How we broke

Letter 28

Hey Nate,

I opened the envelope and found 9 words written inside.

meet at Northhook Elementary at 7pm. don't be late.

I pulled the rest of the papers out and each contained a single word. I worked for 10 minutes until I solved the mismatched letters. They wrote;

Don't trust anyone. This means your life and if you don't follow it means you'll never have existed.

I had never been threatened in my life. I was tempted to show this to someone. Or anyone. That was the time I'd kill to have a mom or a dad. Instead I had a grandmother who died later that summer.

I decided to phone you. You picked up using the Instant Messaging app and you spoke first.

"Hello?" You said.

"Hey, Nathan? Did you open the letter?"

"Y-yes," You said your voice shaking. I was close to crying at this point. I started pacing around my room.

"Is this a mean prank? Nathan, is this real?!" I yelled at you. I was panicking. I was having a panic attack. I hadn't had one in years. I broke out into a nervous sweat.

"I'm not sure...I-I," You were obviously stressed. I noticed over the past week or two that when you were nervous you tugged on your hair. I tried to imagine you doing that to calm me down. When that didn't work, I tried to imagine my mom when I was 7, before she died because of that jerk- It didn't work. I just started panicking even more.

"N-nathan. Can I come over your house, or wherever you live?" I asked. I didn't want to be home alone. Especially without anyone else to back me up if a serial killer came in.

"Aria. W-we need to go t-to that place. W-w-what was it again? El-"

"NorthBrook, Nathan." I closed my eyes and clenched my free fist. I punched the wall and tried to calm my nerves.

"No, It's Northhook! I'm s-staring at the p-p-paper now. How could I f-f-forget?!" You were struggling with speech. I figured that you stuttered in your past. I began to loose my temper. 

"Nathan we can't go there. What If there's a serial killer there?!" I yelled. I ripped my phone away from my ear as an awful buzzing sound ejected from the small phone speakers. I cried out in pain and our call ended. The phone had fallen on the floor. The noise was still going even after I rushed to shut my phone off. The screen had cracked and it was still going. I could hardly see from the impact of the sound and I slowly slumped to my knees. I stared at the clock as I fell. I knew why I was falling. Possible dying even.

My clock said 7:01 PM.

I had spent so long figuring everything out, debating who to call, that I missed my time. I saw a shadow pass by my window. A dark shadow, probably the guy I was supposed to meet. He opened my window from the outside and stepped inside.

Your letter said to come at 9:00 PM. You had 2 hours to live, Nate. I was already dead.

Love,

Aria.