The Golden Words

The cafeteria roared with ridiculing laughter. Roselyn Wood's thick black hair and shabby clothes were splattered with today's drink special at Alder High School: Cookies and Cream Milkshake Supreme. Roselyn's best friend, Zelda Cotton, was just in as much shock as she was, that someone dared to pull a prank like this. Roselyn looked around in search of the culprit... All she saw was a crowd stricken with side-splitting laughter. Her blue eyes welled up and it felt like a rock was lodged in her throat... her stomach churned, she was never so humiliated. She could handle the occasional verbal taunting from the "popular kids," or a spitball here and there, but this was on a whole different level. They had gone too far...

"Are you okay, Rose?" said Zelda shakily. Roselyn snatched her books off the lunch table and bolted away into the school hallways, covering her face and sobbing. "Wait, Rose!" hollered Zelda, running behind her.

"L-LEAVE ME ALONE!" screamed Roselyn harshly.

"Whatever... be by yourself then," mumbled Zelda, who returned to the cafeteria feeling dejected.

Roselyn didn't even realize how swiftly she ran away from it all until she reached the end of an empty hallway feeling drenched and defeated. Catching her breath, she noticed a door ajar at the very far end of the hallway; the door was usually locked. It was labeled STORAGE.

Nobody goes in there, maybe I can sit in there until school's over... contemplated Roselyn.

Inside the storage room smelled like rotten eggs and sour-smelling feet. Roselyn decided it was better to endure this stench than to let anyone else see her in this condition. Her heart still raced and her stomach was sickened with embarrassment.

Looking around the abandoned storage room she noticed that the only desk that wasn't broken was covered in dust and riddled with crude words carved into the wood. She sat in it and threw her bag down on the floor to lay her head on the desk. She hadn't known she fell asleep until...

BOOM!

Crashing to the floor from the front of the room was a tower of books that had been stacked to the ceiling on a rickety old desk.

Roselyn was so startled she fell out of her seat. Every single book on the desk in the corner fell, save one. She stepped forward, kicking dingy outdated textbooks out her way. There, laying on the old desk was a small black notebook. It appeared brand new. Unlike everything else in the room, it wasn't covered in dust.

She picked up the notebook and opened it. The inside was blank. The fresh smell of the creamy-colored pages intoxicated her. The cover was sleek. She sat down with it and got a pencil from her bag deciding to keep it as a diary. She thought hard what to write, but her mind trailed off to what happened at lunch... Anger overtook her.

I want them to pay, scribbled Roselyn fiercely.

Disturbed by her thoughts, she hastily erased the words.

"That was wrong," said Roselyn to herself.

Taking a deep breath she wrote;

Dear diary, today was the worst day ever. I wish I had lots of cash to buy lots of clothes and things. Maybe they don't like me because I look poor—

Just as Roselyn was about to continue writing out her feelings about what happened at lunch, the text she wrote which read lots of cash, startlingly morphed into fancy golden letters; the rest stayed in pencil form. Bewildered, she prodded her finger at the fancy golden words to inspect the ink. It didn't come off and it seemed to give off a glow.

What the heck just happened? she thought, severely perplexed.

Loudly, the final bell rang, school was over for the day. Quickly, Roselyn closed the journal and stashed it in her bag. She ran speedily outside where her mother would be waiting to take her home. Roselyn feared her mother's constant pity most of all. The pain of today was too much...

Already, all the students began pouring outside. Roselyn jumped over a fence and raced to the car. She opened the passenger side door and threw herself inside, slammed the door, and yelled,

"Step on it, mom!"

"Girl, what is your problem?" snapped Mrs. Deborah Wood, looking at Roselyn as if she was insane.

Roselyn put her head between her legs trying to hide from her peers. Once in the clear she sat up and turned to her mother anticipating being questioned too much.

"Oh—how in the—my goodness, W-what happened to your hair?" scrambled Mrs. Deborah, trying to keep her eyes on the road.

"Uh... there was a food fight and I got in the way—some other people got slammed with food too—wasn't only me. I'm fine." said Roselyn, trying to smile.

"O-okay...if you ever need to talk about anything... I'm here..." said Mrs. Deborah, concernedly.

They arrived home shortly. Their house didn't take up much room on the two-acre farm. It was quaint and small.

Roselyn ate dinner, showered, and kissed her mom goodnight. It was 8 PM now. She just wanted to sleep away this strange day. As she lay in her bed, she was thrilled to remember that tomorrow her father was to return home from long weeks on the road trucking. Her eyes became heavy at the thought...

She dreamed of dark hooded figures and maniacal laughter which was unusual for her. She awoke in a cold sweat. The sun beamed through the windowpane blinding her. She sat upright in bed, eyes blurred until she noticed a muddied brown paper bag on the floor in front of her that looked wet, it was very dirty, and smelled of gasoline. On the brown bag read: lots of cash, in the same fancy golden words she'd seen in the journal.

How could she have forgotten? She jumped up quickly and rummaged through her bag to find the journal. There it was. She plopped on her bed with a pencil in hand. She opened the journal. She saw what she had written previously, including the golden words; but something new was written on that same page that said...

