Page 2 of Prey

My shaking hands swiped through my contacts just as a couple holding hands stepped out from the hall, and I slipped inside the foyer lit by security lights. The door slammed shut and automatically locked, and the only way to get in was to use a keycard that only the residents had access to.

Standing next to the stairwell, I used Google Maps to direct me back to Hallen Hall, and to my relief, it was only two blocks away. I waited another twenty minutes before opening the door and poking my head out to find the lingering vehicle gone.

I ran faster than I’d ever run, and my feet refused to stop running until I arrived in the safety of Hallen Hall. With my keycard ready, I swiped to unlock the door and ran up two flights of stairs until I reached number 29, the room at the end of the hall opposite the locked maintenance cupboard. As soon as I was inside, I flicked the light on and flopped on my bed in relief.

My greatest infliction was being slightly paranoid and constantly on edge, and that meant I had a tendency to imagine drama and danger where there was none. As I reflected on my evening, the rational part of my mind took over, removing emotion, and I started to view the past week dryly.

I quickly concluded that Shaun was a typical good-looking frat guy that wanted to screw me and spent the week worming his way into my panties. And the car that stopped down the street could be a lost student, or perhaps they stopped to read something on their phone. There were multiple scenarios to explain the occurrences this evening, and I just needed to put it into perspective.

Tossing my glasses on the chest of drawers, I slipped off my shoes and started stripping off my sweater over my hazelnut head, then removed my fake contact lenses. Fake upon fake became my new normal, but to maintain this ‘normal,’ I had to remember to check my blond roots and never leave the house without wearing my contact lenses and glasses because the photo on my ID had me as a green-eyed, short-sighted, brown-haired girl named Riley Laws born and bred in a small town called Luton a thousand miles away.

I’d never been to Luton, but I Googled it several times for research purposes and tried to imagine myself living there. I had a street address where I lived in Luton and pictures of my fake family and house. I rehearsed every question that I was likely to be asked a thousand times over, and so far, nobody has suspected a thing for the past three years.

Keeping up appearances was tiring, especially now that I’m trying to be an ordinary nineteen-year-old girl seeking love and friends like every other nineteen-year-old. It was a lonely life, but it was vitally important that I kept up the charade.

I stood at the window watching couples walking by hand in hand, laughing and flirting and breathed away the envy burningin my stomach. Just as I was about to pull the blinds down, a word caught my eye reflected in the glass.ROTIART

When I turned to read the word straight, it told me two things -

One: someone knows.

Two: Someone had access to my room.

And the word scratched across my door in blood red read…

TRAITOR

2

Are you sure that wasn’t always there?” asked Carly, the residence hall director, when I told her that someone had broken into my room and writtenTRAITORon the back of the door.

I had to pause as doubts swirled about in my mind, constantly questioning my reality. Sometimes, there is a fine line between what is real and what is imagined. But I didn’t imagine this.

Pushing my glasses back against the bridge of my nose, I firmly replied, “Yes. I am one hundred percent sure that the wordTRAITOR was not on the back of my door when I moved in. Who used that room before me? Could it be a mistaken identity? Perhaps whoever broke in thought I was someone else.”

She looked doubtful as she jotted down my words on the complaints sheet. “Did the door look as though it had been tampered with?”

“No,” I replied, doubt ingrained deeper into her face. “Should I go to campus police about this?”

“Well…” I could tell she wasn’t comfortable with me doing that, probably because it was on her head. “Did you find anything missing? Did they steal anything?”

I exhaled. “No.”

“Okay, so if the door wasn’t tampered with and nothing had gone missing, then…it’s possible that,” she pointed to the picture I took of it in my phone. “Was it there when you moved in?”

“I already said no,” I answered resolutely, staking my ground, even though I was internally interrogating myself.

How the heck could Inotnotice the word TRAITOR in bright red on the back of my door? But then, my first week here was hectically busy on orientation week…Shaun showing me around. Perhaps I did lose my head and was so distracted by my busy schedule that I didn’t notice it.

No. That’s stupid.

“Forget it,” I backtracked impatiently. “Don’t worry about it.” I stepped away from her office on the ground floor of Hallen Hall and disappeared through the nearest exit into the bright sunshine.

Classes didn’t start until next week, so I had plenty of spare time on my hands to explore, especially now that Shaun had screwed me over. I knew I wouldn’t hear from him again, but he said we shared a class…oh no, maybe that was a lie, too. If he were speaking the truth, I’d ignore him to save what I had left of my dignity.

There were two places I tended to gravitate to in life. One was the sports field, so I can relive my memories of when I was on the athletics team in high school in Larsson, where Annika Kaiser died. The other type of place I like to go is amongst nature and animals. It’s weird because I only became interested in nature and animals when I became a forced recluse due to being in a Witness Protection Program organized by the Larsson Police Department. Neighborhood cats became my company, and trees became my confidants. Yeah, I’m a total antisocial nerd these days through repetitive suppressing of my true personality and dimming of my inner light.

This was not who I was. I was bright, energetic, and happy once, at least after my parents fostered me. Before I was fostered, life was a living hell that I’d prefer to forget forever.

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