This Just In [ON HOLD]

4. Surprise Surprise {Lia}

The door opened and there she stood, the first of the many surprises I would have today. Charlotte Anne McKenzie. You must be thinking, hey, do you know her or something and yes I will tell you why I do know her or how I actually came to know her.

Looking at her, Charlotte, it brought back a lot of memories. Mostly awful memories I liked to keep stored up at the back of my mind. Never once had my mind drifted towards that section of my brain, simply because it was that horrible and well, dreadful enough that my mind knew to never ever let it resurface.

It was on that fateful morning on the first day of third grade. I was simply sitting on the swing-set and minding my own business, dreaming of my prince charming that was soon going to sweep me off my little feet with a packet of apple juice and crackers. I had quite a vivid imagination when I was young, one of the talents that helped me in my compositions that my teachers would ask me to write when I was younger.

Tired of staring at the endless blue sky that held clouds of various shapes, I glanced towards the sandbox that was littered with dirty, rusty toys left by careless children. My eyes looked to the side where a girl stood, with chocolate brown hair tied up into a tight ponytail, startling me with her sudden presence. She was wearing a pair of thick framed glasses, and had her hands placed on either sides of her body with her head tilting upwards, nose pointing in the air, reminding my of snooty girls from the Barbie shows I watched during weekends.

She gazed at me with a hazy smile and preceded to say the sentence that would unknowingly start the war between us, "that's MY spot."

The fact that I could actually still remember the memory of her first sentence just showed how she impacted my life, badly. The situation that happened the first time was one of the many times she stole my spots, my ideas and my crushes. What cruel person steals somebody's crush? It was clearly intentional, I thought, recalling the day in seventh grade when she did that. My thoughts were cut off when I realised that Charlotte was still staring at me, agape at the opened door, the melodies of bright jovial voices filtering into the room, nothing like the surprised, distasteful atmosphere we have in the room.

We continued staring at each other, her expression turning from surprise to a look of scorn as her confused stare turned into a glare. "We're roommates?" She questioned me, looking unsightly with the small frown that was slowly swallowing up her face.

I hoped I was remaining my composure; I surely wouldn't want to look like her. I stifled my laughter before answering her question politely as I didn't want my first day to be ruined by the simple sight of her, "yes. We're roommates. We actually have another roommate, if you didn't notice," I pointedly said, tilting my head towards the direction of the third bed, "you can choose your bed between those two that are still available," I continued, bracing myself for the soon to be following comment.

"Thank god, you chose the bed near the window," she smirked, "wouldn't want my complexion to turn out bad like," she carried her bags before carelessly pointing at me, "you."

I felt a spark of anger blazing through me before I looked at her face, mocking me with her soft features that were framed with thick-rimmed "hipster" glasses. "This is really sudden but it just occurred to me that I never knew why you hated me," I questioned aloud, making her turn her head back to me and look at me amusedly.

"Maybe you can find out soon, but don't act like a saint, acting all civilised and stuff. You've done horrible things to me, just like what I did to you and I," she raised her eyebrow, "at least can admit it." She then let a sharp bark of laughter and turned away, leaving me to continue packing up the mess that my clothes were, spewed around on my area of the floor.

While packing up my remaining stuff I glanced around the dorm and familiarised myself with the layout of the room, three single beds with brown desks blocking and splitting up the room into different sections that gave us our own entire comfort zone. Beside the door was a closet, which we all had to sadly share, with a huge mirror. Three shelves that were as tall as the ceiling itself was alongside it and opposite of the closet was the toilet that I had yet to venture into. I packed up everything and was soon emptying the last luggage while I organised my thoughts about the room. It was quite a spacious room and definitely big enough for three people and if the situation comes when we need snacks or drinks, we were able to head towards the common room, as I saw a small kitchen there when I walked past it. Now, were we allowed to go to the common room if we were hungry in the middle of the night? That's one question I had to ask the dorm monitor later, apart from her name, of course.