9. Sadie #2
But there’s nothing that looks like mine. The work is immaculate and entirely unfamiliar, my name is on the top of it, and I have no explanation.
I fold it carefully and put it in my bag and spend the rest of the lecture staring at the front of the room without hearing a single word.
I’ll have to check my laptop to make sure this was sent from mine and not mistaken for someone else's once I get back home.
My mind is all over the place this morning, I even forgot to grab my laptop.
The rest of the class is a blur, I’m not listening to anything, and when the professor dismisses the class, I rush to practice, hoping it will clear my head.
Practice is the thing that fixes my head when nothing else can.
I work through a piece on the mat, just moving to the music playing, getting lost in my movements, and then the music stops.
Coach Pearce calls us in at the end of the session, and looking at her face, this is going to be a serious conversation.
"Regionals," she says. "Four weeks."
The gym goes silent; it's the sound of five people recalibrating simultaneously.
"This is the first marker. Everything from here runs toward regionals." She looks at each one of us the way she does when she wants you to understand she means you specifically. "I need full routines clean by week three. No exceptions."
Four weeks.
We all nod, and know that the real work begins now. I’m excited and nervous.
Coach walks away, and I’m smiling excitedly, grabbing my gym bag when Cara shouts at me. “You want to grab dinner?”
“Not tonight, got a phone call date, and before you get excited, it’s with my brother.” I stop the four of them asking too many questions. I know them well enough to know they will have a lot of questions.
Getting to my dorm room, I check my door five times, and then the window. I know there’s no way the person is coming through the window, but I check it anyway.
Dan picks up on the third ring.
"Hey." His voice is a little slower than usual.
"Hey. You okay?" I ask straight away.
"Yeah, just… it's been a long day. You?"
"Good. Really good, actually." I pull my knees up on the bed. "First competition is in four weeks." I grab my laptop and open it up, ready to look through my work, as I’m still confused about it.
"Yeah?" Something in his voice lifts slightly. "Are you ready for it?"
"Getting there. But you know me, I’m not one to fall and not get back up." I laugh, but there’s nothing from him, just a pause. A pause makes me worry.
"I should go," he says. "I have an early start tomorrow."
"Okay." I keep my voice easy. "Talk soon." I now know that with Dan I have to wait for him to talk. It’s not easy for him to be where he is.
"Talk soon."
The line goes quiet, then the call ends, and I sit with the phone in my hand, looking at the dark screen.
I sit cross-legged on my bed, my laptop balanced on my thighs, staring at the essay document until the words start to blur. The grade at the top glares back at me in red - 92.
It should feel good but it doesn’t, because these aren’t my words. The sentences flow too cleanly, the arguments sharper than anything I wrote last week, and the are citations placed exactly where they need to be. I can only wish I could write something like this.
I open my email and go to the sent folder. It actually was sent from my own account two nights ago. I don’t remember sending it. I don’t even remember writing it.
My fingers hover over the trackpad. Did I do this half-asleep? Did the stress finally make me lose it?
The cursor blinks at me as if it’s waiting for an answer I don’t have. I don’t have the answer to a lot of things at the moment.
The screen flickers once. Then twice. The document vanishes. Everything goes black.
I frown and tap the space bar. Nothing. Dead. Great, just what I need right now. I can’t afford a new laptop, this is a brand new laptop, I got it before I stated here.
Then letters begin to appear, one by one, in the center of the black screen. Slow. Like someone is typing with perfect control.
Goodnight Sadie.
My stomach drops. The air in the room suddenly feels heavier, thicker, pressing against my skin. I slam the laptop shut and shove it off my lap onto the comforter. My pulse kicks hard in my throat.
I slide off the bed and cross to the window, my heart hammering.
The blinds are half-drawn. I peel one slat down with two fingers and peer out into the dark quad.
Streetlamps cast pale pools of light on the empty paths.
There’s no one there, just shadows and the faint rustle of leaves.
There’s no movement, and no silhouette watching from below, but the feeling crawls up my spine anyway, like there are eyes on the back of my neck.
I let the blind snap back into place and turn around fast, scanning the room again. The camera on my nightstand. The half-empty water glass. Everything is where I left it. Nothing is out of place.
My hands are shaking. I press them against my thighs and breathe through my nose, trying to steady myself. It’s probably just a glitch. Some weird virus, or maybe I really did rewrite the paper and forgot. College does that to people. Right?
But the words stay burned behind my eyes. Goodnight Sadie.
I climb back onto the bed and pull the comforter up to my chest; my eyes are fixed on the closed laptop like it might open on its own. The room feels smaller now. The silence is louder. I reach over and switch off the lamp, plunging everything into darkness, and just as quickly I turn it back on.
Because someone knows exactly how to get inside my life, and part of me is terrified. Another part, the stupid, curious part, wonders if they’ve been here the whole time. What do they want?