run baby run

WARNING:THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS MENTIONS OF HEAVY BULLYING,MURDER,AND VIOLENCE. PLEASE USE YOUR DISCRETION.

ACT ONE

You’ll never forget the moment you were accepted into St. Catherine’s University.

The crisp envelope,the hunter green wax seal like something out of a movie,your name in that perfect font, the soaring feeling in your heart that you , ordinary little you, got into the college of your dreams. Nothing else mattered in your life now that you were to become a St. Catherine’s scholar.

Just when you thought you would become someone new, the dreams of tea by the roaring library fireplace and intense studying in the stacks were crushed on your very first day by them. In their pearls and crisp shirts,they introduced themselves by throwing your ratty luggage into the fountain.

They called themselves The Blackwood Circle,  untouchable legacy students whose  sole purpose in existence was to rid St Catherine’s of filthy little scholarship students like yourself. There were forty scholarship students in your freshmen year but by Christmas, there was only twenty remaining.

Perhaps out of defiance and fear,six of them in your poetry class became your best friends, the comfort you needed to survive The Blackwood Circle and the rigors of academia. When a Blackwood spilled water on your laptop, they let you borrow their laptop, and when a Blackwood  left one of your friends in tears you were there with tissues and boxed wine.

ACT TWO.

You survived your first year and returned for your second year because of them and in the midst of all the pain The Blackwood Circle tried and failed to drown you in, you all built a safe little world of your own.  You don’t know when exactly the friendship turned into something more, when the fact that you shared a common monster transitioned into the seven of your stealing kisses in dorm rooms, clasping hands in the dark of a lecture hall, sharing your post-college dreams in the quiet twilight hours.  Love was the one thing a secret society of  privileged college students couldn’t steal from you.

Until you made a discovery.  

You caught a Blackwood, the leader of The Blackwood Circle in fact, cheating on your Latin exam and went to Academic Affairs with evidence,and a tiny bit of hope that all your little world had suffered would finally end.  Their reign of terror was finally over when no amount of money could stop them being expelled at the end of your second year. The sky seemed brighter, and St. Catherine’s finally felt like home.

ACT THREE.

Your fall semester of your junior year was a thing of beauty. Your classes were challenging and engaging,and your little world’s love had only grown stronger. Without their leader,The Blackwood Circle was scattered to the wind, no luggage thrown in the fountain, no tears to be shed, and you finally got your tea by the library fireplace.

Their retribution was swift in a particularly brutal winter in February. You remember it so vividly: all of your little world piling into a rental car after a drink at the pub, the  Lamborghini that wouldn’t stop tailgating you, the screech of metal hitting a frozen lake, your hoarse voice begging for Alice, the sweetest and quietest out of all of you, to open her eyes.

The President called it a tragic accident, the police said it was your reckless driving, but you know the truth. A group of rich kids ran you off the road and killed your love because you made the mistake of doing the right thing, the honorable academic thing.

ACT FOUR.

Seven complete strangers came together and now six of you remain. You should have kept your mouth shut, you should have transferred when your lover was murdered, but you’re back and together you will finish what you started three years ago.