Vern (Matthew's best friend)

No. It couldn't be real. There's no way she was seeing Matthew Broderick's body in a pool of his own blood, laying out on the street like roadkill. His blue bicycle sprawled on the grass a few feet away from him. All the newspapers he was supposed to deliver scattered everywhere, some stained with blood. This wasn't what Vern Haley was expecting when she went out in her robe and slippers to get the mail on the morning of June 18th, 2012.

She stood there in front of his body. Frozen. When tears filled her eyes, she ran back into her house.

"MOM! Mom!" she yelled, bursting into the master bedroom.

"Vern, what's going on?" Mrs. Haley asked tiredly, sitting up in bed.

"He's dead. Matthew's dead." Vern cried, falling into her mom's arms as she became inconsolable.

After two hours and a cup of orange juice, Vern told her mom what she saw and took her to the body.

"Oh, God." said the latter, feeling sickened by all the blood. She reached down to touch Matthew's body. It was cold.

"We need to call the police." said Mrs. Haley, bringing her daughter back inside as she called 911 on her phone.

By the end of sunrise, the neighborhood was filled with cops cars. A sheet was put over Matthew's body as he was loaded onto a gurney and sent away in an ambulance.

Vern and her mother were busy being questioned by the police. The two told them everything.

She noticed the City Sheriff, Clay Thomas, was acting weird, but thought nothing of it.

"Do we have what we need?" one cop, Dan Harris, asked his coworkers. He'd just finished talking to Matthew's family.

Clay nodded and tried to usher the police out, seeming anxious to leave.

'Hmm. It was peculiar that Clay mostly kept to himself the whole time he was here, twice walking away to take private phone calls. And his forehead was rather sweaty. It may be summer, but it usually doesn't get hot until the afternoon.' Vern thought.

She was about to say something when Clay managed to get the cops out and left.

"I'm gonna go wake up your brother. Are you gonna be ok, sweetie?" Mrs. Haley asked.

Her daughter nodded. When she left and went to go upstairs, Vern knew what she had to do. She knew the police will just label Matthew's death as an accident and move on to the next case, and she wasn't gonna let that happen.

"Guess it's time to bring out Vern Haley: Teen Detective." she said.

Comment down below what you guys thought of the first chapter of The Newspaper Murder. I'm happy to hear any constructive criticism.