Moonlight Kisses

when panic sets in

tw: harassment

Going through the motions...it's something almost every teenager has done at some point in their lives. Whether it be for days or weeks at a time, there always comes a day where you feel like you're running on auto-pilot. Your consciousness has decided to step away from the control panel to go on a nice stroll in the park, leaving the rest of your mind to take care of business. A stroll becomes a walk. A walk becomes a drive. And before you know it, you've been running on empty for days now and it's only a matter of time before your mind kicks into overdrive, thinking that it's all on its own.

I absentmindedly pick pieces of my sandwich apart. Bread crumbs litter my tray, along with the pieces of carrots I broke up minutes ago. My ears attune to the conversation my friends are having, but my mind is in a completely different realm. Everything goes in one ear and out the other. What a stellar friend I am, I'm aware. "Okay so what I was thinking was we could go to that cute little yogurt place across the street from that run-down cinema, you know the one?" Adelaide offers. She's the first one to toss out a suggestion out of the four of us. Each of us are all extremely indecisive when it comes to what we do want, but surely we always know what it is that we don't want.

Both Sophie and Veronica scrunch up their noses, indicating their disgust. They erupt in protest and shake their heads. "No, no, not yogurt. I want food," Veronica emphasizes, especially the word 'food'. Out of all four of us Veronica eats the most because she has to keep her sugar level at a maintained balance. If anyone should get a say, it should be us three because even though all have decent food on our trays, none of us have taken a single bite of it.

The amount of things you notice when you're not talking all that much are astronomical.

"Okay, well I'm just putting something out there, losers," Adelaide grumbles. She tosses a pretzel at Veronica, who was the first one to audibly object. She takes it in stride and playfully tosses it back to Adelaide. The lone pretzel falls into her lap.

Sophie hums in thought. I won't look at her, but I'll listen to her intently. It's been like that recently, ever since Leo's first pass at me being on her behalf, I haven't exactly been able to look at my best friend the same as I used to. My love for her hasn't faltered or diminished in the slightest. If anything, I want to be there for her, now more than ever. When I saw Leo's true colors, the first person that came to my mind was Sophie. If he had no shame in treating me the way he didn, there's no telling if he was or wasn't the same way with her. I've been dying to ask her about it, but I couldn't do so without reliving an experience I don't want to have in my head to begin with. The last thing I want is to compare our experiences with the same fucking asshole.

Her eyes go bright with an idea. The other girls turn to her, expecting a proposal. "What if we go to that one burger joint that we went to for your birthday?" she points right at Veronica, cocking her brow in persuasion.

Their eyes go wide with realization. "Wait, that's actually really good!" Adelaide squeals, almost shocked that Sophie came up with the idea.

They start to go more into depth about the plan for later on today. We're all supposed to go out for our last day of school. Except when it was originally planned, we only accounted for Sophie, Kat, me, and the rest of our fairly small group. However, since the start of the new semester, our group has expanded quite a bit. Gains and losses all around, from boys to girls, to new partners and ex-friends that have since been iced out, our group has fluctuated quite a bit. I'm not sure exactly who's going. Perhaps if I paid a little more attention when they were discussing who they'd be going with, I'd know a bit more.

But like countless times this week, I space out with no awareness in my mind to stop me.

"There's no need to cry, babe, I won't hurt you that bad," he said. A lie, a fucking lie. I saw it in his eyes and his demeanor and the aggressive way he grabbed me out of sight just now. He wants to hurt. He wants to leave a lasting mark on me so that I could never forget...