The Things We Do (Under Editing)

Out of Place

True to her word, Mel teamed up with Kacie with the goal of dragging me out of the apartment, by force if necessary. Every time I turned around, one of them had a new idea for something we could do. Honestly, I think Mel was on the verge of just stealing my keys and locking me out. Kacie only got temporarily distracted from her mission when she found a new book and wouldn't respond to anyone or anything until she finished it.

Normally, I loved how much they cared, even if it could get a bit annoying. Now, though, it was starting to go beyond annoying. Once, Mel almost caught me leaving to work on a "project" as she was coming home at 2am. She had friends and didn't have to be at work until noon, so she had an excuse. I didn't, other than detouring to make a bowl of cereal as soon as I heard her key in the door. She walked in to find me sitting on the counter, pouring milk into a bowl, with only the moonlight coming through the window to stop me from pouring it in my lap.

"Hi," I said once she had noticed me.

"Hi," she replied, still standing in the open door.

Not breaking eye contact, I reached down and opened the drawer partially blocked by my leg to pull out a spoon. She raised her eyebrows as I started shoveling cereal into my mouth with comical slowness.

"Have you been working on homework, or did you randomly wake up and decide to be a gremlin?"

I gave a noncommittal shrug and continued to eat.

Mel sighed. "Just make sure you sleep at some point."

After she'd gone to bed, I finally managed to set off on my mission. If I wasn't more careful, she was going to get caught up in my mess. I didn't like hiding things from her or Kacie, but I needed to keep them as far away from Wraith and my dealings with him as possible. I couldn't risk them getting hurt. Sadly my problems like to haunt me, and my friends were good enough to know when something was wrong.

Having failed to get me out of the apartment, my friends decided that, at the very least, be hanging out with them there. I wasn't going to complain about that.

Kacie showed up with a stack of pizzas and we started popping popcorn while Mel cleaned up from work. We were forbidden from eating anything until she joined us.

"I'm gonna smother both of you with pillows if there's any food missing when I come out!" Mel yelled at us as she disappeared into the bathroom.

Popcorn hit the closed door after both Kacie and I threw some in response. We piled food, pillows, and blankets in the living room and Kacie pulled the movie up on the TV. As always we'd each chosen a movie and were going to try to get through all of them. When it had just been Kacie and I, we'd flipped a coin to see which we watched first, but now we had to draw straws. This meant I almost always had to sit through a movie couple awkwardly staring at each other as if that was the same thing as pining or tension, but Kacie only picks those movies so that we can mock them, so it's not too bad.

We hadn't had a chance to do movie night more than a few times since I'd started doing extra credit. I was almost always too tired or too busy, and when I wasn't, one of the others was. My reactions to certain movies and scenes had been getting worse as well.

After high school, Kacie and I had worked to make a list of things the movies we chose couldn't include, but that list was expanding, and some of the things we'd managed to take off had returned to the list. I felt bad asking them to limit their options, especially since I could tell that they got more worried as the list grew. It wasn't like I could pretend things didn't bother me, though, considering the last movie night we'd had to turn off a film halfway through because I kept flinching at gunshots.