Down The Highway

Chapter Fourteen

While I was walking in the hallway, I noticed Jannet walking like a model. Pretty weird but that's her. I immediately ran to her and tapped her back, then as I expected, she jumped off her knees as her heart ran away from us. "Be careful on coffee" I predicted that the cause of her too much startling is too much coffee as well. "What's the rush, girl?" She asked with her eyebrows up and confused face portraying that she was a little laughing but a little insulted too.

Before saying a single word, I looked around us and found no one else but strangers walking with us too. "You won't believe it!" She hid her phone in her pocket and faced me, "what?" Once more, I looked around us and once I got comfortable that no one was there, I stated, "like what Xanny said, Travis will soon ask me out. I guess you read that in the letters I showed you yesterday, am I right?" She nodded and let me continue. "Well, like what she said, Travis just asked me out last night!!!"

She frowned at me without knowing that she did. With her face up to the hallway, she said to me, "maybe it's just a coincidence" I rolled my eyes and placed my arms tied up together in front of my chest. "Coincidence that he's now living next to me" a guy holding tons of newspapers and struggling with it came our way as I grabbed one newspaper at the top of the bulk and started reading it while Jannet blocked my way.

My feet got on top of hers. Which made me freeze and put the newspaper down for a while. "You mean next to your house? Means that you and he are now neighbors am I right?" She asked while I nodded and continued reading, I turned it on the 8th page where I found something interesting that made me tap Jannet's arm several times. "Ouch!" She expressed.

I gulped after seeing that she got hurt by my heavy hands. "Look!" I said then placed the newspaper in front of her then she grabbed it. "Condoms being sold for free?" It was not what I was showing her, but it had the biggest headline font in the paper which made her notice it first.

Confusedness entered me, I was unsure if I would laugh, or punch her for being stupid. "No, this!" Then I pointed my finger to a single hand-written word colored by red which was saying.

Xanny is always watching you!

Jannet and I's eyes met, as both the smiles on our faces vanished when we looked at each other and gulped. The wind blew our hair away as the nervousness got obvious in our faces. We both looked back at the guy who passed us by earlier that day and immediately ran to him.

He was walking slowly so we were able to catch him. "Stay still, don't move!" I warned and checked every single paper. But none of them had a message like what we saw in the paper we had. "What are you doing?" The guy asked us after noticing that we've been destroying the whole formation of the bulk. "Jannet, have you seen at least just one?" I ignored the guy and kept on looking for one "none except for the one we had earlier" she responded. Then I decided to stop once I noticed we couldn't find another one with the sign. She stopped too.

"Are you guys okay?!?!?" The guy madly asked and looked at us, "yeah, sorry we were just looking for something." Said Jannet. The guy took a mad sigh and me and she looked at each other's eyes feeling some guilt for what we did. "Looking for what? This is all the same. They are all newspapers and nothing there is odd!" He demanded back to us.

Guess what, I just figured out how smart Xanny was to put a warning for me in a single newspaper and knew that I would be the one to take that. But I wondered, what if I wasn't the one who got it?" What would the receiver think? Wish I knew that there was nothing to worry about. "Sorry," I said then Jannet and I left him as I narrowed at the huge entrance door of our school and found a bright light, the sun.

We turned our backs at it and continued walking to reach our school. "That was weird" she did not have to mention it, I was already thinking how Xanny was able to do that. It also made me think that Xanny was just around the school. "This just means one thing. Xanny is around this school. Probably a student or a teacher. But out of a lot of people here, why me?" I asked and faced Jannet.

She raised her shoulders and just kept on walking while carrying her bag and fixing her necktie. "Don't tell me it's you!" I said while she rolled her eyes and frowned, "what? Are you kidding me? I swear, I'm not Xanny. I don't even have time for sending you letters. We've been friends for 12 years!" She demanded, well she had a point. She had no reason to send me those kinds of creepy letters but who had the reason to?

"Tell me, you know someone else who can do this to me?" She shook her head. Stood as she answer that she knew no one else that could do that thing to me. I wish I'd been smarter than before so I should have known that I have been tricked by someone.

Someone close to me and someone near me.

The rough texture of the tiles under our feet and shoes bothered me. Rough tiles were not my type when it comes to tyles. They are simply beautiful but creepy. Gives me goosebumps like nothing else. The clock attached to the wall struck to 8 until the bell rings, which was pointing for all of us to go to our rooms immediately.