guys like you [ prinxiety ]

[ 23 ]

"and roman pulled a face at him and followed him onto the coach."

—

roman was greeted with a wall of noise as he stepped in. the year 7s were babbling and the year 8s were screaming and all the older years looked simultaneously pissed and excited, and clearly something had went down because even patton looked shaken.
"what on earth happened?" roman asked, as he sat down next to his friend and virgil took his place at the back.
"haven't you heard?" patton said incredulously. "some serious stuff went down this morning. the janitor went in this morning to find all the floors covered in red syrup, like blood, and post it notes on every wall and every surface. they all say 'the end is near'. creepy, right? the school is in an absolute panic to clean it all up and hide what happened, but the guitarist of that year 9 rock band took a video of the whole thing. want to see?"
roman nodded.

patton pulled out his phone and found the video of the girl's instagram. the footage shows the hallway covered in colourful sticky notes. the floor looks like it was soaked in blood (nasty) and it made a vile squelching noise when the girl walked. roman tuned out the girl's unnecessary commentary and he zoned in on a close up of a note.

that handwriting.

after weeks of analysing, he'd recognise that style anywhere. roman tugged the note out of his pocket with hands that shouldn't be shaking, but were, and was horrified when he realised the handwriting, did, in fact match. the same fascinating, curled letters and a slash instead of a dot on the 'i'.

"hey! that's the note with the weird code on it, isn't it?" patton said, pausing the video. "that's so peculiar! do you think the messenger is behind this?"
"it's too much of a coincidence for that to not be the case." roman muttered, more to himself than anything. he twisted in his seat to observe virgil animatedly hissing at his friends. clearly, his train of thought was the same.
"there's no way only two people could do all this. has anyone been caught? have they even checked CCTV?"
"well," patton began, "apparently, all CCTV footage from last night has been deleted."
"seriously? that is, actually insane." roman said. his entire body was shaking, slightly, and roman had to guiltily admit that he was more excited than scared.
"it has to be someone at school, right? there's was no sign of someone breaking and entering and the only way to get into the school is with the student and teacher key cards. if one of them had been stolen, the system would have remotely disabled the card."
roman nodded. "not only that, but our student key cards don't let us in after school, unless we have a club. and there's no way someone could do this while there are still people studying in classrooms, right?"
"oh!" patton exclaimed. "but that's the thing! you see, yesterday afternoon i was supposed to have textiles club, but it wasn't on this week. apparently, all the other clubs were cancelled, too. i asked miss khatri about it and she said it was because they needed to use the school for the year 7 parents evening."
perfectly timed, meticulously planned. whoever had done this certainly had help. roman closed his eyes and folded his hands in his lap. this was a mystery he was determined to solve.