Game of Fates

Chapter II

I had never felt so uncomfortable thinking about Pip, given the circumstances. Pip Hawthorne was the younger of two identical twins, the other being named Amy. Apart from their voice, there was absolutely no way anyone could naturally distinguish between them with absolute certainty. They're pretty similar when it comes to personality and hobbies, too. How we discerned them apart is simple, though: Pip always had a pair of thin, long-sleeved, red, fingerless gloves on, even when playing sports, and she often wore yet another pair of gloves on in cold winter days. Amy, on the other hand, wasn't as quirky. She preferred simplicity over anything else.

I was sitting in the dorm lounge that bright winter morning, waiting for others to come. It was almost ten o'clock.

Our dormitory complex here in Blackwood Academy was, ironically, quite simply built and structured: It had three floors, with the first being a lounge, dining hall, and other recreational stuff, and the top two for the actual dorm rooms. The girls' rooms were on the east wing, and the boys' were on the west, with the only thing in the centre being staircases and the dining hall.

"Hey," greeted Lillian, walking over and sitting next to me on the couch. "Do you know anything about this? Do you know if it's true?"

"About what?" I replied.

"This," she answered, pulling out her smartphone. Like me, she also managed to get FATE installed by Juliet, somehow, which I expected, considering there's a group chat for the entire class here.

"I have it too," I stated, opening FATE. "Did Juliet send you an email?"

"She did, actually," said Lillian. "God, it's just... How'd that happen?"

"I don't know either," I replied. "What did your email say?"

"Huh?" she gasped, facing away from me, holding her chin with her left arm which was rested promptly on the sofa's arm. "Here. You can read it," she continued, passing me her smartphone.

"[THIS MESSAGE IS PROGRAMMED TO DISPLAY AS SOON AS JULIET WEISS' HEART STOPS BEATING.]

Hello, Lillian Green.

I'll just say, though this isn't too important: It baffles me how thick the line is between fools and the wise. Fools are always so sure of themselves, but the wise can only doubt until the last minute.

Please promise me that you'll keep a close eye on four of us still left standing - by that I mean you, Ava, Angel, and Pip. If anything happens to them, reply to this email with their name and what happened.

By the way, if you open the menu, you can type in a code. Type JALAPENO to enter the class group chat. Thanks."

Then I scrolled down to the replies, especially since I knew Ava was visiting relatives in the UK. As expected, about an hour ago she replied with "Ava - Visiting relatives in Britain", but the bot didn't respond.

"You?" asked Lillian, fixing herself into a slouching position. "What did you get in your email?"

"It was pretty weird, and much shorter. Telling me to make sure that Pip specifically was safe and nothing happened to her, but then she was also mentioning stuff about hoping she'd see Ava in heaven, things like that," I said. Then I open my FATE. "Just see for yourself-"

I was interrupted by that one goofball girl in class who would always get caught up in relationship issues, love triangles, and other drama with the boys. Her name was Katie Ashworth: Legitimately diligent and useful when you need her, but only a thing for entertainment once you bring up anything relating to boys.

Katie was on the stairs walking down towards us. As soon as she traipsed off the last step, Lillian spoke up, asking about FATE and Juliet's emails.

"Yeah, I saw that on my phone earlier," Katie answered, inserting her entire hand into the side pocket of her jeans. "I tried deleting it, but it didn't work. I didn't get any email from anyone, though, and I don't have any clue as to what I'm actually supposed to be doing with this thing. Do you think it could be a virus?"

"You're roommates with Juliet, aren't you?" continued Lillian. "You... You do know what happened... right?"

"Honestly, I could care less. I mean, I can't really bother with roommates once you find out Ed - a guy, for fuck's sake - is actually interested in your boyfriend-"

"Really?"

I was kind of disgusted at first. Katie didn't seem to mind the fact that her roommate was dead, of all things. I mean... How could she...? I then began to realize that perhaps she was like us, trying to deny it all.

"Let's just deal with this crap once Ava comes back from London or whatever," I suggested. "I mean, both Lillian and I had mentions of Ava in the emails we got, so of course she's involved in all of this-"

"Okay, first of all, I don't know what emails you're talking about, but I only know about FATE," Katie interrupted.

"You sure?" responded Lillian. Either Katie really didn't receive an email, which I thought to be weird and highly unlikely, or this kid's lying about what really happened. Maybe her email said something like, "Nobody should know about what I said in this email", though if I were her I would just speak up about it.

"Yeah, I didn't receive anything," she repeated. "I'm meeting up with Brett in the dining hall. We can talk later about this shit, around dinner I'd say."

"Shouldn't we call the police first?" I brought up.

"I tried calling earlier today," said Lillian. "No signal, for some reason. I figure we should try again later." No signal?

I pulled out my phone again, and tried calling up the police. Sure enough, what Lillian said was true.

"I want to cry, but..." hesitated Lillian. "I'm just bothered. Why'd Juliet put all this effort to install some app to announce 'Hi, I'm dead' and then insert instructions? It doesn't make sense..."

"Again, I think it's best we should talk about this later with everyone else," said Katie.

We stopped there.