Sweet Jayne

“Morning,” Kip said, yawning as she sat down at the table in the Grand Hall—a multipurpose room that serves as the cafeteria, a meeting/assembly hall, and where we have movie or game nights some weekends.

“Hey,” I mumbled to her, looking up from my flashcards briefly.

“Morning, sleepy head,” Frankie teased and bit off the end of a steaming sausage with a smile.

“Mmph,” Kip grunted and started to dig into her own breakfast. At Eckhart’s we have a food-serving systems sort of like colleges—buffet style, I guess— except you have to eat the cafeteria food if you want to eat at all. Sometimes we have fieldtrips off campus, going into town for the fair that comes to Schooner Bay every year or to just go into the local shops.

I took a bite of bacon dipped in syrup off the end of my fork and flipped to the bottom of the stack of flashcards. I had to study up for some stupid History test to lay the basis for our new unit. And because, being on a sort of scholarship, I had to keep straight A’s or be kicked out So this test was important, just like all the others.

“Hey,” Frankie said and nudged my elbow and in the process knocked my flashcards off the table. I groaned and leaned down to pick them up. “Thanks, Frank.”

“No, no. Hey! Look up, look up,” she insisted, but I kept bent over, shuffling the papers into a pile. “Nora! Principal! Microphone! Important!”

My head shot up, narrowly missing the edge of the table. Frankie was right. Our principal, Ms. O’Neil, one of the most frighteningly intimidating women I’ve ever come in contact with, was standing behind the podium on the small upper level of the Grand Hall. She’s speaking with the teacher/guidance counselor Mr. Lang.

“I wonder what’s going on…” I mumbled.

“No clue,” Kip said, practically cross-eyed, immersed in her scrambled eggs.

I smoothed my skirt over my knees and leaned towards the table just as Principal O’Neil began to speak, sending a hush over the students in the hall. “—Quiet down, everyone. Thank you.” She paused. It was quiet. A very nervous quiet. Our principal put her hands to her head and massaged her temples as she continued. “There was… an incident yesterday.” She cleared her throat and tightened her lips around her teeth. “One of our students was… hurt. By an unknown man on campus late last night.” The strange hush was gone, replaced by whispering all across the room. “From here on out, we are instituting a curfew of 7:00 to be in your dormitories. We also ask that you to report any abnormal occurrences or strangers on campus.” She sent her dark gray eyes across the hall, a stern expression on her seamed face. “Proceed.”

As she stepped down, some tables erupted into talk, ‘who was it?’, ‘what do you think happened?’. Other tables remained silent. Our table was the latter until Kip spoke up. “What a bastard,” she spit, finally awake which was very unusual for her in the mornings.

“What?” Frankie said.

“Isn’t it obvious? You could definitely tell that O’Neil was hiding a bit of vital information,” Kip said angrily, ripping off a chunk of her cornbread and stuffing it in her mouth.

“You’re losing me here, Kipper,” Frankie said.

“C’mon, Frankie. Think CSI,” Kip said with a mouthful of corn bread.

Frankie looked down at her empty food tray with a frown. Then she looked up at me, miffed. “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

I shrugged. “Sure. Some girl was out late, got caught by a strange man looking for some female company… and I’ll just leave it at that for your sake.” I pursed my lips, raised my eyebrows.

Frankie was nothing short of horrified. “Oh my—who would do that? That’s horrible! That poor girl…”

“But, hey. We don’t know that’s what happened. And O’Neil’s doing everything to ensure it doesn’t happen again, yeah?” I rubbed Frankie’s back consolingly.

“Yeah, but I’ll still have nightmares!” she moaned into her hands.

“Calm your tits, Franklin. It happens every day,” Kip grunted.

“You are so insensitive,” Frankie huffed shortly, sitting up pin straight.

“Mmm…” Kip said around another bite of bread. “Somehow I take that as a compliment.”

“Ugh! Do you hear her?” she said in exasperation. “Do you hear her?”

On any other day, I would laugh, but humor seemed a bit out of the question that day. As far as I knew, there had never been a security breach like that before. It’s almost inconceivable to think that someone even got onto the campus without being reported. We have a pretty tight security system here; guards patrolling, cameras around the outside of the building and in the lobby. That sort of thing.

“—Frank, you can’t go thinking that everything is sunshine and rainbows because nothing is—“

“Oh, so everything’s bad?” Frankie said sarcastically.

“Pretty much, yeah—“

I cast my eyes away from my bickering friends and watched the door as a people walked in and out of the big hall doors and I let my mind wander to what happened last night. Who was it?
And just then a fairly angry boy came storming through the doors, scanning his cold blue eyes over the room. The eyes hit mine—like a freezing cold rain and rush of wind straight to my bones, slapping them black and blue. And his eyes almost softened, but he flicked his gaze away and my eyes fell to my lap.

“—Kip, are you not wearing a shirt?

“What?”

“Are you just wearing a jacket?” Frankie practically shrieks.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Kip, really. Do I have to tell you…”

I may not have known it then, but something had changed after the library—something that would drag our eyes to meet in the halls. There was something about Jayne.