RIOT: Julie and the Phantoms

Bonus Track: Home is Where My Horse is

A/N This is the end guys. The final chapter for RIOT. This wraps up the Carly storyline a little and provides some insight into what Rane and Lara did before the story starts. Hope you enjoy!

Trigger Warning: Mentions of mental health issues, and attempted die.

Carly had just ruined her entire life. She realized this when she watched her ex-girlfriend get carried out on a gurney. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was just supposed to get a little food poisoning, just enough to make her sick. She wasn't supposed to have to be taken to the hospital.

Carly knew she had really ruined her life when she saw the headlines. 'Young Star Dead.' 'Rockstar killed by food poisoning.' 'Lead singer of RIOT dead.' It wasn't supposed to happen like that. The band was just supposed to get too sick to perform, no one was supposed to die.

Carly just wanted them to pay for kicking her out, not die. And, okay, maybe only one of them died, but that was still one too many. So, Carly knew what she had to do next. She had to tell someone, and she did. She told her dad, but he just told her to hide it. He told her to never speak of it, and she did. Until this morning. Six months had passed since that night, and Carly just couldn't hold it in any longer. Carly Wilson had killed Daisy Patterson, on accident.

That's how she found herself sitting on the uncomfortable bed in a cell. A jail cell that is. They had arrested her right on the spot when she walked into the police station and told them. She tried to tell them it was an accident, but no one cared. They called it 'Involuntary Manslaughter.' But some people didn't believe it was an accident, including the two other bandmates.

Rane and Lara were furious. To find out their best friend had been murdered, and for what? Payback? They watched from seats in court as the judge ruled Carly mentally unstable at the time of the accident. So, rather than prison time, Carly got time in the psych ward. It wasn't what Rane and Lara had hoped for, but at least it was something.

The story had been all over the news. It was talked about for ages, all the way up until graduation day. Rane and Lara walked the stage that spring without their best friend, and Carly got her diploma delivered. They let Carly finish her senior year at the psych ward, but she wasn't even allowed back on the high school campus.

After graduation, Rane got kicked out for good. When Daisy had died, they moved back in with their parents, even though Daisy's offered for them to stay. This ultimately led to Rane's hospitalization a year later.

Lara tried her best to be there for her friend, but while she still lived with her parents they wouldn't let Rane move in. When Lara and Rane started college that fall, they roomed together. It had been their pact for as long as both of them could remember, just Daisy wasn't there for it.

It was the spring of 2019 when things really fell apart. Rane had been shut off for a while, but then Lara came home to find them unresponsive on the bathroom floor. It was like that night all over again. Lara thought she was going to lose another best friend, and she sobbed while calling an ambulance.

Rane was admitted to the hospital the next day. And they'd three times before the last. Around mid-summer that year, Rane began feeling a presence near. They weren't sure what it was, but when they told Lara she admitted to feeling it too. Every day for over a year they felt this presence, and it felt comforting. They knew exactly what, or who it was, and they were okay with that.