𝚂𝚄𝙿𝙴𝚁𝚄𝙽𝙺𝙽𝙾𝚆𝙽 ✩ ɢʀᴜɴɢᴇ

𝚡𝚡𝚡𝚒𝚒𝚒. 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚊𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚝𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎

i was going to just jump into the content, but if anyone at all is going to read this, i feel i need to say something. hey, guys. i guess i did it. i became the author of an incomplete story where you desperately go to see when it was last updated in the hopes that it wasn't too long ago, only to find it's been ages and the story's likely been abandoned. i honestly flat-out REFUSE to believe that it's been close to two years since i stopped writing this story. the date has to be wrong. so does the 'first published' date. i mean, 2019? i was still in high school when i started this! with in person classes and everything! for a few weeks there i was updating every 2-5 days. i have not been blessed with such inspiration since.

it's just crazy. everything is. i started writing this because i wanted a little world my best friend and i could exist in together, our (sort-of) version of a utopia in which record stores and duct-taped boots and young pre-fame rock superstars were staples in our lives. i was alex and she was charlie, and we took on the world together and we shared a shithole apartment and we laughed and cried and then suddenly it wasn't we anymore. it was they and these characters ran away from me and did things i didn't want them to and i mean...in my head, their world is real. i can see certain scenes of the book so clearly. i know their apartment like the back of my hand and i know how long it takes to walk to joey's and i remember being at each party and i remember wishing i could hand my friends tissues when they cried. the snowy nights and pink sunsets...

anyway, welcome to the final chapter of superunknown. i wrote most of it two years ago but just barely found the momentum to edit and post it. i hope it doesn't let you down.

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Still beautiful, Alex noted as they drove into Montana the next day. The first time she'd passed through it on her way to Seattle had been with her mom and she'd been so miserable she'd barely noticed its beauty before looking away, and the second time she'd been so depressed about leaving Seattle that she hadn't bothered to look at all. Now she held her head up with her eyes wide open out of fear she might miss something. She took way too many pictures—of the view, of Charlie driving, of the diner they stopped to eat at, of the food, of Charlie as she tried to eat in peace, of herself and Charlie still just trying to eat in peace...

"You're going to run out of film," Charlie said.

"This is my last one," Alex replied as the held the camera up and took a picture of Charlie again. "I think you blinked."

"I hope I did. I'm gonna start blinking on purpose when you have that out."

"I'll get more film and take a million more until I get one where you're not."

"Sure you will. Anyway, you're out of film for the time being, so I'm safe."

Alex looked her square in the face and blinked hard. "Mental pictures. You didn't blink that time. Nice."

Charlie picked up her mug of tea and sipped from it to hide a smile. "I hate you," she said as she put it back down.

"Aw, I hate you too. Anyway, I think we'll be in Seattle either tonight or early tomorrow. You excited to get home to your parents ready to kill you?"

Charlie laughed. "Oh, yeah." She pushed Alex's coffee mug into her hand and when Alex lifted it and added a thumbs-up with her other hand blinked hard at her. "Worth it."

"Sure it was. Move out. Rent a probably really shitty apartment. Be roommates with me of all people. Yeah, I don't know."

"Shut up. It was my idea and I genuinely really wanna do it. You better not back out on me."