The Farewell Note

By Aaradhya Upadhyay

In yet another dark night of winter, I woke up feeling thirsty. I turned on my royal blue and gold lamp, drank the water from my blue bedside bottle, and checked the time. 4:00 AM. As I was about to turn off the lamp when I noticed a red piece of parchment on the bedside table. I opened it and:

I’m sorry, I had to leave. Don’t look for me. I don’t want to put you in danger.

This was what it said. I recognised my roommate’s handwriting style; she always wrote like this. After reading it 2-3 times, I noticed something at the bottom. It said:

Putinwater.

Put in water.

Putting the parchment in water was easy, of course, but I wanted to be sure that this wasn’t a joke. I went to my roommate’s part of the room and…let’s just say, she wasn’t there. So I went to back to my part of the room and put it in the bucket of water. Before it was gone, it showed another clue, or rather, an address.

North, CC

I knew this place. CC, or rather, Creative Colours, was our favourite art shop. There were four of them in four different directions. And this one was telling me to go to the one in the north. Wow. So now I’m supposed to go there at 4:30 AM? Well, I guess I will.

So now I’m here at 5:00 AM and I am so sleepy by now. It took me half an hour to get here and all I can see is the small works of art which hang here. Hold on. What is this? It has the same piece of red parchment as the note. I saw a button, pressed it and I was led down to a secret lair. My roommate, Marissa, was here, tied to a chair. As soon as she saw me, she said, “Maddie! What have you done! Why did you come here? I told you not to!” “So, what, Marissa? Do you think I would leave you in danger? Come on, what are you doing here?” I replied. She explained everything. Like I thought she was in danger and had been threatened. The criminals would come in five minutes. I quickly took a knife and freed her. We ran away from there and since this happened recently, I sleep with Maddie to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

By Aaradhya Upadhyay