BAD OMENS ✬ luke hemmings

5.3 | spiralling

Aria has been driving herself mad this week.

Perhaps it is due to the impending pressure she will experience in the next month and a half, with her last weeks of high school quickly approaching, the disappointment that final exams will inevitably provide, or the fact that she'd gotten rejected from almost half the universities she's applied to. She doesn't expect much, but they've hit her ego hard.

Lord knows what will happen when she sees her final grades.

Not to mention, she still hasn't fully resolved things with Michael. He's obviously still petty about her 'holier than thou' speech, which brings her to the root cause of her recent spiralling: Sade. Of course, Sade has done nothing wrong. Still, now that Aria spends a lot of time with the other girl – bathroom sessions, getting high after school, and making stupid diagrams or lists during math class – the urge to spill all her secrets, especially the ones about Luke, gets stronger every day.

She has been so close to pulling Sade away and telling her best friend about Luke – and how he makes her want to hit her head against the wall or crash into a ravine and end it all. Aria wants to tell Sade all about the Polaroids, every moment during their short-lived detentions that had her screaming into her pillow, and, worst of all, their shared playlist on Spotify.

And with their stupid 'senior campout' coming up, Aria knows that between the mixed liquor, she will pack into her water bottle and the small tent she's sharing with Sade, she won't be able to stop opening her big mouth and thriving on childish gossip.

That's the problem, her stupid big mouth and inability to keep her secret.

It doesn't help that Calum takes every chance to ask about Luke and talk about the blond. Aria, understandably, shuts the guy down each time because she doesn't like what Calum keeps trying to imply—not that he's entirely wrong; she just doesn't want to admit it yet. If it were anyone but Calum, maybe she'd be open to it, but God knows that boy is the worst person to confide in.

Maybe the girl is too in over her head about it all. Perhaps she's being unnecessarily dramatic and naive. Still, it all feels oddly hypocritical– for her to be one of those people who becomes friends with someone she actively hated. In hindsight, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but in a small school where everyone knows everything about each other, it's like the end of the world.

She sits in the library, tucked away in her – and Michael's, she guesses – little corner on the upstairs level, hidden behind the shelves of books sprawled on the musty ass couch that has never been cleaned. Her laptop opens, split screen, as she tries to finish typing her revision notes – but obviously, her mind remains restless.

Thanks to the recent email and update from one of the universities she applied to – in the United Kingdom – her mental capability had flown out the window. Another rejection from a place she didn't even want to go to! Still, she hoped there was a slim chance they'd accept her anyway, considering she's an international student.

Usually, she would rant about with Michael—maybe cry, who knows? But the guy is off making up a test he missed the other day—maybe geography? She doesn't exactly remember that conversation, though. She remembers staring across the courtyard at Luke, who was getting teased by the girls.

She does that a lot now– staring.

No! The point is that she's alone in the library, with nothing other than her depressing laptop screen, as some rap song plays loudly in her ears instead of shit-talking or making plans after school with Michael. Even if she and Michael are still in a cold war, he's still her best friend and would know all the wrong – yet right – words to say about the pile of rejection letters she keeps receiving.