Monday was a busy day for me. I had a bit of time to work on my experiment in the biology lab, and I wanted privacy so I could concentrate. However, I was interrupted.

“Who’s there? The prettiest girl in town! I know her name, it must be… Amanda!” said a guy who had just entered the room, looking at me, mocking the voice of a television host.

I then rolled my eyes and left the frog I had been holding on the counter.

“Benjamin, I have limited time so please stop bothering me. Besides, you know my name is Julie.”

“Julie Angela, what a pleasure.” He began, as I hurried to open a special little cage on the table with fumes I had prepared some minutes before, trying not to inhale them myself.

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you and the seniors be preparing something for college?” I asked, while getting the frog up from the counter.

“No, well yes… actually, I wanted to ask your opinion on something, beautiful.” He said, no longer smiling.

I looked up at him as I let the frog fall inside the cage and then closed it.

“Don’t call me beautiful.”

“Do you think I’m good enough to do athlete tryouts?” he asked, lifting a brow.

“You are a good athlete. Go ahead.” I said, as he smiled widely.

I went to the sink to wash my hands, but then turned around to see the cage open, Ben holding the frog.

“What were you doing to this frog?” he asked, opening his eyes in an odd way. “I can’t believe it, you… you should know Landa Clark would be ashamed of you!”

I was disgusted. 

“First of all, it was my experiment with hydrogen sulfide. Second, you meant to say Linda Carpenter. You better say her name right.” I grabbed the frog from his hands and dropped it in a wooden box. 

Then, the teacher who was in charge of the lab appeared from somewhere, giving me goosebumps. 

“Oh, wonderful Linda Carpenter. She was my star student, and this lab is named after her, you know? She had wanted to become a biologist and loved animals at heart.”

Of course I knew she loved them. I knew it like my name, and I had gotten to know Linda very well. She had been my best friend.

****

Four years ago, a twelve-year-old me had sat alone outside room 303. She had tried hard to cover her face with her long black hair, but it was useless. Her parents were inside, and all she could do was wait. Right in front of her, a group of older students left enormous room 300 with smiles on their faces. None of them noticed Julie, except the last girl to come out.

The tall, blonde girl saw her expression and decided to come close. She sat right next to Julie, looking concerned.

“Hey there, what’s your name?”

“Julie” she answered, with a barely audible voice.

“Well, what’s the matter, Julie? Are you okay?”

Julie took a long pause before answering.

“Adults don’t trust me.”

Then, right from the blonde girl’s point of view, two adults arrived in the hallway, strangers to her. They entered room 303.

“Julie, you don’t have to worry anymore. Come with me, my name is Linda.” And then, she led young me into the deserted room 300.

****

After I apologized about the frog incident, Ben told me the tryouts would be on the next day, and then we both went to our respective classes.

Approximately at noon, I had a lunch break and I walked across hallway 2. Across room 299, the art studio; 300, the drama theater; 301, the counselor’s office; 302, the principal’s office; 303, the psychologist’s office; 304, the student’s center; and so on. At the end of the hallway, I entered the restrooms.

I was washing my hands when I felt someone breathing right behind the back of my neck.

“What a pretty narcissus, why don’t you look at yourself?.” said Ben, who looked at me through the mirror.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said with a high pitch, quickly turning to face him.

“Well, you shouldn’t be so stunning, hon.”

Then, he held me against the wall and kissed me. He kissed me a lot and I hated it, but I somehow managed to escape from him and ran away. I ran away as fast as I could, and once I was alone, I crossed myself three times.

The next day, I was walking alone towards school, crossing an empty field of long and dry grass. Suddenly, in the middle of the path, I saw something strange. As I walked closer, I almost jumped. It was a cat. A completely black cat, lying down, trapped by what seemed to be a white T-shirt. It hissed at me, filled with anger, and that is when I thanked that it had both front legs restrained close to its body by the messy white piece of clothing.

“You mad cat!” I said, then walked around him and ran towards school.

At the end of the school day, I was in my locker, and someone hugged me from behind. It was Benjamin, again.

“Julie, I won’t let you go again, love,” he said, while I gulped hard. “My tryouts are this afternoon, five o’clock. You’ll stay and watch me, right?”

“I wish I could,” I said, noticing we were in public. “But I need to go to church.”

“On Tuesday? Today?” he asked, as he let me go.

“Yes, especially today,” I said, while getting a shoebox out of my locker. Then, I walked away without saying anything else.

Sometime later, I was walking towards my Catholic church, holding my shoebox. I went first to the cemetery while hearing the church’s bell, looking for someone in particular.

Then, I saw her.

I approached Linda Carpenter’s tombstone, kneeled down, and opened the box. It had a set of two plastic Greek masks. Two Greek theater masks.

“For all those dreams that are forgotten, dear Linda.”

I left the masks there, and then, entered the church. There was no one there. The powerful smell of incense filled me. I lit up a candle and walked across the church until I reached the priest’s high platform. I walked up the steps of the stairs, lit some other candles up there, and then looked upwards to see Jesus’ cross. I looked him in the eye and felt as if he was watching me too.

I stepped back, and suddenly, tripped, falling from the elevated platform while still watching Jesus. I fell for what felt like eternity, and landed on my back, hurting it. I could barely move from the pain, and my head was trying hard to focus on reality. 

I turned my head to the left and saw a knife. A silver knife, right next to me, on the floor. Clean, sharp, and shining.

I closed my eyes, opened them again, and it was gone.

Wednesday, I entered the school’s doors. I entered school to see it turned into a pandemonium. Students crying, shouting, running. Teachers here and there, and the police all over the place. The principal was talking to the police chief.

I asked my classmates what was going on, and they told me Ben was dead.

Murdered. That was the conclusion the police had had. When they told me, my heart skipped a beat and I burst into tears. Some teachers tried to calm me down and led me to the crime scene, where the body of Benjamin Wilson had been found.

“The police say he has been dead since yesterday, Julie. We have no idea why he was alone, or who could have done it, but we do know you two were close friends, so you might want to see him.” Said one teacher of mine.

“I-I’ll handle it,” I said, with a cracked voice.

They led me to the gymnasium. There he was, Benjamin Wilson, dead. I kneeled on the floor and inspected his body. He had been stabbed with a knife in his chest. I then caressed his cold face and kissed him in the mouth.

A police officer had entered the scene some seconds before and saw me doing it.

“Were you his girlfriend?” he asked me, once he approached close enough.

“You could say so… we loved each other” I answered, rising up and wiping my tears with trembling hands.

“Where were you yesterday in the afternoon?” he continued, with a gentle voice.

“At church, I left a gift for my deceased friend– she was catholic, just like me,” I said.

“I understand, no more questions.”

After the officer left, I ran to the lockers’ hallway and forced one of them open. I got out my shoebox, and with all the chaos, walked my way out of the school.

I checked it open– inside, it had exactly what it was supposed to have.

I then thought to myself that perhaps one of those days I would have to actually get some Greek masks for Linda… who was an actress.

I cried no more, breathing fast, feeling the beats of my heart in every inch of my body. And although no student, teacher, or officer looked at me, I felt observed. Eyes– in every person, every wall, and every corner. All on me. The vibration of my church’s six o’clock bell in the back of my head, ringing, ringing, and ringing. No stop. I walked away as I tried to congratulate myself for my performance, but the eyes intimidated me. 

My fear grew, and I began to run, hoping that when I had done justice and removed from the earth the drag that Benjamin Wilson was to me, every single one of the saints that now watched me had looked away.