Two Can Play At That Game

15.

 Brooklyn hid in her room for the rest of the holiday break. She spent the majority of her time with her phone turned off and the covers on.

School started immediately and the rest of RPC came back, bustling with the excitement of their vacations and the news of Diana's disappearance.

At breakfast, the first morning back, a gaggle of freshmen slowly made their way to Brooklyn's usual table.

"Um, so is it true?" the one who Brooklyn singled out as the leader asked. She had braces and seriously needed to take a trip to the dermatologist.

Brooklyn kept quiet, hoping that if she ignored the freshmen they would go away. She focused on her parfait, mixing everything together. She felt Elena tense up. "What do you mean?" Elena asked, sounding annoyed.

The freshmen recoiled slightly, but clearly Elena's tone wasn't enough to scare them. "About Diana? The other girl from Windsor. We heard she got kidnapped by a drug lord, also known as your people."

Elena gripped the table to hard, her knuckles turned solid white. Her face turned bright red, similar to the uneaten strawberries on her plate. "I'm going to give you less than three seconds to get out of my sight before I rip those hideous braces off your teeth," she growled.

The freshmen girls scrambled away. Under normal circumstances, Brooklyn would've laughed and plotted some way to make the freshmen pay for their rudeness. But Brooklyn swore that her revenge days were over, and she was too stressed out to even focus on how angry Elena was.

Serena let out a sigh and looked around at everybody. "I think I'm going to head out early," she announced, gathering her stuff and leaving.

Everybody followed in her lead, except for Brooklyn. She stayed put, staring at her parfait like perhaps it had the answers to her question.

Eventually, she got up and threw her stuff away, but instead of heading to class, Brooklyn made a beeline to the nurse and lied saying she was sick. The nurse took one look at her and believed her fib.

Brooklyn headed back to Windsor and opened Diana's room, a place she hadn't dared entered since that night. As far as she knew, nobody else had gone inside either.

The room had the same layout as everyone else's. Big, spacious, with two large windows on opposite sides. The walls were a warm cream color, with matching sheer curtains. A few articles of clothing were strewn on the floor, along with bits of makeup and wrappers. Diana's room was the only single in the dorm. The girls preferred rooming with each other. 

Walking inside, the familiar lavender scent of Diana slapped her in the face. She felt like she was right there back at Hadley's farm, watching Diana get humiliated by her friends.

Going to the closet, she opened the double-doors and prepared to see the worst. But it was just a normal closet, filled with clothes. Brooklyn narrowed her eyes as she recognized a few of her own things in there. She bent down and spotted something shiny behind the shoe rack. Moving the rack out of the way, Brooklyn pulled the shiny thing out and into the light. It was a simple red cardboard box, with glitter sprinkled on the lid.

Carefully pulling the top off, Brooklyn prepared for something to pop into her face. She was surprised when all that was in there were small sticky notes and various folded up pieces of paper.

Brooklyn opened one of the folded pieces up, her fingers shaking so bad that it took her a few moments.

You look beautiful today, xx

Furrowing her brows together, Brooklyn dropped the paper she was holding next to her and reached in for the next one.

I miss you so much. I know we just had class together, but it drives me crazy that I can't be near you and touch you. Xx