Glittering stars painted the dark night sky; the moon giving the campus sidewalks a bright glow. Walking in the distance is a blonde girl wearing a red leather jacket, a phone held to her ear; Emma. Upon hearing heavy footsteps close behind her, quickening with each stride, she whirls around with the phone still clutched to her ear. Her long blonde hair blowing in the gentle wind, flowing across her face that now held a deep scowl with furrowed brows.
"What are you following me now? What part of leave me alone don't you understand?" She snaps at the person.
A hooded figure stands before her, strands of brown hair falling out of their hoodie. No face can be seen. Only a silhouette. They're completely silent.
Emma rolls her eyes. "Look I don't have time for this. You have an issue with me? Cool. The feeling is mutual. But you creeping on me won't do any-" She pauses, seemingly listening to the person on the phone. "What?"
Slowly, the person standing before her pulls out the weapon hidden beneath their sweatshirt and Emma visibly pales. The person starts advancing toward her and she backs up, hands up in surrender.
"This won't fix anything." Emma attempts to reason.
Suddenly the vision skips. A panic stricken Emma is looking at something with wide eyes. "Stop!"
A large hunter's knife slashes deep across her chest, cutting off any further words.
My hand jerks out of Emma's gentle grasp, eliciting confused eyes from her. For a moment I'm so stunned that I find myself blinking rapidly, unable to believe what I just saw. Of all my years of watching the deaths of others through my own eyes, I've never witnessed someone actually get murdered. It left an unsettling feeling burrowed deep within my gut that there's a murderer in our midst.
"Regina? Are you okay?"
I force my eyes to focus on Emma; sweet, innocent Emma. How could anyone want to harm her? My lips part to speak and that's when I realize I'm trembling. Fearing that my voice may betray me, I let out a small and almost inaudible "Excuse me." before moving past her. I just wanted to go back to my dorm, sleep this off, and hope to never bump into Emma again.
I scan the mass amount of people for Kathryn, to tell her that I suddenly feel sick and needed to go to bed which isn't a total lie if you think about it. It wasn't too hard to find her; standing atop of a stool swaying to the beat of the music with closed eyes, no shoes and a red cup in her hand. I'm not even sure if she's drunk or just being herself.
"Kathryn." I call once I'm standing directly in front her.
Blue eyes blink open, casting down on me. A bright smile instantly forms on her face. "Heeeyy, baby roomie."
Drunk. Definitely drunk. How she managed to get drunk so fast, I have no idea. "Okay. I think it's time to go back to our dorm. Where are your shoes?"
Kathryn glances down at her feet then pouts at me. "I don't know." She scratches her head while scanning the room. "I can't remember..." Her sentence trails off and I'm sure it's because she lost her train of thought.
For a moment, I consider leaving her to figure it out by herself because I don't have time for this and, frankly, we're not friends. But if the roles were reversed, would she leave me? With a small groan, I roll my eyes and start searching for her shoes which happens to be right next to the stool she's standing on. "Look, your shoes are right there."
Being the drunk person she is, Kathryn attempts to lean down and pick up the shoes while on the stool. The result is that she loses her balances, forcing me to catch her.
"Not again." I sigh right before there's a flash of white.
In a pure white room, rectangular windows shining in an abundance of sunlight, lay a woman on a hospital bed. Thin, faded blonde hair sprawled out against the pillows, tubes sticking out of both nostrils to help her take in slow, even breaths. Her wrinkled eyelids were closed and her thin body remained still underneath the sheet placed halfway on her.
Seated in a chair next to her is an elderly man, deep brown eyes and near white hair. Both of his hands are enclosed around one of her's and they are placed near his lips, tears slipping out of his eyes as he watches her.
"Kathryn," He begins, his voice strong yet quivering. "I don't know if you can still hear me, baby but...I just want you to know how much I love you. God I love you so much." He whispers the last part just as the monitor voicing her heartbeat flat lines.
"Goodbye my love."
I draw in a deep, shuddering breath.
"Oh my goodness, you total just saved my face from being destroyed by the floor." Kathryn's holding onto both of my arms, laughing at her own mistake. She then pulls me into a lazy hug, the kind where she leans her entire body weight on me and I have to hug back or else she'll slip to the floor. "Thank you, roomie. I'm so so glad your my roommate, Regina."
Perhaps befriending Kathryn will be good for me in the long run. And I find myself smiling, despite the smell of liquor wafting off of Kathryn and burning my eyes, because there's now someone in my life that's not exiting anytime soon. "Yeah. Me too, Kathryn."
First day of classes and I'm already catching myself dozing off during a lesson. Not really my fault. Kathryn kept me up majority of the night asking me random questions until she finally passed out. What's really keeping me awake, besides the fear of being caught sleeping in class, is the vision of Emma I had the night before. My mind refused to let me erase the image of her getting sliced open. I wince at the thought of it. With over a hundred students in this university, it's going to be impossible to even make a guess at who her murder might be. Unless I become friends with her.
Don't interfere.
I blink the thoughts out of my head. Not my problem. Once class is dismissed, I gather my books and head outside. To my surprise, I find Kathryn leaning on a nearby wall languidly chewing gum and wearing sunglasses.
"Hey, roomie." Kathryn pushes herself off the wall to walk beside me. "How was your first big girl class?" She questions playfully.
"Painfully slow. How's your big girl headache?"
