Next-Door Neighbour

Chapter 31: Little Puppet.

Valentina.

I'm left with only one purpose in my life—to get into Harvard. And to do that I had to concentrate on getting better grades at school. What felt like an eternity was just one class of an hour, I had four more to go.

"Hey, Evan?" I call out to the guy in front of me.

"Me?" he asks surprised. I nod and he takes a step towards me hesitatingly.

"I was wondering if you could lend me your notes?" I fake a smile. Evan was one of the brightest students in our class, always on top of his assignments and he carried a notebook with him to every class taking notes.

"I can lend you my notes," Theo interrupts Evan when he is about to speak.

"Notes? Since, when did you start taking notes?" I ask surprised. Evan just stands there awkwardly clutching his notes that he fished from his bag just now.

"Since I got serious about going to Harvard." He shrugs. Do people do that? I take a mental note to carry a notepad next time, that is if I am ever paying attention to a single word the lecturer is saying. Recent incidents had taken away a lot of things from me, to list a few—my sleep, my will to study, my confidence and my concentration.

"Well, if you need anything else, do tell." Evan smiles, taking the cue he puts the book back in his bag.

"Sure," I tell Evan before he gets back to his friends.

Theo walks with me to my locker while people shoot mean stares at us. People are going to start talking about us, and there will be rumours about us tomorrow, but I hardly care about it anymore.

"So, Harvard huh?" I ask him.

He scratches the back of his neck and smiles. "Yeah,"

"Doesn't being so good at football help with getting into colleges?"

"It does," He nods, there is something about him that I always liked. "Are you afraid of competition, Gomez?" I look at his lips when my last name rolls off his tongue. When I look up, he is staring at mine too.

I pull myself together before my mind tricks me with thoughts of him. "I doubt that,"

We reach my locker, but he doesn't take his eyes off me. For a moment there I think, is there something between us that I'm failing to notice?

"That's me," I point at my locker, smiling.

"See you around?" he asks. I nod and turn to punch in the code. The lock clicks and the door opens, I grab books from my bag and stack them in the locker. Something catches my eye when I reach for the lipstick kept in the corner, stuck in the edges of the locker door is a blue note.

'ABANDONED PARK BEHIND THE SCHOOL. 4 PM.' It reads. Goosebumps dot my skin. Could Caleb have left it there? Even after what happened in the morning?

I put the note carefully inside my bag and plug in my earphones. I promised to protect them, I promised to stay away but I don't think I can keep that promise. With every step I took, I kept replaying all the things Caleb said to me.

                                                                                   ***

The crunching of twigs and dry leaves beneath my feet were the only noises as I entered the park through the back gate. It was late afternoon, but the park gave creepy vibes. I don't have my earphones plugged in; my ears are on full alert for any noises. I may have been wrong this whole time, maybe the note wasn't from Caleb. Maybe someone was messing with me.