Veronica I've been told that I'm not a people person, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad when you're a reporter. Sometimes the fact you desire isolation to pick up the pieces of a never-ending mystery can lead to ground-breaking discoveries and furthermore articles, other times the fact you cannot socially connect with witnesses can lead you off in different directions and no closer to a completed article. Now was one of those times where my anti-social awkwardness hurt. I was interviewing people he knew, people closest to him. His mother gave me a factual background about his life; his teary-eyed girlfriend provided a turbulent account through sniffles and snot about how terrible her life was now, and this tall boy called Ryder who was his friend or something simply mumbled answers. I was no closer to the truth. Letters to Katie Katie,
What do you want?
-Ryder
He placed it on his locker where he had first found the note, put it in yellow notebook paper and green biro and printed Katie on the front. He sighed and walked off as Jake sauntered by. The two weren't speaking and he had pledged to avoid those Gleeks at all costs.
He was pushing his way through a crowd of people to get his History folder when he saw another piece of yellow notebook paper stuck to the locker, in the spidery scrawl of green biro, in the yellow notebook paper. It was crumpled at the edges and had an odd smell, something scented vaguely like the boys locker room. At first he had a strange conspiracy theory of Beiste doing this, but it soon passed as he ripped open the note.
Ryder,
To be with you. I like you.
-Katie
He stared at the note is disbelief. He stared at it all though History, all the way home, through every word in precise detail. He wrote the note and stuck it up. She replied. He replied. It was a cycle. He soon felt he could trust her again, like they were starting over, even though she betrayed him. Some days she'd post a note very day, others she wouldn't. They were all written the same way, as the ritual was. On a Thursday, at nine o'clock, he counted, it read:
Ryder,
Meet me in the auditorium tomorrow at four. I'll be there.
-Katie
He scribbled the date in his diary and thought of his note tomorrow. Had he listened instead of being in elation, he'd have heard a sigh coming from a nearby row of lockers from Jake. What had this guy done now?