What Keeps us Here

Chapter Two

   Oh God. Oh God, Oh God. Oh god, why?

   Aisling Blair Crippen.

   Could I have read the name wrong? Skipped a letter?

   Aisling Blair Crippen.

   But the picture, she had drawn that today. I was there, I watched her, talked to her. She talked back. Laughed. Argued. She defended her drawing, she told me what was what. She was dead? She couldn't be. It didn't make sense.

   I turned off the computer screen and slumped back in the chair, confused. It had to be wrong. Some huge prank, maybe, just to scare me. That was possible, I thought. I rubbed my temples and groaned, this seemingly new information bashing itself against my skull. I pulled out my phone, ready to prove death wrong, and I dialed Asling's number. Pressing the cellphone to my ear, I prayed that her voice was on the other line. I held my breath and let it out as a relieved sigh as Aisling's voice reached my ears.

   "Aisling, you wouldn't believe what Ron just tri-"

   I'll get back to your message as soon as I can. Voice mail? It beeped and I stuttered before just hanging up. If it was her voice mail, they didn't shut her phone off yet, which meant she couldn't have been dead. Right?

   I threw my phone down on my bed and got up to leave my room. A thick green line on my wall caught my eye and I squinted. It shimmied up my wall slowly and fell off after a few seconds. It thrashed around and rolled itself over before trying again, and I stood there staring at it do that for the longest time.

   It was very highly entertaining, watching a caterpillar fall off of my wall.

   I swiped it off the floor after it fell for the fourth time, and I walked purposefully for the front door.  Despite Ron's protests, I stepped outside and let the caterpillar down on my front step.

    "What are you doing," he said bitterly, and I smiled a little.

    "Nothing," I replied quietly and stood up straight.

    "Go back to your room," he ordered. I pushed past him and very, very happily went up to my room. A caterpillar. Falling off of a wall. It was magical.

   I shuffled through papers in my desk drawer before pulling out a pad of sticky-note things and I popped a sharpie open. In all capitals, I wrote 'Thank you Aisling' and stuck it on my window. Flopping down on my bed, I took a deep breath which seemed to settle me a bit, and I grabbed a book off of my nightstand. I flipped to the page I was on and glanced at the unchanged sticky note. I fell asleep with the book open in front of me and when I woke up, the sticky-note pad and sharpie lat neatly on my windowsill, and under my note was another with a picture of a caterpillar writhing on the floor and 'You're welcome'. I smiled and glanced at the clock. I had only been asleep for twenty minutes.

    Thank you Aisling.

 

 [A/N: Super short. XD I hope this went with the first chapter nicely, but I dunno. THIS STORY IS FUN XD]