My hallway encounter made me joyful after an atrocious experience, one that was not delightful in the slightest. I headed out of my second-to-last class and darted down the hallway carrying my last few books and extra pencils. My blue pencil case with a white stripe across was wobbling from side-to-side as it sat upright against me. I made my way down the hall and into another classroom, one that is realistically there in present day every day, but mentally from the Aztecs and every time period before B.C.E. Still, it's not as abnormally disturbing as it could very much be. Well, other than the boys in the corner table doing all they can to mess up anyone's day or afternoon. Anything and everything in that class was just there, nothing special. The teacher was pretty basic and had nothing special to him. He had slick black hair that was pumped up a little in the front to give it some volume, black glasses, and facial hair that was too visible, yet, invisible to call a beard. He had a white button up, beige khakis, laced, brownish caramel colored, fancy shoes, and dress socks lined up to get the perfect fit on the ankle and a little over. He sipped his coffee in his basic white mug with some lettering on it, his young but wrinkled face focused intently on the doorway.
He was always on caffeine, the guy was in his twenties and obsessed with Greek Mythology, everything made sense. A basic dude who likes Greek Mythology, nothing more. At this point, I don't even know what kind of class he is running, he projects things on the board, claps his hands a lot, but only makes mediocre noises. His hands are usually against his face, and he does teach, he just doesn't make it memorable enough to talk about.
I sat in my seat and pulled out my blue ballpoint pen, basic class, basic tools, basic teens.
He started teaching about the ancient times in Rome, but then trotted off and began explaining every detail about Daphne and Apollo as one of his conversations quickly turned into a mythology rant. I was writing down random things in my notebook and randomly wrote down Noelle's name. I stared at it for a little bit and drew some stars around it, making a nice little named image. I didn't think much of it until Mr. Luken said the word, "mystery".
He was talking about Aristotle uncovering the mysteries of his time, but I took it a different way. I instantly thought of every bad thing that has happened to me and how it had only been a few weeks since I was last in the hospital. I wanted to find out how it was happening and why. That was my mystery, and I was planning on solving it. My leg was bouncing up against the dark grayish blue carpeted floors that smelled like a fresh basement. I tapped on my desk as my pencil top was hung against my lip and I started to nibble on the metallic part of the eraser holder. I brought it down to the blue lined notebook paper and noticed the scuffed up holes on the side of it. I played around with the pencil, made some swirly lines, and looked at the shapes they made in between. Cursive looking fonts, squiggly, messed up lines, and gray graphite smeared amongst the page.
The smear was in the same direction as the water that splashed along the bathroom mirror and right next to me in the horrid situation, the first time anything had happened. Everything was ringing in my head, his teaching, kids talking, pencils being clanged against desks, erasers against the page, the squeaking of colored pencils, "One week..." he said. It all rang inside my head until I just felt my head hurt so bad that I thought it just exploded.
Everything ringing in my head stopped, the noise, the voices, the sounds. It played again, "One week..." it said. "One week..." once more.
"One week," I said in a whisper.
One week.
It had been exactly one week in between my events, the first one, one week later, a second. It all happened days after I had the gut feeling of something wrong. Had I predicted it? Did I know my own fate? If so, why didn't I get hurt once again a few days ago, six days ago. It had almost been a full two weeks and nothing had happened to me except regular school encounters. What was going on? Was something going to happen and I would pay the price for two weeks of it? My heart started pumping fast...it jumped.
I jumped up.
His voice startling me like no other, "Prixley, is there something you would like to say about our wonderful historical god, Apollo?"
I stopped and thought about it, "he was a wonderful man of the stars." I responded, thinking on my feet and raising my eyebrows in fake amusement. I continued to fiddle with my ballpoint pen that was practically moving back and forth at the speed of light.
"Well, not exactly. Apollo was not limited to just the sun and light, however he was a god of it...not to be confused with the original Sun God, Helios. Apollo was practically the god of almost anything you can think of!"
I rose my eyebrows and dove my attention back towards my notebook with swirls and twists with loops all scribbled over the top. I smiled at my paper and thought about how I was going to put all of this down on paper and tell Noelle every little detail.
~~~
I fast walked with firm footsteps over to where Noelle would be working during study hall and smashed all of my books onto her table. She continued typing her sentence and slowly finished, then stopped to look at the books piled upon her once bare wooden desk. She turned to me in her chair, glanced at the books giving them a glaring side eye, and turned towards me with no change in her facial expression.
She had an "...and what's this for?...and what do you want to do with it?" look on her face. I had a small scrunched up smile as I teetered back and forth waiting for her to say something. I looked at the books and glanced back at her. I always slam my stuff on her desk or any nearby working area when something is important, she does the same for me, it's like our 'thing', a way of gaining each other's attention. Even when that means making the loudest noise in the library.
I grabbed my orange notebook and flipped open to one of the only pages without meaningless things drawn all over it. The page had notes scribbled and bullet points marked, all the ones from History class and more that I managed to throw together in my free time. I flung it open to her as the metal slid across the glossed over wood.
She picked it up and looked it over, she analyzed it and read every little detail, "so, you think this goes deeper?" She asked, confirming my thoughts.
"A lot, deeper." I replied.
Noelle continued looking through the notebook and I explained further, "It's not a coincidence all of this is happening, there has to be some significance." I suggested, hands making out more words than I can even say.
"I don't know, Prixx. You've been doing fine the past few weeks, I don't want to ruin it by digging down deeper."
"We won't ruin it," I shut the notebook closed and slid it back under my hands before bringing them back up to accentuate my point. "We'll get more answers and stop asking questions because we'll know just how simple or absurd this stuff really is." I replied in hopes she'd agree with me.
She took a deep breath and then sighed with a small laugh, meet me at my house at four o'clock.
I smiled and grabbed my notebook from her offering hands, "See you, then!"
YOU ARE READING
C.R.E.W
Mistério / Suspense"Prixley Ereya" Morgan is a 7th grade student who goes to Chestville Jr High. She's the rebel of the school, some might even say prankster. One day after getting home from school, she notices on the news, it says, "Missing Children," specifically in...
