Saturday March 1st, 14 days before
Casually on her PC, Lilou was playing a new zombie video game. Her phone goes off in her pocket and to her frustration, she pauses the game to answer it. Sliding open her phone, Lilou rolls her eyes at her phone, answering Ava’s urgent text with “Be there in a minute” She saves, turns off her game then her computer and walks down into the foyer. Lilou pulls on her gray jacket over her black t-shirt and slips on her gray converse with rainbow laces. She pulls the hood over her short and messy black hair as she also pulls her laptop bag onto her shoulder. Closing the door behind her as she left her house, she opened her phone to see three more messages from Ava. “Yay! Come quickly!”, then “Hurry up!” And lastly “Why aren’t you here yet?!” All 3 were sent within a minute of each other, only confirming Lilous suspicions that her rush was needed to meet her best friend. Living down the street from her meant it wouldn’t take her long to arrive. She was first greeted by Cocoa, a beautiful purebred husky who barked at the familiar face and jumped onto her hind legs to ‘hug’ Lilou. She laughs, telling Cocoa to get down before she fell over. She then strides over to the door happily, having been in a good mood today.
“Hello?” Lilou asks when she opens the door of Ava’s house and hangs her jacket and laptop bag up on the last stairway post. She didn’t need to knock anymore; she even had a key to Ava’s house at this point of their ever-growing friendship. After taking off her shoes, she headed up the stairway and to Lilous surprise, she found Ava turn the corner with a knife in her hand. “Whoa, it’s just me.” She raises her hands to show she isn’t holding a weapon of any kind. Her long red hair looked like she used a whole can of hairspray on it, when it was really just her bed head. She didn‘t have any make up on and she still had her pajamas on even though it was the afternoon. “What’s wrong?” Lilou asks, slowly taking away the knife from Ava. She sighs, loosening some tension in her shoulders. Once she seemed ready to start talking, she proceeded to ramble on about her urgency of protection.
“Well it started like this; first I spent my morning completely fine, with a donut and some coffee. I also gave Cocoa a treat.” Nodding every couple of minutes let Ava know that Lilou was listening. Ava twisted around her hair nervously in her fingers as she continued. “Then I had some lunch and I could have sworn I heard some one open the cupboard.” All of a sudden, Ava’s dazzling blue eyes seemed to haze and she looked at a point past Lilou. She started shaking, truly terrified of whatever seemed to haunt her house. After a few minutes of calming down, Ava continued her story. “And after that, it got worse. I was downstairs doing laundry and I could hear the floorboards creaking upstairs and you know it wasn’t Cocoa because I let her go outside after lunch.” Since it was three in the afternoon, it didn’t seem too unbelievable that she has left her puppy outside to play for a few hours. In what little snow was left in this late starting spring, Cocoa wanted to take advantage of it.
“Well I’ll stay here for a few hours and if there’s anything strange sounding then tell me and I’ll investigate it.” Lilou smiled at Ava, reassuring her. Making sure that her best friend was okay is so important to Lilous sanity. Plopping herself down on the couch, Lilou smiled up at Ava, giving her the confidence she needed.
“Okay.” Ava says quietly, going to the mini-fridge in the corner of the room and taking out a Pepsi and Barqs Root Beer. Ava holds the root beer out to her, Lilous favorite. The Pepsi can teeters on Ava’s knee when she cracks it open, the loud fizzle making her smile for the first time since Lilou arrived. Familiarity is what calmed her, the fact that Lilou was here and her Pepsi fizzled and even Cocoa whining at the front door made her smile a little bit.
“I’ll bring her in.” Lilou offers, heading back to the front door and opening it, letting the dog loose from her front yard leash. The orange puppy cradled up to her master, as if sensing Ava’s horror. “D’aww, isn’t that adorable?“ Ava and her dog huddled up on the L shaped couch, sitting on blankets. After plopping herself down next to the two, Lilou proceeded to open her laptop. “Look, if we want to get plane tickets to Los Angeles by tomorrow we should probably hurry. What seat do you want?” She asks Ava, trying to distract her from anything she would be possibly scared of.
“Window seat I guess.” Ava answers, not looking at Matryoshka, but instead at Cocoa, petting her lovingly. They were planning their first trip to California, planning to be a tourist and also visit some close friends who currently live there. Living in L.A. meant 3 people shared an apartment, but to Ava and Lilou, living in suburbs of Minnesota meant it wasn’t too incredibly hard to find a house in their price range for the each of them. That and the bonus that it was the same neighborhood they grew up in, same town of Apple Valley. Going to California for Spring Break was going to be amazing, a nice break from Ava and her job and Lilou from her college studies. Being 18 with a house, a well paying job and a fantastic college leading to her career in video game designing, Lilou had her life set out for her. Ava on the other hand did have a nice job and she loved it however she had an aspiring dream to become a professional video maker online. After trying that for the past 5 years, neither of the two women had succeeded in what few others had. Ava hadn’t started college because she wanted a break from school, while Lilou dove right in so she didn’t break her studying habits. Therefore the only time either had a gap would be spring break where most of the workers at their jobs were getting time off and where the college had a few days of teacher workshop.
“I’m taking the middle seat then, I don’t want any random people between us on a four hour trip.” Lilou continued looking online at the Airline ticket services. Next to her in her peripheral, Ava waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
“Well, I recently read a book-”
“Ugh, don’t even start this. It’s called fiction for a reason!” Lilou rudely cut her off, already knowing where this conversation was going. Ava’s evil glare was sent directly to Lilou who was blatantly ignoring her to get her plans finished.
“As I was saying, I was thinking we could find a super cute guy to sit between us so it’s a double win!” Ava smiles at Lilou, her plan perfect. Lilou knew better, with Ava being the better looking one and the most flirtatious she already knew she would fail and left being all-awkward in the aisle.
