#sofie b.

Louisa couldn’t sleep that night. Lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling through the darkness that shrouded her and Sofie’s dorm room, the Melleray house captain was entirely consumed by her thoughts. For what must have been hours now she’d been mulling over the details of the events that had transpired; the knife, the bone, the questions that lingered in regards to the source of the bone and then back to the knife again. She couldn’t help but think that the discovery she and Sofie had made had also sealed their fate, surely the site would be excavated within the next few days and alongside any additional bones they would find a small pocket knife, worn and weathered but most certainly marked with the fingerprints of one Sofie Bauer and one Louisa Walsh. Her stomach twisted into knots at the very thought of a police officer coming to that conclusion and she let out an audible sigh without meaning to, squeezing her eyes shut tight as if she could make their ill fate disappear if only she wished hard enough for karmic mercy. Her house captaincy would be revoked. Her college applications would worthless. Her future, no longer an exciting career in something she was passionate about but more likely an orange jumpsuit and shower shoes. Thinking about what would happen to them if the girls were suddenly put on trial for some sort of violent crime they had nothing to do with, her breath caught in her lungs as if it had turned to tar. Her stomach twisted into knots at the very thought of a police officer coming to the conclusion that the roommates had somehow conspired and become involved with whatever had put that bone in the ground and she let out an audible sigh without meaning to, squeezing her eyes shut tight as if she could make their ill fate disappear if only she wished hard enough for karmic mercy.

Sitting at her desk, Louisa kicked back gently and leaned on the hind legs of her chair, something that her parents and teachers alike had consistently advised her against, lest she falls backward and injures herself, though the warning never did stick. With a pen between the tips of her forefingers on each hand, she surveyed the room in silence for a moment, before deciding to break the peace, unintentionally distracting her roommate from her studies in the process. “I think there’s a bullying epidemic at Broadripple,” she decided, thinking out loud. “I’ve never noticed it before -and I would notice that type of thing- but more and more kids, especially younger kids, are getting anxious and isolating themselves,” she leaned forward on her chair now to get closer to Sofie as she spoke about somewhat sensitive matters, “Obviously the whole thing with Chris,” Kit, but close enough, “-then this sophomore was standing in front of my locker and I swear he thought I was going to knock him out for getting in my way- he apologized about six times just for existing,” she recalled thoughtfully, “Then Gwen- duh, speaks for itself, I’m sure we’re not the only people on the planet she likes to antagonize for sport,” she was maybe a little extra bitter that week due to the events of the blackout.

“Do we do something? Do we tell a teacher? Do we- I don’t know,”  she shrugged her shoulders, the last time they’d decided to take matters into their own hands, they’d ended up burying a contraband weapon in the middle of the night. That thought, however, hadn’t occurred to the Melleray captain evidently. “Do we target the bullies or the victims?” she asked, still on a bit of a tangent in her own head, “Both?”

Louisa: Hey! Coffee at the Kettle this afternoon? I had a kinda weird run-in with one of the Keough juniors and I want to talk about it xx

“Some old guy just asked me to put sugar in this coffee- I don’t know if he thinks I work here or if he was just being weird,” Louisa made a face as she explained why she’d taken so long to return to her friend, setting Sofie’s drink down in front of her first before placing her own down by the closed notebook and pen she’d left behind when she went to the counter to order for the two of them. “So, anyway,” she let her coffee cool, piping hot steam rising from the ceramic mug and warning her not to even attempt to sip from it. “I went to the shower block and Jamie was in there with a towel pulled all the way up- it looked really strange but that’s like, whatever, I’m not judging, I don’t care about that, I’m just saying-” she backpedalled a little, she didn’t want to come across as bitchy for no reason, “They told me to straight up fuck off, like as soon as I walked in there they turned around like I was in their private room and said something about shanking me and then told me to fuck off,” she explained, clearly she hadn’t quite come to terms with the events, it remained a markedly unusual encounter in her recent memory, “I said no, obviously and told them I was cool with it if he- they wanted to use the girl’s shower block, as long as they were cool with sharing,” she thought that was a given for anything at boarding school, the students had very few things they could truly call their own, “Then they just started just going off- like throwing my shit around, knocking it off the counter. At first I thought it was to get me to react badly but I don’t know, I got this other feeling,” she motioned to her stomach indicating where the feeling had come from; her gut instinct, “I think they’re really struggling with something- obviously I don’t know what but there was so much anger, so much hate, so much frustration and it wasn’t anything to do with me I’m pretty sure, it could have been anybody that set it off, I just happened to be there,” she reasoned, it was then that she opened up the notebook she’d brought with her and ran a fingertip down the unlined pages, covered in scribbly handwriting, “Yeah,” she was talking to the notebook as it reminded her of something else, “I just want to be normal” she was reading from the page, “Maybe it’s an identity crisis, that would explain the bathroom thing- then it was all about not being good enough, not being in control of things...hurting other people. I don’t know what that part meant but maybe we could talk to Jamie’s friends? Do you know any of them? I literally couldn’t tell you who he sits with at lunch if you had a gun to my head,”