all i want :: s.m

1: one year later

friday ¬ january 15, 2016

They liked to call Ella Rose a mystery, sometimes a myth. Everyone in the school knew the famous story of the sudden disappearance of Ella Rose, leaving only trails of assumptions and a galore of questions unanswered. There were even some made up rumours added to the tale, which hopped around people's conversations for the first couple months of Ella's disappearance. 

"What if she was a secret spy? Like, her parents were also spies, and they were forced to move somewhere else because their identities were already exposed here?" 

"Maybe she got expelled, and the principal won't tell us the truth, and Ella was just too embarrassed to tell anyone that she got expelled." 

"What if Ella didn't move? What if she was still here, in this country, but like, she just moved houses and moved schools, and she hid herself every time she saw either one of us at the mall, or something."

Shawn hated that made up tale the most, because if Ella actually was still in the country (but just moved houses and schools), it would mean that she had lied to him again, and that she surely didn't want him anymore. Shawn didn't want another lie from Ella, because she had already reached her limit. 

She told him that she loved him, and that lie was enough. 

Shawn was never the same since the night (well technically, it was morning) of January 1st, 2015—and it's less likely that he would ever be the same again. The first months since that New Years, Shawn would often burst into tears at even the single thought of Ella, whether alone or in class, and sometimes he would be subtle about his emotional agony and cry in the shower or cry himself to sleep. He even insisted his mother to buy him new bed sheets because his current one reminded him of her.

He was ruined; she ruined him.

Even Ella's best friend, Alice, the beautiful dark-skinned girl with big hair, didn't receive a letter. Poor her; tear-stained cheeks for months. She was a close second for being miserable about Ella's abrupt leaving, Shawn obviously being the first. 

Initially, Shawn was at denial the morning he woke up, a brand new year. He washed his face (his eye bags were dreadful), making himself look like he hasn't cried himself to sleep on the washroom floor, fetus position, with the ripped pieces of paper scattered around him. 

After eating a small breakfast, he drove to Ella's old house just to check if Ella had been lying to him (he wished she was lying), and that she actually hasn't moved out of her house, out of the country, out of his life. 

But there was no car parked on the drive like there always was. And the 'FOR SALE' sign hammered on the front lawn with a long, red sticker with white letters that said 'SOLD' stuck diagonally across across the sign, confirmed it. 

It was odd; Shawn didn't notice the sign on Ella's lawn every time he visited her, and he didn't even know one could sell a house and move to a different country so easily and briskly. 

"Bro, History is going to be the death of me! I totally flunked my last quiz and Miss Robyn is probably going to fail me, and I'll have to take summer school instead of graduating!" Shawn's friend, Matthew, groaned as he approached Shawn and his abundance of friends, who were waiting for him to take his things out of his locker. "I need to learn how to cheat."

"No, what you need to learn is how to study properly." Cameron said sternly, him being the eldest (they were all the same age, eighteen, but Cameron was the oldest out of all of them) and the most mature, meaning that he was the most responsible one of them all. 

"Whatever. At least you didn't flunk your Physics-" Shawn was interrupted by a girl everyone in the school was familiar with: Dakota Harper, the main gossiper of the senior batch. She knew anything about anything—any drama or rumour that goes on around the school, she would be one of the first ones to know about it. 

"Holy shit, guys!" She nearly yelled, but thank goodness it was almost lunchtime, meaning all the teachers were either in their class room, the teacher's lounge, or cafeteria. "Did you hear about it?" The six guys stared at Dakota blankly, eyebrows raised. She rolled her eyes, "So these girls were talking, right? And obviously I eavesdropped on them, and one girl said to the two other girls—'cause, you know, there were only three-"

"Dakota, the point?" Shawn impatiently said, shutting his locker and swinging his backpack over his shoulders. 

Dakota paused, shaking her head, as if she couldn't believe the news herself. A wide grin plastered on her face, and she used simple words, "A mystery is soon to be solved; a myth is soon to be confirmed,"

"Wait, you mean-?" Jack Gilinsky begun, wide eyes. Even with those effortless words, they immediately knew the situation, but neither of them could believe it. Shawn couldn't say anything, although he knew what Dakota meant; he waited for her to finish, though, just in case the situation wasn't what he thought it was. 

Dakota nodded at Jack, "I heard that Ella Rose is coming back."  

-

alice (ella's best friend) is the wonderful isabella (the girl on media).