Letters to Romeo

As the birds chirped outside her room, Julie turned in her bed, facing the window where the rays of sunlight peeked from the cracks of the two curtains.

Sitting up on her bed, she noticed the curtains waver because of the wind passing inside through the gap of the window. Like many other nights, Julie had not kept the windows open. But when she pushed the curtain aside, she saw the window was left ajar. At the side was a white envelope that sat against the blurry window.

It was addressed as—'To the troublemaker.'

Julie wondered if this was a new sender, but at the same time, only one person had been sending her letters without any middleman.

On second thought, it wasn't her but this person who had put her in trouble last night because of the letter. One letter and it had ended up with her getting another detention, thought Julie to herself. She wondered what this person had to say and she pulled out the letter from the envelope before reading it.

'Word has reached to my ears that you broke another rule. Walking outside in the night past the curfew time, you must be eager to go to the detention room. You will be breaking records at this rate compared to the other new students who are being more compliant. What were you doing in the forest last night?

Leave your answer next to the window. And don't bother by turning yourself into a watchman to see who I am.'

Julie turned worried by thinking who could open the lock of her window and place the letter. From being a university for delinquents, she also believed that some of the students here had insane minds. One had opened her window, and some others had been eager to beat her up with a baseball bat. Stuck up arrogant students was something she understood because some people who belonged to wealthy families believed they were entitled to everything.

But this wasn't normal.

The envelope was placed here when she was sleeping. And right now, it felt like a movie where a serial killer was watching her closely. She wondered what to do.

Without bothering to write back to the letter, Julie locked the window before getting ready and leaving her dorm. She made her way to the main office building. Entering the office, Julie walked to where the woman sat behind the counter.

"Hi, good morning, Mrs. Hill," Julie greeted the woman. "I had a favour to ask from you."

"If this is about the phone call, I have already told you that this is for office use only," replied the woman, giving her a pointed look.

"No, it isn't about that," replied Julie. Somewhere she did hope that Mrs. Hill could allow her to use the telephone. Coming back to the reason why she was here, she said, "I wanted to check with you if there are any other spare rooms in the dormitory that I could switch to."

"No," responded Mrs. Hills. That was quick, thought Julie to herself, but she didn't give up.

"I don't mind moving to next dormitorium building either or if someone wants to swap-"

"You cannot do that, dear. First of all, that was the last available room in the entire girls dormitorium. Secondly, the room has been allotted in your name for weeks now and even if I do send it for approval it will take more than two months of time," explained Mrs. Hill.

"Months?" asked Julie. That was too long. She was hoping to change her room by this week, or even next would have been great.

"That's right. There are a lot of procedures to be done before we allot rooms to the students. You should go and attend your classes now, lest you want to miss them," said the woman behind the counter, and she went back to drinking her strawberry milkshake.

Julie sighed, unhappy with the response she got. She only wanted a room with better locks on the windows. Turning around, she stepped out of the room, making her way towards the Blue block.

While she walked towards the gates, she met Eleanor, who stepped in front of her with a glare.

"I wasn't expecting to see you this soon, Eleanor," Julie dully greeted. Before she could get away from there, the other three girls appeared. "And hello to you too."

"Where are they?" demanded Eleanor.

"What?" asked Julie, confused, not knowing what exactly Eleanor was asking about.

"Our baseball bats. Give it back to us," demanded Eleanor while placing one hand over her waist.

Julie stared at the girls, wondering if they were seriously asking her about the weapon that they tried to use on her. She said, "I have no interest in collecting souvenirs like those. You were the ones holding them. Chasing me with it and not me. Who knows you must have dropped them and for the record, you owe me a flashlight."

Eleanor huffed, "Do you think we are going to fall for it? We were talking in the forest yesterday and we didn't chase you. When we reached our dorms, we didn't have them."

What was this psycho ghost talking about? She and her friends were chasing her all around the forest, driving them to the restricted area of the forest.

"I don't have your bats. Now," Julie took a step back and said, "I don't know about you girls but I have classes to attend." She walked past the girls and walked through the open gates.

Julie speedily walked so that the girls wouldn't catch up to her while also noticing some of the girls look at her. Having so many eyes on her made her feel squeamish and clumsy. But as she continued to walk up the stairs, she caught sight of Roman at the above floor, leaning towards the railings with his back bent forward, watching her.

As usual, he was chewing gum, and Julie found it strange how the teachers didn't give him detention every day, or maybe he did attend the detention room daily for breaking at least one rule. Not to forget, she had seen him with his motorcycle at the front of the main office.

He stared at her, and Julie stared right back at him, her eyes curious while wondering what he was doing standing on a tree. She continued to climb up the stairs, not realizing someone else was descending the stairs, and she crashed right into someone.

The corner of Roman's lips pulled up, and he heard one of his friends call his name.

Julie quickly apologized to the person she had collided into. It was a boy, and by the looks of it, she guessed she had run into another senior. He had sandy blonde hair, and he wore glasses.

"I am so sorry," she apologized and quickly climbed the remaining stairs. She quickly took a look at the railings where Roman was earlier standing, but he had disappeared.

When she reached her classroom, she caught sight of Melanie and walked to her seat.

"I got your note at my door. Where did you go?" questioned Melanie.

"I went to visit the main office. Also, I won't be able to join you in the library in the evening. I have a detention to serve," whispered Julie, placing her bag down and next to her desk.

"Huh? When did you get detention?"

"Last night with Eleanor," replied Julie, wanting to scratch that girl's and her friend's face. "Is there any counsellor here with whom I can speak?"

"There is one, in the left wing. Did the girls threaten you? You should have woken me up," asked her friend in concern, and Julie offered her a smile. Melanie was a sweet girl, and from what she knew, in the entire time of Melanie's time in here, she had landed in the detention room only twice, while here she was, breaking the rules one after another.

Julie was going to tell Melanie about what happened last night, but she didn't forget how one of the teachers had told them not to speak about what happened in the forest. If she told anything to Melanie, she would be breaking rule number two again.

"No, not much. We just ran a lot," said Julie, which was true. She was used to running, so much that she didn't know it would come in handy yesterday. "But I did break my flashlight. When I go out this coming Sunday, I will need to buy a new one. By the way...is baseball one of the sports here?" she asked Melanie.

Melanie shook her head before answering, "Not at all. We have football and basketball, but no baseball. Why?"

"I was just curious," replied Julie, while wondering why Eleanor had demanded from her to return the bats that she didn't have. The level of bullying went too much in here. She decided to talk about it with the university counsellor.

Before the time of detention, Julie decided to make a short stop at the counsellor's office. But when she saw the door open, out stepped one student and with the student stepped out the counsellor. Julie's eyes went wide, and she quickly turned and started to walk away from there.

The counsellor was the same person who had told her and the other girls to not speak about their time in the forest.