The paper girl

It was in one of those villages where houses stood at least a quarter of a mile apart. To get to most of them you had to walk down a long, dark, dirt foot path before you could even reach most of the doors. In the middle of the village stood an old small white house, it was so old most of the white paint had started to strip off the sides to reveal the naked bricks underneath. Inside, the damp had become such a problem you had to really push the front door to open it, it was so old the bottom had absorbed so much rain over the years it had expanded and made the door stick. Up the short but steep staircase and to the left was her room, Rosa’s room, she was only 15 and it seemed like the worst thing in the world for her to be so young and living in such a quiet village. She did normal teenage stuff, she went to school, she had a paper-round, she did her homework in her room alone like any other anti-social teenager.

That morning after snoozing her alarm 5 times she finally woke up at 8 A.M, finally the realisation kicked in that she would miss her bus to school if she didn’t get moving. She threw on the first thing she could find, usually her black jeans and some old t-shirt with some movie logo printed on the front, she barely even stopped to brush her hair, just lightly combed through it with her hands. She unlatched the old-fashioned door to her room and made her way down the steep stairs, even though the stairs were so steep she never slipped, she had almost become an expert at rushing down those stairs. The living room was at the bottom of the stairs, it was also small with two dark green two-seater sofas opposite each other on either side of the television.

Rosa walked straight through the living room and into the kitchen, she wished her mother had been in the kitchen to prepare breakfast or at lease stock the cupboards with something she could eat for breakfast, but her parents were rarely home. In fact, her mother, Genevieve, had her when she was 44 years old, add 15 years that made her mother 59, her father, Robert, was 3 years older than her mother, that makes him 62. Apart from being a little on the older side and living in a small village mostly populated by retired people, her parents were very religious, they were Jehovah’s witnesses. Rosa wasn’t religious at all anymore which majorly disappointed her parents but that wasn’t why they weren’t home that morning, they were out doing the thing Jehovah’s witnesses do, knocking on doors trying to convert people. Rosa wasn’t the type of teenager to care about makeup, she skipped makeup most morning unless of course it was a special occasion. She grabbed her shoes from the entranceway and sat on the stone step next to the front door, proceeding to tie her laces. She grabbed her backpack off the coat-hook near the front door, slung it onto her back and headed out of the door.

She only had to walk a quarter of a mile down the road to get to the bus stop, there were no pavements in the village and there was no clear indication that the bus stop was a bus stop, everyone just grouped there so the school bus knew where to stop, this was the only bus stop in the whole village. The small group of high schoolers in the village consisted of Tilly, a short south-African girl who had just moved here, god knows why she would want to move to such an empty village full of old people but she was the only one of the group at the bus stop Rosa would consider a friend, she wasn’t loud or covered in makeup like the others. There was also Ray, he had dark curly hair and dressed very femininely, he was an aspiring artist and very opinionated, but he wasn’t loud or overly talkative, so Rosa liked him. Mary and Lucy weren’t related at all but they looked very similar because of their aesthetic, Mary had brown hair, Lucy had blonde but they wore it the same and it was the same length give or take an inch, they both wore the same make-up brands and wore the same colour lipstick. The bus came rushing to the corner where we all stood and we all got on the bus one by one, since it was just the bus to fetch the village kids we didn’t need to show ID because the driver already knew all of us. Mary and Lucy went straight to the back of the bus, straight to flirting with the boys and straight to talking as loudly and as obnoxiously as they could. Rosa quickly put her earphones in her ears and blasted her music loud enough to drown out the loud noises of the back of the bus.

Around half an hour later the bus arrived in the lay-by outside the high school, it wasn’t a small nor a large school, the whole place was surrounded by a green metal fence, but the layout nor the buildings of the school were important, Rosa’s anxiety didn’t care where she was, it would always lead to feeling overwhelmed and disappointed by other people, sometimes she even wondered if her brain was wired correctly. She stood to get off the bus, keeping quiet and to herself she waited for everyone to pass before she got off. Everyone else were meeting their friends in front of the school, chatting and catching up, but Rosa walked past everyone, music still blaring, she walked straight inside and to her form room for registration. She was shy and anti-social but had 3 people you might call friends, but she didn’t, she was happy though she had some distraction from her anxious thoughts. Kerri was shy too but more talkative than Rosa, she loved old fashion and had long pink hair right down to her tail bone and had cute dimples whenever she smiled showing her perfect teeth. Helen dyed each half of her hair a different colour, she looked a little Gothic but she actually loved boy pop groups, she was a little bit weird to Rosa but she was so open and perhaps this was the way Rosa found herself a part of this group, they were the only people that could accept someone with such a blank seeming personality like Rosa. Finally, maybe her ‘best friend’, Lizzy, Lizzy was so down to earth, she was easy to talk to, other than the fact Kerry and Helen seemed to be so joined at the hip that Rosa and Lizzy weren’t able to join much of the conversation. Lizzy had medium length curly blonde hair and more of the same style of clothes as Rosa, jeans and a t-shirt, she also loved pop boy bands but she kept it more to herself which was good because Rosa wasn’t big on pop bands, it was easier for Rosa and Lizzy to talk about things like school and how shitty parents were.

Registration doesn’t take long, Science dragged on like it usually does, then English then the worst of them all, Mathematics. Like many teenagers of 15, Rosa hadn’t yet found her passion in life, when school was done, she could easily have been asleep through the whole day, she may just as well have slept, she didn’t remember a thing about any of her lessons. Her ‘friends’ all left together to walk home while Rosa walked back to the bus stop outside of school, she had finished her last lesson a little early, she might hate her lessons but she hated waiting for the bus with the village group out in the cold even more. The little village bus was always the last to arrive. Rosa stood there being taunted by the other villagers, well Rosa thought of it as taunting, they may have just been trying to make conversation but they were giggling to themselves which made it seem sarcastic, even if it had been normal conversation it would have felt like an inconvenience to Rosa, she hated small talk even more than she hated waiting in the cold.

