A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

In Capstone Project Log—Entry 31, Pip realizes her project has evolved from a gut instinct that Sal was innocent to a certainty about it. She and Ravi have come to an agreement that if she cannot find the killer in three weeks’ time, she will take the photo to the police. Pip laments that she is torn between the Wards and the Singhs. She writes, “I don’t even know what’s right anymore—everything is so muddled. I’m not sure I’m the good girl I once thought I was” (260).

Pip notices something is off when she enters her room. The photograph proving Sal’s innocence has been placed on top of a pile of papers, and on Pip’s computer, someone has typed “YOU NEED TO STOP THIS, PIPPA” hundreds of times (265). Pip panics as she realizes the killer has been inside her house. She struggles to sleep that night, her heart racing at each sound she hears.

Pip walks with Cara down the school hallway, and she hopes Cara cannot tell she has hardly been sleeping. She narrates that she wrote her personal essay for her college application and deleted it because “It wasn’t right, it wasn’t her” (269). The pressure of the three-week deadline to find Andie and Sal’s killer is also weighing on her.