The Assassination of a Student President

Epilogue

“They’re all gone,” said Oscar Careman, surveying the field. The majority of Cassandra Salieri and Brian Hawthorn’s gang had run away, except for those who appeared dead or unconscious on the ground. Daniel Brooks, one of the conspirators, had been shot dead. Cassandra Salieri had stabbed herself in the heart, and Tyler Castello had shot himself in the head. Only two conspirators remained: Caitlin Ting, who hadn’t come to the fight, and Brian Hawthorn.

Since Becky told him about the Student Council members and their assassination of his cousin Julie, Oscar had undeniable hatred towards Brian Hawthorn. This Brian guy seemed cocky. Probably considered himself the big shot of the school, thought Oscar. He was a heartthrob, an athlete, and an honour student; his identity just spelled out egotistical. Oscar was more than happy to clobber Brian’s face.

His opinion of Brian Hawthorn changed after reading the letter. Their gang had marched off the field savagely and triumphantly. Becky and Oscar, the two of them bruised up badly, investigated those who were left behind. They got to Cassandra and Tyler, where they both lay dead next to each other, like a scene taken out of Romeo and Juliet. Oscar studied the still look of past desperation on Cassandra’s face and the one of tragic romance on Tyler’s face, until Becky noticed a piece of paper sticking out of Cassandra’s jeans. She bent down and slid the piece out of the corpse’s pocket. Oscar looking over her shoulder, she opened the folded paper up.

“It’s a suicide note,” stated Becky. “It explains Julie’s assassination. Aha, they did kill her!”

“Let me see that,” said Oscar, grabbing the paper from her hands. Oscar studied the note. It explained thoroughly how Cassandra hated Julie from the start and devised a plan to kill her. She had convinced the rest of the Student Council to join her, though Brian had been resilient to the idea. Brian joined because he felt that Julie Careman was dangerous in her ambition, not because he hated her. He agreed to join the conspiracy only after Cassandra had sent emails to Brian’s advice column supposedly written by students worried about Julie’s presidency. As Oscar read through the letter, he developed sympathy for Brian.

“Where’s Brian?” asked Becky. “Didn’t you fight with him?”
“Yeah, but then these two guys tackled me and he got away.”

“I’ll go look for him, he might be passed out.” Becky searched the rest of the field in the hopes of finding Brian’s body. In the meantime, Oscar skimmed the letter and stared at the bodies next to him. Man, I‘d never want to work in a morgue, he thought.

“I found him!” shouted Becky a few yards away. Oscar rushed to Becky’s side, where she stood above the dead body of Brian Hawthorn. He, like Cassandra, had stabbed himself in the heart. “Do you think he’s got a suicide note too?”

“Maybe. Check his pockets.”

She meekly searched through the pants’ pocket until she found a note. She passed it to Oscar, who read it thoroughly.

“It says the same things as Cassandra’s letter,” declared Oscar, “about the conspiracy, about him being persuaded by Cassandra, about him caring about Julie but thinking that she was dangerous, all that stuff. I guess this means every conspirator except Caitlin Ting is dead. With these two notes, Becky, you can finally prove the police wrong!” Oscar expected Becky to be happy, but instead she looked into space. “What’s wrong?”

“This victory isn’t as sweet as I thought it would be. I ignored Brian when he called us hypocrites, but after my fight with Cassy, I started to think about it. We are hypocrites! For goodness sake, we got a sniper to kill Matthew, and you know we only killed him because he was the only know we knew the whereabouts of. We assassinated him, just like they did to Julie.”

“It’s not like we killed him, and come on, he’s the only one we killed - ”

“Listen to yourself, you’re making excuses for his death. And if you haven’t noticed, only one of the conspirators are still alive.”
“The rest killed themselves.”

“We drove them to it, and what about Daniel? One of our guys shot him! We promised that we wouldn’t bring weapons.”

“Why do you want to make us feel guilty?” questioned Oscar harshly. Embarrassment flushed in his cheeks.

“It’s not that I want to make ourselves feel guilty. This incident has given me an epiphany. I want you to realize what we’ve done here.”

Oscar sighed and looked at the florescent moon. “Are we going to hand those letters into the police?”

“I don’t know. I want to do the right thing, but I don’t want to destroy the memory of these unfortunate teenagers. Before this, they were good people. They’re not the monsters I thought them to be.”
“Fine, we’ll decide later.”

Becky stared at Brian Hawthorn’s body, a daze coming over her eyes. Realization and wisdom settled inside her frail body, and in this moment of epiphany, words of another age escaped her mouth.

“Six teenagers, all honoured in their age,

felt that their equal Julie must not live.

Some of them picked up their daggers in rage,

one thought her too ambitious to forgive.

Persuasion’s snake wrapped around his mind,

which caused him to stab my dear friend ‘til dead.

I responded in anger, conscience blind,

to make sure he felt pain, and greatly bled.

Hypocrisy is the real fiend to blame,

each one of us judged ourselves unfairly.

We performed crimes in Lucifer’s name,

in revenge of others’ acts seen bitterly.

As we false heroes stand alive and tall,

here lies Brian, the noblest of them all.”