on the upcoming mountain retreat. His assistant ( I think she was his wife, too) started making her way through the crowd at this time, stopping to hug each one of us.

I woke up full of dread, knowing that I was certainly prison-bound. As I tried to remember if I had used gloves or not, I realized that the person I had strangled probably never existed.