Stairways | A Surviving Summer FanFiction

Part 93 - Disgrace

A/N: I'm sorry if this next chapter seems a little rushed or unedited, I'm currently writing this on a bus to London with my class, but we're stuck in traffic and might be here for a while lol 😂. But then again, this chapter is double the number of words I normally do, so hopefully that makes up for it.

Phoebe x

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You and Summer are in the back of a taxi, back in Victoria now. 

Between packing, and your flight getting slightly delayed, it's now nearly ten o'clock, and Summer is dozing against the window on the other side of you.

Wrens phone feels like a brick as it weighs down your pocket, and you don't know what the hell you're going to do. 

You took it out of your pocket at security in the airport and placed it alongside yours in one of the trays, which to them, obviously didn't look at all suspicious, but the guilt you felt after you picked it up again on the other side was unmatched. 

How on earth are you going to give it back to Wren without telling her that you were in her room? As if she didn't have enough of a grudge against you in the first place. 

It's only a half hour drive from the airport to Shorehaven, and thankfully Subtropix paid for a taxi, otherwise you doubt your mum's mood would benefit from having to pick you up at ten in the evening from the airport, coming home from a professional photoshoot disgraced and probably blacklisted from ever doing a Subtropix shoot again.  

It'll be time to face the music soon, though, as you begin to recognise way the roads curve with the coastline as you drive along the clifftops.

"Summer." you nudge her, and her eyes open slightly as she gets her bearings, glancing out the window at the darkened sky. 

"Are we here already?" she asks quietly, and you nod.

"We're nearly at my place."

"Excited?" she mumbles, her eyes closing again as she leans back down against the window.

"For what?"

"To be grounded for life?" She responds. Don't worry. Margot will be exactly the same."

There's a tiny hope that your mum might believe your side of the story, that you spent all evening hanging out with Summer and not trashing a photographer's room. But that's wishful thinking – the odds are stacked against you if she believes there was enough evidence for Subtropix to put you on the next flight home.

"I wonder how the shoot went today." you say, thinking of the others out in the water as you were in your room packing your bags for home. 

"Who cares? Stop thinking about it, Y/n. It'll only make you mad."

"You do realise neither of us were actually sponsored by Subtropix. We didn't have a contract, which means they're probably never going to hire either of us for anything ever again."

"Plenty of other sponsors in the sea." Her eyes have closed again as she leans against the cool glass.

"But there's not, Summer," you reply. "Wren's fucked our chances."

"I know..." Summer seems like she's about to say something, but trails off, and you realise she's fallen asleep again, just as the taxi pulls up outside your house. 

The darkness does nothing for your mood as you stumble your way along the pitch-black garden path to the front door.

The light's on in the kitchen, which means your mum is awake, and sure enough, she's perched on a stool at the kitchen island on her phone in her pyjamas - she must have waited up for you.