Wintercrest Academy

Hello, stranger

The house is dark and lonely, just like it always is. The cook had stocked up on food, the housekeeper had ensured everywhere was spotless and clean, without the slightest speck of dust. The gardener’s doing a pretty great job with the flowers and plants. But her parents had not remembered to hire someone who would keep their daughter company while they were away on the numerous, unending business trips they always went for.

“Woah! Cool house!” Markus, Michael? (She doesn’t remember which) says as he takes in the house.

“Thanks,” she nods, following his eyes as he looks, taking in everything like a child whose been taken to Disneyland for the first time.

“Your parents must be very boxed up, right?”

Astrid shrugs and starts heading towards the kitchen. “They’re normal parents. You want water? Coffee? Juice?” She asks him and he shakes his head. He then points and when Astrid follows the direction of his fingers . . .

“Wine? Uhm . . .like I told you, I’m 16 so . . .you know.”

“I wouldn’t take anything strong. No worries. Plus, you don’t have to drink it with me.”

Astrid snorts and walks over to take wine out of the wine bar. “I don’t take orders from you.” She fetches two wine glasses and stands awkwardly. This is the part when hey go upstairs and to her room.

“Cool. So, where’s the studio.”

“Follow me.” Astrid instructs and musters up the courage to go up the stairs and into her room with a complete stranger. A stranger whose name she couldn’t even remember.

“Even your studio is cool.”

“This isn’t my studio,” Astrid says, shrugging off her jacket and dumping it on one of her chairs. The stranger follows suite. “This is my room. Where I paint. I abandoned my studio because I get more inspiration in my room. So . . .tada.”

The stranger grins and Astrid notices just then how green his eyes are. How the light in her room makes then glint. How somehow, his eyes make his smile brighter.

“Coo. Let’s get to work then?”

Astrid turns on music while the stranger pours them some wine. They start to paint, the objects of their art unknown to one another. They drunk wine, paint and swerve their body to the music once in a while. They carry on like that for hours and when Astrid checks the clock.

“s**t. It’s 2:37am!”

The stranger looks up at the clock too. “Well, s**t,” he says and they both burst out laughing. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Astrid turns her board over to him and he gapes in pure awe. “What do you think?”

“That is . . .so cool. It’s two people, connected physically but not by heart, right?”

Astrid nods. “Totally.” And when he says ‘cool’ again, Astrid wonders if that’s the only adjective in his vocabulary.

“Yours?” she asks and he shows her. He’s painted a house falling apart, but they’re two people inside sleeping quietly. Wow. That’s deep, Astrid thinks to herself even though she can’t really read meaning into it right now. Her mind is clouded with wine, and a hint of tiredness.

“Cool,” she remarks. “I shouldn’t be up this late on a school night.” She gathers her brushes together while Michael does the same.

“Mmhmm. You should totally be asleep.”

Astrid nods and the two of them stand, facing each other directly. “Well, what about you? How are you going to get a text by this time?”

He shrugs. “I could stay here. Leave when it’s getting bright out.”

Bad decision. Definitely a bad decision. She doesn’t know him. They only met at a cinema and sparked up a conversation because she’d seen his art tools. She then invited him over to see her own tools, which was probably a bad idea, thinking about it in retrospect.

But she’s been by herself for 3 months. Her parents only came in for a week after they’d left 5 months ago. A little company—even though strange— would hurt.

“The guest room’s the last one at the left. Everything you’d need is in there.”

“Cool,” he says and starts to leave. He turns back abruptly. “How about another glass, before we go to bed.”

“Okay,” Astrid agrees and one glass, becomes two, and then they’re four bottles down, talking and giggling about random stuff.

“How old are you?” Astrid asks.

Markus heaves (she figured his name out when he was telling a story of his childhood.) “Promise you won’t freak out?” she promises. “22.”

She gasps extra dramatically, all thanks to the wine. “You’re seven years older than me.”

“Seven?” he squints and scratches his chin. “I think it’s eight.”

“Is it? Wow. I’m really bad at math.”

“Me too,” he shifts to face her and they start laughing. “You have a pretty face.”

Blood rushes up to Astrid’s ears and her heart rate increases. “You have a prettier face. And prettier eyes. But an ugly nose.”

Markus chokes out a short laugh. “My nose is perfect. Thank you.”

“No way. It looks like . . .weird poop,” Astrid says and flicks at the nose. Markus does same. They flick and flick like that until Mark flicks her lips and leaves his fingers there. He starts tracing the outline of her lips and Astrid feels goosebumps rush up her skin. Should she be lying in bed like this with a 22-year-old? Especially one that she just met some hours ago.

“Markus,” she whispers, and the sound of her voice is pushed back in as Markus presses his full lips onto hers. She doesn’t do anything. Just lays there as he kisses her lower lip, upper lip, both of them together.

“Can I stay here instead? Truth is, I’m scared of sleeping alone?”

“Me too,” she says. Because she’s not just scared of sleeping alone. She’s scared of being alone. She fears that one day, she’d die by herself, with no one to look for her. No one to remember her. And so she lets Markus’s alone lips collide with her alone lips, and till this day, Astrid does not remember how long that night lasted for. All she remembers is that it reminds her so much of the painting she made that night: two people connected physically, but not by heart.

Maybe she thought their individual loneliness would merge and provide one big company for the both of them. But she was 16 at the time. Grossly naïve and foolish. And the 22-year-old she had let into her parent’s house and into her bed, she never saw him again.