Circling Carousels by Ashlee North

was as real as anything she had ever felt, but she was young and vulnerable. Marcus had been her world and her secret life for many years now. He was all she had once her mother ceased to be able to be a mother anymore, and now that she was at an age when her emotions and hormones controlled her, she was right there and ripe for him to claim.
    In the case of Marcus, it was hard to know. Sienna chose to believe he actually loved her, but was Marcus only making an easy kill? Was what he was saying to her the truth or was he just using her? Would she end up hurt and destroyed by her wildly raging feelings of first love?
    Dear Diary, what a wonderful week we’ve just had! He loves me. He truly does, and it’s so wonderful, so fantastic! I feel like a princess and he is my prince charming.
    He gives me anything I want. He took me out swimming, and we made love like in the movies. He treats me like a grown up, not like a teenager! I feel as though a million butterflies were flying around in my belly. I’m so happy I could burst.
    But, what if this doesn’t last? What if he only wants me for a little while? What if he doesn’t really love me, like I love him? What if he hurts me and breaks my heart? I couldn’t stand it! I love him so much!
    Sienna continued to write in her diary words of love, stories of tenderness, and the wonder of newness, but tonight, she would also have a new type of writing to do. Tonight a terrible thing would await Marcus and Sienna and an equally terrible thing would have to be done to keep them safe and out of trouble. Tonight, Sienna would lose something she knew one day she would. Tonight everything would change.
    Marcus went upstairs after he had held Sienna close for a long time to check on Candice and how well she had been looked after by his friend, Geoff. He wanted to make sure she was all right because although he trusted the man, Candice was not exactly interactive anymore and he hoped he hadn’t just left her to her own devices, thinking Marcus would be none the wiser. He also had a growing fear that Geoff may have felt it better for Marcus if this woman were dead, because Marcus had admitted as such many times. Candice had become a thorn in his side, an unimaginably huge pain for him, and a dead weight around his otherwise forward-moving life. Geoff was the only other person who knew of the relationship with Sienna, and he may very well have thought it wouldn’t matter so much if he left Candice to die. It was true that Candice was now useless to him, but he wasn’t sure that Sienna wouldn’t blame him if she were gone.
    When he walked in the room, Marcus was hit by a sight and odour he had not expected. It was clear from what he saw on the bedside table that Geoff had deliberately left Candice with everything she needed to take care of her own needs. The only problem was that she couldn’t be trusted to be careful with her wants. He looked on in horror and saw the evidence of heroin in too large an amount left for her, and he smelt the odour of a life ended. Candice had either accidentally overdosed or deliberately decided to finish things and had been left with the perfect tools to do it. Marcus sighed with a sadness that wasn’t like him. He would usually have just written off a woman such as Candice as expendable, but this was going to hurt Sienna more than he could stand.
    He called out down the stairs, and hearing the panicked tone in his voice, Sienna ran up the stairs two at a time, already fearing the worst. The worst was exactly what she was faced with, and as she cried great wracking sobs into Marcus’s chest, he tried to work out what they should do.
    Again, like so many times in the last few months, Marcus treated Sienna like an equal, discussing what they must do to absolve themselves of any wrongdoing. Although Sienna was grieving dreadfully, she realised that it would look incredibly bad should they get the police involved now. As abhorrent as the plan sounded to