Don't tell me bye bye (mystery/ thriller)

Chapter 7

I spent most of the night lying in bed calculating how many hours sleep I would get if I could just miraculously stop worrying about my first day of school and drop off. It was 4.37am at my last calculation, leaving me with just under two hours.

Jin made me have some breakfast, which I could hardly swallow, even with Teddy as my role model, milk and cereal dripping down his chin. I refused to arrive at my new school with mum, which she was surprisingly understanding about, but she covered me with kisses and held my head firmly between her hands as she made me promise to find her if anything was wrong.

I declined Jin's offer to drive me and walked in on my own, the churning clouds mirroring the feeling in my stomach, and arrived at the gates of Seoul Academy. I flushed as I nodded at mum's new colleagues in the reception office, then did the only thing I could think to do on my first day amongst established cliques hugging and high fiving; I hid in the toilets. I've been sitting in this lonely cubicle, listening to gossip and giggling coming and going for the last ten minutes, my pathetic breakfast threatening to reappear as I wait for the bell for registration.

"Hello?" A voice floats over the cubicles. "Y/n? You hiding in here?"

My heart stops high up in my neck, almost choking me. Who the hell could that be? Footsteps make their way along the cubicles, each of their doors swinging open and closed again. I double check that the lock on my door works.

The footsteps stop outside my cubicle, and I hold my breath. The door strains against the lock and the voice tries again.

"Y/n? You in there?"

Seconds pass as I hold myself still, praying that whoever it is will decide it's not me and move on, then I hear the voice again, this time from overhead.

"What the hell are you doing? It's freezing in here." I look up, Rose's long dark hair hanging over the side of the cubicle as she peers down at me. "Are you planning on hiding in here all day?"

"No." I shake my head. "Maybe just until lunchtime?"

"Open the door and come out, you loser." She smiles as she says the words and I do as she says. She hops down from the toilet seat and joins me in front of the sinks. "See, not so bad out here, hey?"

I shrug. I was feeling quite comfortable in my little hidey hole, actually. Rose looks in the mirror and grimaces, at what I have no idea. She's absolutely gorgeous. She throws her bag on the sink and hunts around inside it, finally pulling out a brush and starts brushing her hair.

"Nervous for your first day?" She takes a hairband off her wrist and grips it between her teeth. "I was too, I was seriously bricking it, but once it's done, it's done," she says, pulling her hair back into a ponytail.

"I'm not nervous," I snap at her. "I just don't feel like socialising."

"Okaaaaay, if you say so, but this is exactly where I hid on my first day as well. That's how I knew you'd be in here." Rose freezes, her eyes widen and her head whips around towards the door of the toilets, almost taking my eye out with her pony tail. "Oh God, is that-?"

The door opens a fraction, a manicured hand holding it steady as someone finishes a conversation about a TV show with whoever she is parting with in the corridor. Before I can ask Rose who she's talking about, she grabs her bag and darts into one of the cubicles, locking it behind her.

The door opens and in walks the person Rose is hiding from. She looks at me and if we were in a comic I think death rays would shoot from her eyes.

"You!" She flies at me, stopping right in front of me so our noses are practically touching, then looks around. "Who were you just talking to?"

'Excuse me?" I say, folding my arms in attempt to look like I'm not afraid of her but also to protect my body. "Who the hell are you?'