Part One of a Mystery
Scribbles, Part One
So this one day I was studying at the library. Well, I was trying to study. Really I was just kind of glaring at my textbook because it was a gorgeous day out and it was completely ridiculous that I had to study this early in the semester anyway. Still, my professor was crazy and I needed better grades this year so here I was.
Anyway, because I was only half-assing my studying my eyes kept wandering. My main points of interest: the cute girls in the corner, the French dictionaries one table over, and the graffiti on my little desk/cubicle thing. I always get a kick out of reading the things that bored kids like to write when they’re fuming over finals or whatever. Sex is always a favorite topic of course, but people can get pretty creative too. I’ve seen poems, inspirational messages, drawings and even grammar lessons scribbled all over campus.
This time my desk wasn’t all that interesting but it was better than my textbook and the girls in the corner had left after they noticed me staring. From what I could see all there was here was a bunch of initials and penis sketches. I was about to give up and actually read my notes on level five basket weaving when something caught my eye. Scribbled down in the furthest corner, half-hidden by the shadow of the desk’s shelf, was one word. It said ‘deserve’ and it had the number seven next to it. I wondered what on Earth that was supposed to mean.
I shrugged. It was probably just some weird band name. Still, the word must have stayed in my mind because two days and a B- later I was thinking about it again. I’d just gotten out of class and I was walking back to my dorm while trying to pick a song on my ipod when, out of nowhere, a lamppost crashed into my face. I don’t think anyone noticed, or at least no one looked my way until I started swearing.
I scowled at it for a moment before I noticed that someone had scribbled a word along the lamp-post’s side. This one it said ‘plain,’, complete with the comma, and right next to that was the number five. It took a few seconds before I realized why the weird, slanting handwriting it was done in looked so familiar. It was the same as the one I’d seen before. Was this supposed to be some sort of art thing? Writing random words around campus? Did they make a message?
I thought about it for a second. The only words I’d seen so far were deserve and plain. Since they’d had numbers next to them I guessed that was probably to show the order they were supposed to go in. I had a five and a seven. Plain-blank-deserve. That wasn’t much to go on, but I’ve always loved a good mystery so I decided to keep my eyes open.
I didn’t see the next one until a week later. My buddies and I were in my favorite dining hall trying to plan a camping trip for the weekend when I noticed one of the cleaning staff scrubbing like crazy on one of the tables. While we were walking out I craned my neck to see what was there. In huge letters someone had written ‘BETTER.’ with a small eight next to it. The woman cleaning noticed me staring and told me in halting English that the word had been there for about a week and no amount of soap seemed to make a dent in it.
I gave her a quick sympathetic smile and said it sucked that she had to clean that, but I did feel a little thrill inside. Okay, so it was ‘plain, something deserve better’. Well, at least it actually sounded like a message and not just random words. There was even a period at the end of this one so it must have been the end of the message. Since I had words five, seven, and eight that meant I only had five more to find.
When I got to my dorm I wrote down the words I had to see what I could figure out. After ten minutes the best I could work out was that word number six had to be ‘you’ or maybe ‘I’ to make any sense. The rest was still a mystery.
I leaned back in my chair and looked out the window. It was still warm out and pretty sunny. Camping with my friends would probably be a blast, but right now that didn’t seem as interesting as it had earlier.
I wondered who could have written these words around campus. Why would he do it? Was it maybe a girl? What was it supposed to mean anyway? Maybe this was some friends playing a game, or maybe it was some club’s really sneaky way of recruiting people. It could wind up being “We socialists think it’s plain, you deserve better.” At this school I wouldn’t be surprised. Still, I knew that whoever had written this stuff, whatever their reasons were, they had a flair for the mysterious. Whatever the message wound up being about I knew that I wanted to meet whoever was behind it.
So this one day I was studying at the library. Well, I was trying to study. Really I was just kind of glaring at my textbook because it was a gorgeous day out and it was completely ridiculous that I had to study this early in the semester anyway. Still, my professor was crazy and I needed better grades this year so here I was.
Anyway, because I was only half-assing my studying my eyes kept wandering. My main points of interest: the cute girls in the corner, the French dictionaries one table over, and the graffiti on my little desk/cubicle thing. I always get a kick out of reading the things that bored kids like to write when they’re fuming over finals or whatever. Sex is always a favorite topic of course, but people can get pretty creative too. I’ve seen poems, inspirational messages, drawings and even grammar lessons scribbled all over campus.
This time my desk wasn’t all that interesting but it was better than my textbook and the girls in the corner had left after they noticed me staring. From what I could see all there was here was a bunch of initials and penis sketches. I was about to give up and actually read my notes on level five basket weaving when something caught my eye. Scribbled down in the furthest corner, half-hidden by the shadow of the desk’s shelf, was one word. It said ‘deserve’ and it had the number seven next to it. I wondered what on Earth that was supposed to mean.
I shrugged. It was probably just some weird band name. Still, the word must have stayed in my mind because two days and a B- later I was thinking about it again. I’d just gotten out of class and I was walking back to my dorm while trying to pick a song on my ipod when, out of nowhere, a lamppost crashed into my face. I don’t think anyone noticed, or at least no one looked my way until I started swearing.
I scowled at it for a moment before I noticed that someone had scribbled a word along the lamp-post’s side. This one it said ‘plain,’, complete with the comma, and right next to that was the number five. It took a few seconds before I realized why the weird, slanting handwriting it was done in looked so familiar. It was the same as the one I’d seen before. Was this supposed to be some sort of art thing? Writing random words around campus? Did they make a message?
I thought about it for a second. The only words I’d seen so far were deserve and plain. Since they’d had numbers next to them I guessed that was probably to show the order they were supposed to go in. I had a five and a seven. Plain-blank-deserve. That wasn’t much to go on, but I’ve always loved a good mystery so I decided to keep my eyes open.
I didn’t see the next one until a week later. My buddies and I were in my favorite dining hall trying to plan a camping trip for the weekend when I noticed one of the cleaning staff scrubbing like crazy on one of the tables. While we were walking out I craned my neck to see what was there. In huge letters someone had written ‘BETTER.’ with a small eight next to it. The woman cleaning noticed me staring and told me in halting English that the word had been there for about a week and no amount of soap seemed to make a dent in it.
I gave her a quick sympathetic smile and said it sucked that she had to clean that, but I did feel a little thrill inside. Okay, so it was ‘plain, something deserve better’. Well, at least it actually sounded like a message and not just random words. There was even a period at the end of this one so it must have been the end of the message. Since I had words five, seven, and eight that meant I only had five more to find.
When I got to my dorm I wrote down the words I had to see what I could figure out. After ten minutes the best I could work out was that word number six had to be ‘you’ or maybe ‘I’ to make any sense. The rest was still a mystery.
I leaned back in my chair and looked out the window. It was still warm out and pretty sunny. Camping with my friends would probably be a blast, but right now that didn’t seem as interesting as it had earlier.
I wondered who could have written these words around campus. Why would he do it? Was it maybe a girl? What was it supposed to mean anyway? Maybe this was some friends playing a game, or maybe it was some club’s really sneaky way of recruiting people. It could wind up being “We socialists think it’s plain, you deserve better.” At this school I wouldn’t be surprised. Still, I knew that whoever had written this stuff, whatever their reasons were, they had a flair for the mysterious. Whatever the message wound up being about I knew that I wanted to meet whoever was behind it.