"Painfully painful." Through her shades she squints, scrunching up her nose at the bright Sun. "An eclipse would be so great right now. Oh, almost forgot, I'm totally sorry if I kept you up last night. I didn't expect to get drunk so fast but don't worry I'm not an alcoholic or anything."
"Liar." Came from behind us, capturing both of our attention enough to make us turn to look. A young man with a boyish smile and side swept brown hair wrapped his arm around Kathryn's neck to pull her closer. He appeared oddly familiar. After a quick study, it hit me. He's the old man in the vision.
Practically beaming up at him, Kathryn playfully hit him in the chest. "Shut up. Regina this is Frederick, my high school honey. Frederick this is Regina, my new roommate." High school? They're basically soulmates and they don't even know it.
"Pleasure to meet you." He stuck his hand out in greeting only for Kathryn to smack it away, saving me the trouble of lying to him.
"She doesn't like shaking hands with people ergo don't touch her." Kathryn winks at me. "I got your back, roomie."
I muster a smile. "It's nice to meet you too."
"Babe, no offense, but you're ruining my apology to Regina. I was just about to give her a tour of the university to make up ruining her first night."
"Oh no, you really don't have to." I interject, shaking my head at the offer. Though it would be extremely beneficial, I prefer for Kathryn not to feel like she has to be my babysitter.
"You sure? This place is pretty big."
"I think I'll manage. Go hang out with your high school honey."
"I like her." Frederick grins and Kathryn rolls her eyes at him but a smile still spreads her lips. Hopelessly in love, that's what she is.
After waving goodbye and parting ways, I stand still momentarily and use my hand as a shade to scan the campus. This might be harder than I thought. Too many students and too much ground to walk. Where do I even start? Dropping my hand to my side with a small scowl, I whirl around and almost immediately slam into another person sending my books flying out of my grasp and onto the concrete.
"Shit." The person swears, bending down to pick up my books before I can myself. That's when I see a head full of straight, blonde hair and this is just what I didn't need today. Emma bounces back up to hand me my books with this lazy, side smile on her face. "I'm really sorry. I was kind of already standing behind you, not in a creepy stalker way, but I didn't know how to approach you and when I was about to you turned around."
"That's fine. Bye." Dismiss the conversation. Walk away. I tried to do exactly that but a small "Regina, wait" stopped me right in my tracks. I squeeze my eyes shut and exhale deeply through my nose to collect myself before turning around to face her with a raised eyebrow.
"I'm actually really glad I bumped into you, quite literally if I may add," Emma laughed at her own joke then quickly stopped and cleared her throat when she realized I'm not smiling. Not that the small joke wasn't funny, it's just that I'm more of a person who laughs on the inside. "I wanted to talk to you about what happened last night and how sorry I am."
At that my brows furrow downward in confusion. "What?" My memory scans the events of yesterday night coming up with nothing for Emma to apologize for. If anything, she was a complete sweetheart and thinking about that only makes me feel worse for attempting to dodge her.
"Yeah," Emma puts on a false smile to mask the grimace on her face, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly. I notice that she's not making direct eye contact with me. Apparently she's embarrassed about something. "I obviously crossed a boundary last night and made you uncomfortable which is why you walked away so fast. Even if it was unintentional, I still caused you discomfort and I'm so sorry. I'll understand completely if you never want to speak to me again."
Oh. Although I'm sure I didn't physically express it, I'm shocked. Emma didn't play it off as me being weird, which most people would've done-which most people have done, she placed the blame on herself. Leading me back to the question: How could anyone want to harm her? I've never met someone who genuinely considered the feelings of another, especially me, so much. Now I'm stuck between making a decision. Emma's basically giving me a free pass to never speak to her again which is not necessarily something I want, more of something I need to protect myself. But with that pass comes a lie, a lie that's seemingly having an effect on her. She spared my feelings and I'm planning on not doing the same in return?
Maybe I don't have to lie. Maybe I can tell the truth and then keep avoiding her, I mean this is a big campus how many times am I likely to bump into her again? "You didn't make me uncomfortable, Emma." I state softly.
"Really? You're not just saying that to make me feel better are you?" Her big, bright eyes are gleaming with hope.
I chuckle lowly. "Trust me, if you made me uncomfortable I would've told you during the first 10 seconds of our conversation."
Emma breathed a huge sigh of relief, positioning her palm over her heart and grinning. "Thank god. I was so scared that you thought I was a complete creep."
I merely shook my head in response, looking her over. I've come to notice that not only do I have a thing for her eyes but for her smile also. The way it curves one side of her mouth and how she tilts her head slightly to the side to match it.
"So, Regina, do you need any help finding your way around campus?"
Limit your interactions. "Um, I think I got it." I answered hesitatingly, looking in each direction to pinpoint where I could start walking.
Emma replies with a small "Okay"and a smile that she tries to hide by puckering her lips. My eyes narrow in suspicion but I choose not to comment, instead I turn and walk away. After the first few steps toward the center of the campus I realize just how crowded and big everything is so I stop in my tracks to make an observation. It'll take me hours to figure out where everything is. Now I know why Emma had that look on her face. I close my eyes and shake my head, a small smile playing on my lips. I'm not sure whether I should be annoyed or amused by her personality.
When I turn back around and make my way towards her, she has a full blown grin on her face. "Got lost?"
"You be quiet," I point my index finger at her. "And just show me around."
Emma laughs then bows. "Right away, your majesty. You see what I did there? Because your name means queen? Isn't that clever?"
I roll my eyes but I catch myself wanting to smile. The same question still lingering in my mind: How could anyone want to harm her?
