black tide. | ✓

0.1; allison

"if you loved me, why'd you leave me?" - all i want, kodaline.

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"Ali, wait up!" I called out to my best friend over the wave of students leaving school at the end of the day on Friday. "Allison!"

Something finally clicked after a good few minutes of me yelling, and she turned around to find my face in the crowd. When she spotted me, her hazel eyes brightened just the slightest, but I could still recognize that deep longing to be somewhere else; all day she'd been on a different planet, dazing out of the window in biology more than often, or attempting to work out 2+2 in maths and ending up with 54 to the power of negative 7. Something wasn't right, but any time I breeched the subject to her, she either ignored me, walked off, or yelled.

It was probably just her time of the month, but my brain was screaming out that something else was definitely up.

When I finally caught up to her, quite a few of our fellow classmates had dispersed, most of them talking about Stacey's party later on in the evening - which I wasn't invited to, by the way - and I stopped for a second to catch my breath, proving my mom's point that I needed to exercise more often. As if running to the fridge every now and then to stock up on snacks isn't exercise enough!

Anyway, after my heart started functioning like a normal human being's Ali was still stood there looking like the world around her was ending and that her cat had just died.

"Are you gonna say something, or are you just gonna stand there looking like you ran a marathon? Seriously, Charlie you literally jogged 20 feet."

"Okay Miss Head Cheerleader - we can't all be Olympians!" I retorted, knowing that giving her anything but compassion and kindness in her time of need (also known as her period), would lead to me having to face the wrath of Allison Browne; and trust me, no one wants that.

"Ex-head cheerleader." She retorted. "Look, Char, I'm real busy tonight - can you please just tell me what's up or can I go?" Her face looked genuinely pained, and best friend instincts kicked in at that point, telling me that she wasn't feeling all too great.

We stared at each other deeply for a while, each analysing the other, until finally I gave in and said, "I love you, m'kay, best friend? I love you and if you forget to text me later what the party's like I'll - "

"I'm not going to the party."

"Excuse me, Allison Leanne Browne, what did you just say?"

"I'm not going -"

"You're not going to the party of the year?!" I burst out, looking at her as if she'd grown two heads and told me she was marrying her brother. "Ali, sweetie, what are you doing with your life?"

"I don't even know anymore." She barely whispered back, suddenly over interested in her shoes.

"Right, I'm calling an emergency sleepover!" I suddenly declared, overcome with excitement. Ever since the beginning of high school, when one of us was upset, we would have an emergency sleepover, in an attempt to cheer us up. "Pizza, ice cream and Netflix, that good?"

"Veto."

"Allison, you can't just veto an emergency sleepover! Seriously, babe, what's up?" I asked, tilting to my head to the side, oozing sympathy but attempting not to show it too much, knowing that in any situation that could make someone feel worse.

"I'm going home, see ya."

As she started to walk away, I called out for her one last time, and before she could fully turn around and begin to protest, I engulfed her in the biggest hug I could possibly muster, and whispered into her ear, "I love you."