in which;
twenty year old pippa doves attends her very first taylor swift concert and comes away with a little more than she bargained for.
gracie abrams never thought in a million years that she would ever meet somebody who could break her heart r...
If she ran to the basement, Charlotte would be sure to hear her steps down the stairs. But there were many places to hide down there, like behind the minibar or under the clothed pool table. It was also dark, which would make her harder to find. If she ran to the treehouse, Pippa would have to first leave her current hiding spot and run for the side door to the backyard, but Charlotte was highly unlikely to even consider going to look for her up there. Running outside would also be quieter, and since the sun was setting, Pippa was convinced she could do it discreetly.
And so, like always, Pippa ran.
Hearing the approaching footsteps of Charlotte's boots on the floor, Pippa opened and closed the side door of the house with much care, gently letting the lock click back into place as silently as possible. She ran down the stairs of the deck, gasping for air as the soles of her shoes touched the grass in the backyard. Pippa stuck as close to the edge of the house as possible, ensuring her body was out of Charlotte's possible line of vision from the back room, which Pippa had never hated more for being made almost entirely out of glass. Once she reached the point of the house that was closest to the old oak tree outside her childhood bedroom window, she sprinted the fastest her little legs had ever taken her.
Pippa climbed up the shaky rope ladder attached to the back of the tree with bated breath, she hadn't been up to the treehouse since she was a little kid so she wasn't even sure if it could support her weight. Half expecting to fall with each foot that she climbed, Pippa let out a heavy sigh of relief as she felt the old wooden floorboards of the treehouse beneath her feet. She collapsed to her hands and knees, exhausted and heaving from both fear and exertion. She crawled to the window of the treehouse that overlooked the back room of the house, noticing that Charlotte was no longer in the room.
It occurred to Pippa that once Charlotte realized that it wasn't Patrick's phone that was ringing, she would grow to be even more suspicious. Pippa didn't know what to do. Leaning against the beat up makeshift couch inside the treehouse that she had made out of cardboard boxes and excess fabric from her mother's projects when she was ten, Pippa buried her face in her knees and broke down.
She cried because she was scared and she was sick of always feeling scared. She cried because it wasn't fair that she always had to run faster and faster to escape from her past. She cried because she felt weak, like she couldn't deal with all of her baggage on her own so she had to burden the people around her. She cried because even though she said horrible things to her, Gracie still cared enough to call when she knew Pippa needed her, albeit a little unfortunate in terms of timing. She cried because Gracie knew she needed her in the first place. She cried because she wanted a hug from her mom.
It didn't help that she was sitting in a place that was filled with the fondest of her childhood memories, the very walls being an essence of her father's now lacking love for the innocent version of herself. The walls of the treehouse were littered with old drawings the man had made in his younger years, paintings of Pippa's favorite Disney princesses and cats and dogs and unicorns. Storybooks she used to make her mom read to her before bed were organized neatly in a shelf by the window, next to the tiny little desk Pippa used to spend an ungodly amount of time at. One of her old journals, though covered in dust, still resided atop it. An empty candy wrapper was glued to the page that it was opened to.
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Pippa remembered the day she wrote that journal entry like it was yesterday. It was the day before she found out that her life was going to be ripped to shreds. It was the day before her mother told her that she had stage three brain cancer and there was nothing much the doctors could do. Pippa didn't know what it meant at the time. She wished she never found out.
Pippa hadn't eaten a Snickers bar since that night, nor had she touched a journal. Everything in her life fell out of sorts from that day, nothing was normal. She watched as her mother withered away, both from the disease she was carrying and the treatment for said disease. She watched as her father spiraled deeper and deeper into sadness, consumed by what he knew was coming, the death of his beloved wife. She watched as her brother came home later and later each day, not knowing where he was or who he was with all the time when he used to spent every waking hour doting over his little sister. She watched as her father found it harder and harder to look her in the eye, every feature on her face a direct mirrored image of her mother's younger, healthy self.
Somehow, Pippa thought everything was her fault. Like by writing what she felt in her journal, she had willed all the bad thoughts into existence. She wished every night before she went to bed that she would wake up the next day, and it would be the morning of her eleventh birthday again and she could redo the whole day all over again, making a conscious effort to not write in her journal that night. Perhaps things would be different.
As Pippa looked around the now claustrophobic landscape of what used to be her favorite place, a fresh wave of tears burned the back of her eyes, and she found herself pulling out her phone to dial an all too familiar number. The line didn't even get the chance to ring once before it was picked up.
"Bird! Oh thank god you're okay, I was just trying to call you to tell you-"
"Where are you right now? I-I need you, Gray, please."
-✫★✫-
hello my lovelies!
if you skimmed the journal entry i hate you because i got a hand cramp from writing that (jk i could never hate any of you)
tell me what gave me the confidence to think i could build the entirety of pippas childhood home in one night because just no
