CHAPTER FIVE — The Girl With the Notebook
1516 Words
The next morning felt wrong.
Too bright.
Too normal.
Too opposite of everything that happened yesterday.
I dragged myself out of bed, dressed slowly, and followed Rita to the dining hall. Nobody talked about the scream. Nobody mentioned why teachers marched everyone back to their rooms. But every single person kept glancing at Dorm 7 like it might blink.
After breakfast, we headed toward assembly. My head felt heavy from lack of sleep — every time I closed my eyes, I saw that old file… that photo… that warning note.
Dorm 7 never lets two Halimas stay.
“What are you thinking about?” Rita asked quietly.
“Nothing.”
Which was a lie. I was thinking about everything.
We stopped on the sandy assembly ground with our class. The wind kept blowing dust into my eyes. I blinked—and then I felt someone tap my shoulder.
Not gently.
Like they wanted my attention urgently.
“You’re Halima, right?”
I turned around.
The girl standing there was definitely not from our class. She was tall, in neatly ironed SS2 uniform, her prefect-in-training badge shining too bright for morning time. Her hair was in a tight bun, and she held a thick, battered notebook under her arm.
Rita muttered under her breath, “Oh no… it’s her.”
The girl smiled at me like she had been waiting.
“I’m Tomi,” she said. “SS2A. Prefect in training.”
I swallowed. “Good morning, ma—”
“Please,” she cut in, “don’t call me ma. I’m not that old.”
She looked around, like she didn’t want teachers hearing her.
“You were taken to the principal’s office yesterday.”
Rita rolled her eyes. “Everybody saw that.”
“Yes,” Tomi said calmly, “but not everybody knows why.”
I froze.
Tomi opened her notebook just slightly — enough for me to see old, scribbled drawings of Dorm 7, arrows, dates, and names crossed out.
“I used to live in that dorm,” she said quietly. “Two years. SS1 and JSS3.”
My heart skipped.
“You lived there?”
She nodded. “Before they moved all seniors out of it. Before it… changed.”
Rita grabbed my arm. “Hallie, don’t listen to her.”
But Tomi wasn’t even looking at Rita.
She was staring at me like she was searching my face for an answer.
“You saw something,” she whispered. “Didn’t you?”
My breath caught.
“I didn’t—”
“You did,” she said. “Your eyes are doing the thing.”
“What thing?” I asked.
“The ‘a ghost visited me last night’ thing.” She said it so casually I almost laughed.
Almost.
Rita hissed, “Tomi, stop scaring her!”
“I’m not scaring her,” Tomi replied calmly. “I’m warning her. There’s a pattern. Every time Dorm 7 chooses a new girl… something happens in the first seventy-two hours.”
I felt my skin prickle.
“Something like what?” I managed to whisper.
Tomi glanced toward the staff building.
“You want the truth?” she asked.
I nodded slowly.
“Meet me behind the computer lab after prep. 7:30pm. Come alone.”
“Why alone?” Rita snapped.
Tomi’s eyes turned cold for the first time.
“Because some things in that dorm don’t like crowds.”
The assembly bell rang loudly, making everyone jump. Girls started moving into lines. Teachers walked in with their books.
Tomi closed her notebook sharply.
“Don’t be late,” she whispered, already walking away.
I watched her disappear into the senior section, her badge glinting in the sun.
Rita leaned close and whispered:
“Hallie… I don’t like this.”
I didn’t either.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Tomi — weird, serious, prefect-in-training Tomi — knew something no one else dared to say.
And whatever it was…
It was waiting for me at 7:30.
Assembly didn’t feel like assembly anymore. The sun was too bright, the dust too stubborn, and every teacher’s voice blended into one long echo I couldn’t focus on. I kept shifting my feet in the sand, my palms sweating even though the morning wasn’t that hot.
Rita kept throwing worried glances at me, nudging me gently whenever I spaced out.
“Hallie, stand straight. The principal is looking this way,” she whispered.
She wasn’t. But I nodded anyway.
My eyes drifted across the sea of students, past the prefects with their stern faces, past the teachers frowning at latecomers, past the flagpole swaying lightly…
…and straight to the senior section.
Tomi was there — tall, calm, as if assembly didn’t affect her at all. She didn’t look at me, but something in her posture felt like she was waiting for 7:30 to arrive already. Waiting to tell me something she had been holding for years.
I swallowed hard and looked away.
When the national anthem started, I sang the first line and mumbled the rest, my mind too full of questions. Every breath felt heavy.
What did Tomi know?
Why did her notebook look like evidence in a crime show?
What was that pattern she kept talking about?
And what did she mean by “Dorm 7 chooses”?
Dorms don’t choose people.
Dorms don’t whisper.
Dorms don’t move curtains without wind.
But Dorm 7 did all three.
After assembly, classes started, but I barely heard anything the teachers were saying. Every time I opened my notebook, my mind slipped back to the old file, the faded ink, the girl with my name. The picture that looked like me but… older, sadder. The written warning that felt like it travelled across twelve years just to reach my hands.
Dorm 7 never lets two Halimas stay.
I kept touching my pocket as if the folded note was still there, burning through the fabric. Rita noticed and nudged me with her elbow.
“You’re doing that face again,” she whispered during Literature class.
“What face?”
“The ‘something is following me’ face.”
I pressed my lips together. “Nothing is following me.”
“Hallie…” She leaned closer. “I know when you’re lying. Your eyes don’t blink normally.”
“My eyes blink normally.”
“They don’t. They blink like someone is controlling them with a slow remote.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed. Rita’s dramatic expressions were sometimes the only things keeping me from freaking out completely.
But even she couldn’t save me from the growing tension inside my chest. It felt like a balloon someone kept blowing air into — slowly, slowly — waiting for the perfect moment to burst.
By lunchtime, rumors had already spread faster than jollof rice in dining hall.
“I heard a girl from Dorm 7 fainted.”
“No, they said she saw something at her window.”
“My senior sister said the principal is hiding something.”
“They said a ghost is walking in the corridor—”
“A ghost that looks like a student.”
Every time the word “ghost” floated near my ear, my heartbeat stuttered.
They were talking about me.
About her.
About us.
I pretended not to hear, but the whispers crawled under my skin like ants.
Rita tried her best to block them out, pulling me to sit at a quiet corner of the dining hall. “Ignore them,” she muttered. “They’ll talk today and forget tomorrow.”
But I knew they wouldn’t forget.
Dorm 7 rumors never died.
They lived, grew, spread.
Afternoon prep came too quickly. My pen moved across the page, but none of the words entered my brain. All I could think about was the meeting.
Behind the lab.
7:30pm.
Come alone.
The phrase repeated itself like a drumbeat in my skull.
Rita watched me the entire time. At one point she whispered, “You’re not seriously going, right? Hallie, don’t follow that girl. She’s… she’s not normal.”
I looked at her.
“Do you know something about her?”
Rita’s face changed — the way someone’s face changes when a secret almost slips out. She looked down immediately, pretending to rearrange her books.
“I just… I just know she’s obsessed with that dorm,” she muttered. “And she’s not the only senior they removed from there early.”
That made something twist in my stomach. “Removed? Why?”
Rita shook her head. “Hallie, please. Don’t let her drag you into that notebook. Next thing, you’ll start seeing shapes in your locker.”
I already had.
But I didn’t say it.
When the bell finally rang for the end of prep, my heartbeat began thumping like someone knocking on a door from inside my chest.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
7:30 was closer now.
Girls packed their books noisily, their chatter filling the hall. Outside, the sky was turning orange-pink, like the world was slowly dipping into something darker.
- Writer
