Lover's Lake | Eddie Munson

20

Ann's coffee had went cold as she looked through the window of the wheeler's house. Karen was in the kitchen cooking as Mr. Wheeler, Holly and Max were sat at the table.

"Ann, darling. Do you want a pancake?"

The woman's voice pulled Ann out of whatever daydream she'd been in, and the girl smiled, walking over to the kitchen island.

"Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler, these look amazing. Do you mind giving me another plate? I'll give some to Max, I want her to eat something." Ann told the woman, grabbing the plate that had been handed to her

"Please, call me Karen. Do you want a fresh coffee?" Mike and Nancy's mother asked Ann as she handed her another plate with pancakes for Max. "Yours looks cold. Are you okay?"

"Oh, I'm sorry Karen. With everything going on, I think my mind's been elsewhere." Ann explained, looking at the coffee cup she'd placed on the counter not long ago. "I love hanging out with everyone, but I need to head home for a little while."

At that same moment. Nancy and Dustin burst into the kitchen, stressed. And Karen walked back to her stove to grab the pancakes that had been cooking.

"Oh! Morning guys, everything okay?" she said once she noticed the duo. "I think it's so sweet that you guys are sticking together like this, I was just talking about it to Ann." She remarked, looking at her daughter.

"Could try sticking together at a different house for a change." Ted Wheeler quipped without even looking up from his paper.

Karen rolled her eyes and turned to Dustin, who had raised his eyebrows at the man's comment. "You know you're welcome here anytime. Every one of you."

"I know, you're like family." Dustin replied sweetly, eyeing the pancakes, "may I?"

"Absolutely" Karen Wheeler responded, handing Dustin a plate. "Ann had some and gave max a plate, you can go sit down if you want."

"Yeah, why not? Take us for all we're worth." Ted once again commented, taking a sip from his coffee.

"Okay," Dustin replied, cheekily, and proceeded to stack up almost half a dozen pancakes and some bacon, as the father looked at the boy in almost disbelief.

"Ann, you said you needed to go home?" Nancy said as Ann looked at Max draw with Holly's crayons.

The girl nodded as she finished chewing on the food she'd just eaten. "Yeah. I'd just like to go home and change. Maybe just tell my parents I'm okay and Jason hasn't murdered me in the woods or something." She said, placing her plate on the table.

"If you just need to do that, I'll pass you Steve's keys and you could take his car home and then bring it back." Nancy said, "we have ours if we want to go somewhere, it fits more people."

"You know what. I think I'll take you up on that offer." Ann said, walking towards Nancy who was looking at Max's drawings, eyebrows furrowed.

"Alright, the keys are on the table downstairs. Dustin, go grab them?" Nancy asked, and the teenager nodded, shoving a piece of bacon in his mouth.

No more than a minute later, Dustin walked back up with Steve's keys and a walkie-talkie he was fiddling with.

"Here, this is a spare walkie mike had. This way, if anything happens, we can contact you, or at least try." Dustin explained, handing Ann the gray walkie. "It's not as great as my super-walkie, but it'll do the job."

****

"Mom, I told you I have things to do, places to be! I was going to go pay my respects in person." Ann said, looking at the black dress her mom was holding up.

"Ann, honestly. I don't care what you do. I just want you to do this for me now alright, you can run off to God knows where for all I care after, because obviously, you don't care about me enough to just let me know where you are."

"Mom, come on. It's not like that, I was-" Ann tried to explain to her mom she had a good reason, but the woman ignored Ann, and just handed her the dress.

"Put this on and meet me downstairs. You can go to the church in that random bloke's car, I don't want it in my driveway." Her mother added, already turning around and walking downstairs.

Ann shut her bedroom door and groaned, running her hands through her hair. She took a deep breath and slipped off the clothes she'd been wearing for almost two days now and put on the sleek simple black dress, struggling with the zipper just a little.

"I can't go back to see the others wearing this, and there's no way in hell I'm coming back here after the memorial," Ann whispered to no one in particular. "Packing a bag, then."

A whole ten minutes later, Ann was shutting the passenger side door of Steve's car shut, waiting for her mom to come back outside.

After what felt like hours, the woman came outside and gestured for Ann to get in her car, and that they were leaving. "Alright, Ann. Let us be on our way." 

*" Author's note"*

Chapter 20!!!! this is one of my worst chapters, but i'm working on writing right now, so i'll try to post more soon!

thank you for reading!!!!!