40 minutes or so later Rosa arrived back at the bus stop in her little village, hurrying off the bus she walked straight down the dark footpath to her little white house. Her parents were still not home, she was unaware of it, but they had gone back to their ‘friends’ home for tea, other members of the cult no doubt. Rosa attempted to unlock the door, but it was already unlocked. The house was quiet, until she heard a loud thump of a guitar, she loved having her house so quiet, to her it sounded like her ear was placed right in front of the amplifier. She didn’t even need to see who it was, she knew it was her brother, she had a lot of brothers but there was only one left living with them and only one that liked playing the guitar so unnecessarily loudly that it felt like the old house itself was beating just as loudly and harshly as Rosa’s heart was. She hung her backpack back on the coat hook, grabbed her paper bag and hurried back out of the door to start her paper round, she had to walk half a mile to the only shop in the whole village to pick up the papers for her paper round, it might have been a small village but when you have parents who put most of their money into their religion and couldn’t possibly afford to get their daughter a bike, doing the whole paper round on foot took a couple of hours. She walked inside, hearing the little bell on the door ring, for the first time all day she felt like she could smile, the shopkeepers in this village seemed more like parents to her than her own parents. They were a delightful old couple, Penny and Richard Walker, she was short and a little chubby, she had short grey hair and was always smiling, he was tall and muscular for his age, he had short curly grey hair and always had a cigarette in his mouth. They didn’t get a lot of business but being the only shop in the village they got by, the shelves were never fully stocked, and they didn’t have a lot of essentials, but Rosa liked it all the same. Rosa loved the couple because they were so simple and they knew small talk wasn’t Rosa’s favourite thing, they helped her put the stack of papers in her paper bag, thanked her for her hard work and told her to pick up some dinner on the way home. Rosa said a simple thanks before heading on her way. This simple thanks was enough for the couple, they may have known Rosa better than she knew herself, they had known her since she was born and knew how awkward and nervous she was with words. However, much Rosa wanted or didn’t want to talk, they were always there and happy to listen.

Many would find it boring but this was Rosa’s favourite part of the day, she plugged her earphones into her ears and made her way around each sharp corner, each dark footpath and every country lane that though it was like a maze, it made the village seem so much bigger. She made her way down a long path where there were no houses for what seemed like miles until she came upon the last house and her last paper to deliver. This last house was home to Cassie Baker, her house was the biggest in the village, she had to unlock a gate and walk along a narrow white brick path to the front door to deliver the paper. This time something seemed off, the door was wide open, and she couldn’t hear the loud, infuriating laughter of the sitcoms Mrs. Baker seemed to watch all day every day. Rosa wasn’t the type to bother herself with anything she didn’t absolutely have to but suddenly she caught a glimpse of blood on the edge of the door. She may have been a loner who didn’t like to bother herself with others, but she did feel like it was her duty in that moment to make sure no-one was really hurt. She gently pushed the door open and slowly stepped inside, nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the kitchen. “Hello?” she didn’t shout just yet but once she realised there was a knife missing from their knife holder, she started to raise her voice and rushed to the living room “Hello?!” eventually she was yelling, finding nothing in the living room she came to the stairs, placing her hand on the banister ready to climb the stairs, she then quickly had to pull her hand away, one quick look at her hand she noticed it was covered in blood. Beginning to get a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach as she tried to pull her eyes away from her hand to look at the banister, it too was covered in the same dark red as her hands. She had to spend a few seconds to steady her breathing before she started to walk up the stairs more cautiously.

Nearing the top of the stairs she had no idea where to turn, for this house had many more doors at the top of the stairs than her own little white house had. Standing at the top of the stairs she only figured out which door to open because the knob had a smudge of blood on the bottom. Rosa wanted to know if Mrs. Baker was okay but she also didn’t know at that moment what she would find in that room, she very slowly went to turn the handle and opened the door, peaking her head inside, she opened the door fully and to her shock she found the room to be completely empty, apart from the missing kitchen knife that was laying there in the middle of the room in the middle of a pool of blood. It was evident that something terrible had happened there but where was Mrs. Baker?

Rosa didn’t even know what was going through her mind anymore, she went to examine the knife, even picking it up to see if it was even real or her imagination, quickly realising It was real, she dropped the knife with a gasp and quickly scoured around looking for Mrs. Baker but she was no-where to be found. She ran back to the only people she thought could help, Mr and Mrs Walker but when she arrived, she found the tiny village shop surrounded by police cars. “Thank you for all of your help” two policeman said as they walked out of the front door, hearing that bell Rosa suddenly realised the situation she was in, she was stood in front of the shop, in front of two policeman, with someone else’s blood on her hands. She wanted to run but she was so shocked she didn’t know what to do, she just stood there shaking. As soon as the policemen turned to look at her, they both took each one of her arms and put the handcuffs on her wrists, reading her rights to silence, it all happened so quickly before she knew it she was in the back of the police car with the police men in the front ready to drive her to the station. As she later found out, Mrs. Baker’s body was found in the village river and a passer by had seen her and called the police and whilst they were leaving the village shop after asking them some questions, a teenager covered in her blood had turned up, covered in fingerprints from the house and without an alibi for the last hour other than her paper round which no-one had happened to see her on was standing right in front of them. Her eyes wide from shock, she turned to look back at the shop through the back window of the car, thinking she would see Mr and Mrs. Walker just as shocked as she was but to her surprise there they stood, both of them smiling so wide their eyes barely looked open. It was then she started to realise, who it was that had done it, it was the perfect crime.