Manuscript by Astrid (Editing)

Chain Messages

It's officially more than 24 hours since the announcement was made. Another day in school, and everyone can't seem to drop the topic. Bouquets of flowers burying her locker, another person I passes another mention of her name.

Now that I notice, it did felt a little different, felt like something is missing, even though Astrid never been a part of my life. It's like when you lost one of the three orange shade of your color pencils that you don't actually need, barely noticeable but still it wasn't there.

Astrid wrote a book, It was long ago when she published it. I remember ordering it online once I heard about it. It's good to know someone from our school made it while I can't even start one. Maybe that's where and how the emptiness came from. A craft from scratch made by Astrid Hammer, but yet again it's the characters of the book that I read, not her.

She wrote about a guy who left alone with memories after losing a girl to death. Is it to late for a spoiler warning?

Sitting under the warm hollow vent while the freezing cold air radiating from the glass wall beside me. It's the perfect temperature, not too hot, not too cold. I'm glad that our cafeteria is indoor, if not we will be freezing outside at the opened right now.

Thank god no one like the corner seat because now corner seat is my comfort zone. So it's just me and other bunch of loner in this loud and packed cafeteria. As always, lunch time, means everyone, including me, is enjoying the overrated mini hotdog that our principal over hype more than necessary.

When I entered school earlier this morning, it was blindingly colorful with all these stripes. It's like walking into an optical illusion exhibition. Not really, it's more like I just got toss into a rainbow prison. Literal prison.

All jokes aside, it was actually Aria aka Astrid's best friend aka the loud mouth girl. It's a chain massage thing, It was sent by Brittney, but it was actually from Aria telling everyone to wear stripes to pay Astrid tribute. Since stripes is like Astrid's all time attire.

I'm quite surprised almost everyone participated. Even the teacher joined in too. William did, with his black and white sweater underneath his varsity jacket and Fred with his hideous yellow, purple dad hat. That's the worst color combination I could ever think of.

I wasn't about to go all in with my bright cardigan, it's a little too much in my opinion. I wouldn't mind wearing it on a normal day but today, people might think I'm asking for attention. Apparently that's only striped clothing I owned, so I didn't participate.

"Laurie!" I whip my head to find the voice owner. It came from none other than Brittney herself from across the room with her pink and black striped top she gesture for me to joined her and the other look alike friends that I never learned their name. They are sitting the middle table, or I would say the popular table. I reckon it's going to be loud and more talking there.

I shake my head refusing her offer with a smile and a thumbs up. She got the message and offered another thumbs up.

It's weird that I used to hung out with her during lunch time. I'll admit it, she can be a bitch sometimes, but since Eloise got transferred, Brittney always check on me and asked me to hangout and even invited me to her party every weekend, but something about being alone comfort me. I always turned down all the offers to the point being alone doesn't make me feel lonely even for a bit.

I curse under my breath when I saw Mr Carpabitchi in front of my lunch table. How the hell did he got here so fast?

"Miss Laurie Petersen" I didn't even notice him coming to my way.