Letters from Maggie: Installment VI

Cassandra, it’s funny how things run in circles.

It has been a year since things really started to happen for us here, since we learned where Sorrell’s library is, since I met Miles. There are some things you just never get over, and I think Miles is one of those things. He keeps on running in circles.

Just like I keep ending up at the same tables, in the same spots where important things happened last year. I keep on making the same mistakes, eating the same meals, going for the same walks when I feel like I need to clear my head.

I’m not complaining, I’m just saying that nothing is different. Maybe I’m glad for it, I don’t know. I didn’t really want to have to move forward after how perfect last year was. I learned a lot, sure, and changed a lot, but that doesn’t mean anything has to be different this year.

One valuable thing I learned that I think other people should know, for the record, is that meeting somebody at a frat party is not the same thing as fate.

Anyways, I think I have more perspective now, after what happened last night. I know you already heard it, but I need to write it out again. I was just going home after class, it wasn’t even particularly late. It was around 9 p.m.; I had that late writing lab for science fiction. At first I thought it was a residual figment of that class. Lou sitting inside my locked room when I opened my door, lounging casually in my desk chair clearly in companionship with someone across the room. I looked comically over towards my bed to see none other than Wendy, sitting criss-cross applesauce on my bed. They were both looking at their phones, not speaking.

My first thought, if you can imagine it, was how the hell there were two people sitting in my ID-padlocked single dorm, one of whom was supposed to be across the country in California.

I dropped my water bottle to the floor, where it landed with a thud. Neither of them turned to look at me.

“Lou?” I prompted.

Still no reaction. I walked further into the room, stood in between them. It was too quiet, I couldn’t be in there with them, they didn’t seem real or even like humans. I sputtered and walked out the door, into the hallway. It was still too quiet. I walked to my suitemate's door and knocked aggressively. No answer. I walked further, to the door of some girls I’d met while moving in.

Their door was slightly ajar, so that when I knocked, it fell open. I called out, but there was nobody inside. I went to the next door. It was also ajar, and the dorm behind it equally empty. This pattern was repeated at every door I went to. At the last one, 42, there were voices behind the ajar door, but no people. Every dorm on the floor appeared to be empty.
When I got back to my room, it was empty too, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Lou and Wendy were not gone. Evidently I was all alone on the floor, and maybe even in the building, but there were ghosts all around me, I could feel it.

I am surrounded by ghosts.

Margaret.