Sarah Joy Blaine

Chapter 4 - Silk stuffed stalls.

I was – as they say – rooted in place. My feet held down with two chunky cinderblocks, sitting right on the threshold of my cousin's room. Perhaps it was the fact that she was not here to welcome me into her personal space - I felt that if I did enter into her room then I would be invading into a space that I was never meant to see. I know it would be different if Sarah were still alive; but that also begged the question, how much did it really matter if she was dead?

The conversation inside the room faltered. Flynn – upon noticing my statuesque state – walked in first. His elbow lightly brushing against mine, pulling me forward and into the room with him.

"Who was it?" A voice from inside the room questioned.

"You know Jenny Cooper?" I hear Flynn reply with his own question.

I was enough into the room to see who had asked the question, and her response to Flynn. A girl with a raised eyebrow sat in a suede couch across the room. The big window behind her made her platinum blonde hair look almost transparent. She was looking right at me, then at Flynn with her expression that seemed to say 'that's not Jenny Cooper.'

"Right well it was Jenny but then Sarah Grace came up for her, and I asked her to join us." Flynn continues; he's still standing next to me, like a man having his actions and words on trial before deciding it would be safe for him to sit, or to lead me out the same way he invited me in.

I didn't allow myself to take in the rest of the room, I kept my eyes respectfully on the girl who seemed to be taking me in.

"Remember you said you wanted to meet her Astrid?" Flynn changes his route to the girl sitting next to the blonde. I hadn't taken her in earlier, but her head rests on the shoulder of the blonde, and arm slung over her shoulder keeps her in place. She was the same girl I had seen in the front row at the funeral.

I should leave. I should abandon all social etiquette and decorum and just turn around and walk away without saying another word. I should have ran the minute Flynn even mentioned me walking into this room. This was a room of friends in mourning, and I genuinely had no place here. Flynn's instincts were way off, I didn't know that before - but I knew now.

The blonde looked from me to the clueless boy still standing next to me, blinking in a pattern I suspected was her hopelessly trying to ask him what the hell was wrong with him. When we made eye-contact again, an understanding seemed to pass between the two of us, she glanced down at Astrid beside her.

"Actually I think I hear someone calling me." I have admittedly had worse ideas. Flynn's head whips to me, "Downstairs." I continue, "I should go see if they need anything."

"I didn't hear anything." My attention is pulled to the bed on my right. Eli is seated up against the headboard, completely at ease. His one leg is crossed loosely over the other at his ankles, his head is rolled onto its side. His curls relent under the pressure and weight of his head. His hands rest comfortably, folded together on top of his stomach. His posture is one of someone in a therapist's office, on a therapist's couch; but he's looking at me – amused.

Another boy off to my left snickers. He's sitting on a swivel chair at a desk that's pushed up against a thick pillar of a wall, with doors on either side. All pairs of eyes are on me, and I feel like a scared child in the middle of the forest, the trees lighting up with unknown glowing orbs that inspect me hungrily. We don't usually associate animals of prey with anger; but that's definitely what I felt when considering my prospects, being outnumbered - and as it would seem - outrun.

But none of them had brought me into this room to be circled by the pride, Flynn had - and as I had just discovered – he was foolish. I feel myself smile lightly, looking at Astrid. She was the least threatening in the sense that she was hunched over and resting on another; and yet she was placed in the center of the room, like a diamond snugly protected by its metal prongs.