"Fifty. Two-Twenty. Two", I read to myself for the millionth time. I held the white piece of paper and locked my eyes on it once more.
My best friend Dani must have seen me from the back, because she snatched the note away from my hands. "What's this?" She asks teasingly.
"Hey, you might tear it!" I warned Dani, turning my head to see her. She giggled.
"Don't worry, I won't harm your little note", she replies. Her mahogany eyes stared blankly at the paper. I watched as her expression slowly dissolved into confusion.
But Dani didn't give back the note just yet. Her gaze was still on the note; her view lost into the deep.
I recalled walking into the crowded halls of Rowan Sydney Academy every morning before class started. I would hold the strap of my yellow backpack that hung on my right shoulder, making my way past the chatting groups and creeping zombies. Geniuses discussed about their intellectually advanced tasks, bottle-shaped princesses sashayed away from their "peasants", and aspiring musicians kept their instruments close to avoid losing them in the crowd.
I didn't carry anything that set me apart from the others. I was generic. Unfascinating, even. The only thing I find simply interesting about myself is my love for art. Although I knew that carrying a paintbrush or a huge canvas while walking through something that resembled a mosh pit wasn't ideal. I figured that if you wanted to look inside my world, you would have to turn my cover and look past my boring title.
And so far, a few people succeeded in doing that.
One was a young lady who looked like she escaped from a masterpiece in a local art gallery. She was slim and tall, with apricot-colored skin and silky black hair that fell on her shoulders. Dani. The first friend I made in this school. After we met, we decided to go to the cinema in the weekend to watch a movie. We would pick up a dumb quote from it and say it to each other for the rest of the week, until we see a new movie a week after. It soon became our little tradition.
This morning, I arrived to school twenty-seven minutes before school started. There was enough time to walk through the sea of people in the halls, like I do everyday. When I finally made it to the lockers, I unlocked the one with 23 embossed on the door. I grabbed my Literature textbook from a pile, when all of a sudden I spotted something.
There was a tiny slip of paper stuck in between the pages of my History book. I pulled it out and opened it, taking out the piece of paper. As I examined the slip, I realized that it was a note printed out from a computer onto a piece of white paper.
Fifty. Two-Twenty. Two.
I was rather shocked, and it was unclear to me why something like that would be in my locker. I had absolutely no idea what the numbers meant, let alone who sent it. All I could do was keep it inside my wallet and tell myself to worry about it later.
And that was when I resumed to what I was doing. I got my stuff, locked the door to my locker, and went to Ms. Levine's class for first-period Literature.
After what seemed to be forever, I looked back at Dani. She was still trying to process the note.
"Do you have any idea on what it means?" I ask her, hoping she would respond. And she did.
"Man, it would take a hired investigator to figure that out." She finally answers, handing back the note to me tiredly.
And that was the note that changed everything I thought I knew.
