Hell & Back || TYLER SBG

Chapter 14: Its Just a Little Tummyache

Warning!! This chapter is based on a pretty graphic part of the comic, and sometimes descriptions of things can be more disturbing than the drawn depiction of it. Just a fair warning before we jump in.

Danica was exhausted.

They were all hoping that maybe they had more time. Maybe they could stay put in wait to act. That wasn't an option anymore though—not if it meant randomly and violently flipping out like that again.

They needed to avoid negative emotions. She found that a bit impossible, considering that all seven of them were trudging through the pits of hell in both the real world and the phantom world.

Danica went to school, and was harassed everyday.

Negative emotions.

She would go home to either be interrogated by her mom or rot in her room.

Negative emotions.

They'd all hangout, which was positive until they had to talk about the serious shit.

Negative emotions.

How was she, or any of them, supposed to prevent the way that all of this had affected them mentally?

Ashlyn's great idea? Convince her dad to go ahead and host that barbecue. Danica's mother had been hesitant. She worked a night shift the day before, and she wasn't really sure if she would hit it off with the Banners. Her daughter disappeared to their house everyday, and the last time she came home late with a human scratch mark on her face that still had yet to heal all the way.

However, Dani and her mother were similar in the sense that their nighttime routine made a social life a little difficult, so she finally said yes. Even if it was just to get a read on the people Danica was around all the time now.

"Who did you say was coming to this again, Dans?" Her mother asked, trying to balance the three different kinds of dips she made in her hands.

Danica took two of the dishes. "Aiden, Ben and his parents, Logan and his grandparents, and the Hernandezes."

"The Hernandezes? Like the twins up the road?"

Danica nodded.

"You didn't tell me you were hanging out with them," her mom said, said raising a brow. "Good kids. Does that Tyler have a girlfriend?"

"Mom!"

She was pretty sure that her mom had asked that every year since Danica was in eighth grade. Any time her and Ryland were having a problem, she'd bring up how there was a perfectly nice kid a few blocks away, and how cute they were in fourth grade when they did that recorder duet together.

Perfectly nice was a stretch, and the recorder duet was a nightmare forced on them by their elementary school music teacher. She vividly remembered them arguing and whining even back then. It was a rivalry forged in the three notes of Hot Crossed Buns.

And honestly, she preferred not to talk about Tyler right now. Ever since the arcade brawl went down, he'd gone back to being the same with her as he had been before Savannah. No texting about homework, no lighthearted jabs, no walking to classes together. Nope—Danica was just an annoying part of his life again, which was a total contradiction of the way he'd nearly beat Ryland's face in for not letting go of her.

Maybe she shouldn't have been butthurt about that. They'd disliked each other for how long, and they'd only been cordial for a month or two now due to extenuating circumstances. She was butthurt, though. No denying that.

Ashlyn got the door, letting the two of them in. They were close to being the last ones there, the twins and their family being the only ones who hadn't arrived yet.