Do you accept, lots of cash?

There was also a box next to the word Yes, and a box next to the word No.

Is this really happening... thought Roselyn.

"If my mom saw this notebook, she'd start praying all over the house and burn all the money AND the bag to ashes," said Roselyn aloud, trying to talk herself out of it.

Roselyn felt uneasy... but she was curious and optimistic. Hesitantly, she drew a checkmark on the Yes box.

Suddenly, crumpling sounds came from the brown paper bag... It expanded like a bag of popcorn being heated up; then it just stopped. Roselyn crept closer and opened the filthy bag. Inside lay stacks of fives, tens, and twenty-dollar bills.

Roselyn gasped in awe, almost forgetting that this money came from a mysterious unknown source. The first person she thought to call was Zelda...

"Zelda get over here, NOW!" yelled Roselyn, almost tearing the phone off the kitchen wall.

"Settle down out there, I'm trying to sleep!" hollered Mrs. Deborah from the other room.

"Why?" said Zelda, dryly.

"Mom's home—not safe to talk—come now," whispered Roselyn.

"Yeah... I think I will come—gots to talk to you about something," responded Zelda.

Roselyn hung up the phone, cheering silently. About twenty minutes later Zelda arrived. They headed straight to Roselyn's bedroom and closed the door.

"Listen, I'm really upset how you left me in the cafeteria. I was so worried—you didn't even call me when you got home," argued Zelda, watching as Roselyn overturned a brown paper bag and outpoured tons of money. It spread across the entire hardwood floor. They've never seen the likes of it in their sixteen years of living.

"Where did you get this from!" squealed Zelda, with her hand over her mouth in shock.

"I—I found it in the woods some days ago when you were out of town for that emergency about your grandma," said Roslyn. "I wanted to wait until the weekend to surprise you—telling parents is off-limits, seriously..." Roslyn concluded not to tell Zelda about the notebook. She didn't want her getting into anything strange; that was a burden she wanted to bear alone.

"What are we going to do with it?" giggled Zelda, flinging the money in the air and watching it fall.

"Spend it on whatever we want at the mall—it's Saturday!" grinned Roselyn. "You're my best friend—Whatever is mine, is yours too." They hug and celebrated. "Zelda, let's count the money before we go and split it."

They were in disbelief. In total, stacked on the floor was twenty thousand dollars.

They then got permission from their parents to spend a day at the mall, so they went in a cab. They ate junk food and shopped until they couldn't carry anything more. Their approaching curfew at 7 PM ended the best day of their lives.

Finally, they headed home, high on life. Roselyn had altogether forgotten about the mysterious journal. She snuck into the back of her house where she left a window cracked open to get inside. She hid everything she could and disposed of the shopping bags.

Unexpectedly, Roselyn's room door burst open. It was her mother who appeared red-faced, eyes swollen and covered in tears.

"I-I thought I heard you were back home. I'm so h-happy, you c-came just in time," sniffed Mrs. Deborah. "Daddy's b-been hurt—Sherrif called—We're leaving in five minutes—get r-ready now."

Roselyn's heart pounded with every word her mother spoke. She was speechless. The best day of her life was quickly making a turn for the worst.

"Hurry up—no time to waste!" yelled Mrs. Deborah.

A storm brewed above. Heavy droplets hit the window shield harshly as if they were hail. Mrs. Deborah was wailing and banging on the steering wheel madly. Unknowingly, she sped and swerved over the traffic lines frequently. Roselyn stared out the window trapped in her mind, unable to think, move, or even breathe properly.

They arrive at a roadblock where policemen stood.

One officer bent down to talk to Mrs. Deborah, who could not contain herself at all.

"Hello, I'm Sherrif Gaines. I'm sorry this happened ladies—very unfortunate. My condolences," said Officer Gaines as he shook his head sorrowfully.

"So—looks like his wheel got jammed by debris in the road—made him swerve off to the side in the woods there. The wheel came clean off somehow. Embedded between the tires of that wheel we found a stack of them grocery store brown paper bags. Those things are tough when there's a stack of 'em but there's no way it should've taken the wheel off—this just doesn't make sense..."

The Sherrif beckoned Mrs. Deborah and Roselyn out of their car and into the back of a nearby police vehicle. The Sherrif escorted them further down the road where a fire was raging off in the trees.

"It's not safe to go any closer really," said Sherrif Gaines.

Roselyn, looking very ill suddenly vomited all over the back of the vehicle. Mrs. Deborah, starting to wail again, didn't even notice. The Sherrif ran over to help Roselyn out. As soon as the door opened, Roselyn gathered her strength and darted toward the scene. She was too fast for the Sherrif. She could hear her mother calling out to her from behind, but she didn't care... she had to see it.

In the distance by the wreck, she thought she saw a tall hooded man wearing all black, but she blinked and the man vanished. Her father's tractor-trailer gas tanker blazed on the side of the road, in a muddy ditch. The air was thick with the smell of gasoline and the rain began to pour heavier.

Roselyn closed her eyes and lifted her face to the heavens.

"What have I done?" cried Roselyn, falling to her knees before the flames.