The Night Tournaments

17 - Bree (Part 1)

~ One Day Later ~

"We're getting extra butter in the popcorn," Stacie, my youngest sister, proclaimed as all three of my sisters, my parents, and I drove to the local movie theater on Sunday. We had decided to watch Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning to celebrate the end of the first month of school (which had been very hectic, at least for me), and I was looking forward to it. Some relaxing entertainment would probably do me good.

"Nooo, it tastes too sickening," Kiara objected, irritatedly tapping her foot on the floor of the car. Because, well, of course my obnoxious sisters were arguing again.

"I'm just stoked to see Tom Cruise on screen again," Skipper announced, smirking. "He's such a hottie - and no one can disagree with me."

"He's sixty-two years old," Stacie reminded her, rolling her eyes. "I mean, I'm not saying that he's not hot, but I feel like you should at least keep that in mind, Skip."

I just wiped at my window, trying to admire the city lights in the distance while listening to music at full blast. If it were up to me, I would turn on the noise cancelling on my earbuds without a second thought, but I had been screamed at by my parents far too many times for me to have the guts to repeat the same mistake. Sigh.

After we arrived at the movie theater, my sisters excitedly purchased a giant popcorn-snack-drink combo, and the six of us made our way to the IMAX theater that was screening Mission: Impossible. It was already crowded when we got there, so we had to pull off the awkward task of squeezing between everyone's legs and settling into our assigned seats.

I looked over at Skipper in the darkness as the pre-movie ads played. She had already made, like, a dozen friends at school, even though she had only been attending Seaside Heights for a month. Even without me needing to ask, she had been settling in well, not to mention that she was also one of the strongest members of the volleyball and gymnastics teams at the moment.

We all enjoyed the nearly three-hour-long action movie (ignoring the part where we had fought over the popcorn and had almost dumped the remaining contents on the heads of the people sitting in front of us) and stretched when the credits finally began rolling. I had personally really enjoyed it, because whenever it came to adventure of any sort, I was down for it.

"Wanna have pizza on the way home?" my dad asked, and my sisters cheered in agreement. I wasn't really feeling that hungry, but as always, I knew that my opinion was neither going to be heard nor paid much attention to.

As I waited for Skipper, Kiara, and Stacie to stop by the washroom before we left the movie theater, I looked around, letting my eyes wander. Flynn had shared Thea's stalker's anonymous Instagram account with me yesterday, and it had been jarring to discover that he had posted so many secret photos and videos of her. I knew that we had to stop his creepy shenanigans before they got even more out of hand, but . . . we were still stuck. We had put so many plans into action already, but none of them were working -

Wait. That boy with the light blond hair, crystal-blue eyes, and incredibly annoying smirk . . . wasn't that Felix Wainscott?!

I could see a large group of high school guys striding by from afar, talking and laughing about something amongst themselves . . . and there was no mistaking that one of them was none other than the male half of the Demonic Duo.

What was Felix doing here? I couldn't recognize any of the boys that were with him, so they probably didn't go to Seaside Heights . . . but now that I looked closely, I realized that one of them was wearing a rich maroon blazer with black piping, gold buttons, and a gold crest on it; a white dress shirt; black dress pants; a skinny black tie; and black shoes.