Riley's Box

Part 7

It was a voice that I recognised, of course, and one that belonged to none other than one of my closest friends- April Viridi. 

"Hey, Riles," she greeted me with warmth in her gaze. 

"Hey April. Are you alright?" I asked her. 

She sat down on the chair behind me and then her expression transformed into one of discontent. Her eyebrows furrowed and her ocean-blue eyes looked a little colder. 

"That's just the thing. I honestly don't know. I was on the way to school today, when I saw this strange black, shadowy thing out of the corner of my eye. Of course, it only lasted for a moment before it faded away completely. Otherwise, I would have got a good photo of it! Maybe. Maybe I wouldn't have been able to take a photo of it, anyway. It didn't seem...well, you're not going to believe this, Riley, but it didn't seem strictly human," she told me. 

It didn't seem human? 

What on earth was she actually going on about, here? 

Regardless of what I might have thought, I managed to smile kindly back at her. 

"I thought I would tell you, you see, because you're the approachable one," she said. 

That was true. I wasn't known as the school agony aunt for no reason. 

"Thinking about it," I started to say, before she could turn away from me, "I think I saw something similar yesterday afternoon," I finished. I then took a moment to consider what I had seen the previous afternoon- the weird shadowy figure that I had seen in my peripheral vision, on the corner of the block. 

"I knew I could talk to you about this!" April said, with a pleasantly surprised expression upon her face. "You're easier to talk to than anyone else would be. What do you think they are? Maybe we're being invaded," she said. 

If I hadn't been as kind a person as I was, then that would have been the moment I would have reached up to pinch the bridge of my nose. 

An invasion, April, seriously? 

"Hey, don't worry about it," I said caringly and a lot kinder than my mind was currently being. 

You couldn't cease belief until proven wrong, after all. Well, in this case, I supposed that I would being proven right, especially if these creatures that April and I had previously seen weren't, in fact, invaders. 

"Are you alright, April?" I asked her. 

"Maybe I need to take another trip to my psychiatrist. Maybe I'm hallucinating," she said. 

She had always occupied a flair for theatrics, so did this really take me by surprise? Not really, no. 

"I can understand that this must have taken you by alarm! Fear not, though, because super Riley is here to figure everything out," I said. 

I almost believed what I had told her. Almost, but not quite. 

April's lips made the smallest smile, then. 

"Really?" she asked me and wonder danced in her eyes. 

"Really," I replied. "After all, you're one of my best friends and I care about you. If something is bothering you, then it is simply my duty to figure out what it is!" I said. 

Her blue eyes flickered with appreciation, at that comment. 

"Thanks, Riley," she said. 

She was being so polite, especially for someone who claimed to have seen a possible invasion, but that was April- she was always a sweetheart. 

"You'll have to give me as good a description as you can later on, April, because then I'll be able to draw a sketch," I said. Just like a real detective. 

April nodded, while I glanced towards the teacher to silently communicate, 'you should probably pay attention, now'. 

She seemed to catch on to my silent communication because she then swivelled around in her seat to focus on the teacher again, who proceeded to give a lengthy ramble on Pride and Prejudice. 

When class eventually came to its end, April and I went to sit in the library for our free study period. 

"Okay, I have a bus to catch after this so...tell me what you saw," I said. 

April gave a quick nod again and then proceeded to describe what she had seen. 

Tall dark figure, sort of not completely there...

"Sort of not completely there? Like it was absent-minded or transparent?" I asked. 

April sighed. 

"I don't know...like a mist. It was weird, Riley! Like I said before," she said. 

Right, right. I supposed that made enough sense. 

With that thought in mind, I started to draw the figure- exactly as April had described. 

It wasn't too long after that it was time for me to leave to catch my bus. 

"We're going to have to talk more about this tomorrow," I said to her. 

"Right you are, Detective Riley," she said to me. 

I gave her a look. 

"I mean, if we're going to be solving a mystery, here, then we may as well have code names," she continued. 

I gave an understanding nod, this time around. I supposed that I couldn't argue with that logic, no matter how strange. 

"See you later," I said, with a kind smile. 

She waved me off and I then promptly rushed out to the bus stop and hopped onto it. 

What was going on? What were these strange shadowy creatures that we had been seeing? 

I thought about it for the entire journey home. 

When I had eventually got in through the front door, I went to sit myself in the living room in front of the television. 

Suffice to say, I was in need of some distracting. 

I wasn't entirely sure how effective the television was actually going to be, though, because the creatures, or what I could only describe as 'creatures' were still on my mind. 

After I had watched a few re-runs of Friends, I wandered into the kitchen and got started on some cupcake baking. 

Baking had always been one of my passions, after all, and it was a pretty good distraction from my racing thoughts.