"Zara...Zara!"
A voice, along with the violent shaking of her body, dragged her out of her slumber.
Her eyes opened groggily, and there was Aurora, her face a few inches from her own.
Zara's eyes flew open as, without warning, Aurora wrapped her arms around her neck. Although Zara attempted to push her away, she kept the chokehold with her eyes squeezed shut, giggling manically.
"Oh my God Zara! I didn't recognise you in that coat! I was walking by, looking for you, when I see this...this guy sitting up against the wall, and then—" Again with the yapping. What had gotten into her?
Zara slapped a hand over her friend's mouth and slowly wobbled to her feet, her head feeling like a frozen ice-block. Aurora kept trying to talk though, undeterred by her muffled speech. It was like listening to a broken record—she kept saying the same thing over and over again.
"Can you shut up?" Zara yelled, and Aurora clamped her mouth, feigning a zipper being pulled across her lips.
Zara scratched her unruly hair, ignoring the sad look Aurora gave her. She began to walk in no particular direction, not turning to see if her friend was following her or not.
"Where did you get that coat?" Aurora asked innocently, trotting up to her. Zara noticed that she too was barefoot, and that she looked even paler, like a white sheet of paper. She could even see the web of blue veins on her feet, which travelled up her legs and to the rest of her body. The girl was obviously cold, but was doing a good job of hiding it.
Without warning, Aurora stopped in her tracks. She bent over double and hurled, her body convulsing with the effort. Zara rushed back to her and pulled her friend's hair out of the way, patting her back as the girl vomited, over and over, onto the side of the road.
She must've taken something.
Aurora finished and spat on the ground, straightening and giving her a goofy smile. Zara recoiled.
"Did you take anything?" She asked cautiously, forcing her eyes not to narrow in suspicion. Of course Aurora had, the question was rhetorical.
Aurora's face blanked out, but then she nodded. It was so fractional that Zara would have missed it if she hadn't been directly staring at her.
Zara let out a loud groan and slapped her own cheeks with both hands. She dragged both of them down her face in exasperation, revealing the pink under her eyeballs. "What?"
Aurora made an "X" with her arms, and then proceeded to giggle like an idiot, like it was all just a game to her. Zara took a couple of angry steps away from her, but then walked back to Aurora, her finger raised with the intention to give her a piece of her mind. Aurora just stared back at her, her eyes wide and a smile on her face, so Zara closed her eyes and clenched her raised hand into a fist.
Reprimanding her would be pointless. In this state, Zara might as well have been talking to a labrador puppy—Aurora would listen but not remember anything of what would be told to her.
Zara couldn't keep babysitting this girl either, she was 18 for Christ's sake.
She still needed an answer to that niggling question though, "How much?"
Aurora raised a single finger, her eyes crossing as she brought it up to her own nose.
Zara let out a breath of relief. At least it was only one—there was no possibility of this going sour any time soon. It was a rave, after all, and candy always floated around.
She smiled, and the one on Aurora's face grew wider. Zara pulled an arm out of the coat and threw it over Aurora's shoulders. "Give me your phone."
YOU ARE READING
Deadly Secrets
Ficção Geral[NOW FEATURED IN GENERAL FICTION!!!] Everybody has secrets, something to hide. Some say your secrets are your blood; when you shed too much of it, you die. For Zara DeRealis, nothing is as heavy a burden as her tempestuous past. Orphaned as a young...
