The Naked Truth [Ryden]

Twenty-five: Sarah

Sarah was once the girl with the unpronounceable surname and the addiction to knee-high socks, and she was once unfortunate enough to attend high school with Brendon Urie, whom she caught making out with her boyfriend at the back of French class one time. She'd be on her deathbed and still not understand how or why she ever dated him, but to date she was his first and only girlfriend, and she was secretly proud of that.

Back in high school, her sophomore year especially, she had her long hair in weird plaits and wore stupid tartan skirts and tried so hard to look like that cool senior named Lindsey that everyone loved, but then Lindsey noticed and they got into a fight and she realised that Lindsey was just a shallow bitch so she ditched the look completely. She became an odd goth/grunge girl, got herself a cute boyfriend, and watched her relationship fall apart around her.

It wasn't even as if she'd ever had a crush on Brendon Urie; he was just some vaguely attractive kid in her year that made out with people way too often and spent most of his time on the lap of some artsy kid, smoking what was most likely weed. But one day he'd said 'let's date', and she'd shrugged and said 'okay', because what else was there to do?

And now, walking down the hospital corridors with an arm around his shoulders as he sobbed, she found herself reliving those moments. Their first kiss, in a tree behind his house. Their first time having sex (by then, they were most definitely not virgins), in the basement of her house, directly below where her overprotective, asshole father sat watching hockey. All of the weird and crazy shit they did, the shoplifting, the alcohol, the drugs, oh the first time they smoked weed together they broke into someone's garden and passed out in the bushes, half-naked and not a care in the world.

Sarah often wished she could go back to those moments. Back to when she was sixteen, back to when she was seventeen. Back to before Spencer, before Dallon, before Ryan. Back to before she caught Brendon with Spencer at the movies and didn't realise that Brendon might actually not be straight at all. Back to when things made sense.

Because Brendon wasn't making sense now; he was sobbing as they sat down on a bench not too far from the hospital, mumbling something unintelligible about Dallon and Spencer and everybody dying. She hoped that that wasn't the case.

"Well if everyone's dying, Bren, then maybe you should breathe and, like, not die?" She said, and he hiccuped before looking up at her, tears clinging to his eyelashes.

"Why are you here?" He choked out, and she closed her eyes, asking herself the same question.

"Ryan called. He figured you were still mad about what happened, though I've no idea what happened, and...yeah."

He sniffed, shaking his head. "Everything's gone to shit. I don't even know what to do anymore."

There was once a time when Sarah thought that Brendon was fearless. He did all this stupid shit and she never questioned anything, because it made him smile. He was never scared. He once took these stupid little pills just before a math exam. He once had sex with her on a teacher's desk. He once spray-painted dicks all over some guy's house after he'd leered at her. She didn't care. She thought that she was just as messed up as he was. But that was never the case.

"Ryan and I were supposed to leave town." He said, his hands shaking, his voice dull. "We were gonna like run away together. It was gonna be fun." He looked down at his hands, biting his lower lip. "I don't think I wanna do that now."

"You're stubborn and selfish, you know that, right?"

"For a start, you can stop fucking crying." She snapped, and he scowled at her, attempting to wipe away his tears. "And second, you should really evaluate your life choices."