Pepper, Laces, and Bottlecaps

Mo

I wake up to two girls playing cards on my bed. One has long black hair braided into two extremely long braids. The other has her hair in two buns, one being held up with 2 pens and the other a scrunchy. The one with buns lightly places a card down, and then they both slap down onto the cards with excessive force. I jump at little at it.

The one with buns looks at me, then whispers to the one with braids, "She's awake. What do we do Molly?"

Molly rolls her eyes and gets up. The other girl watches her with a helpless look in her eyes. She looks towards the doorway Molly left from and then back at me. Then, she sighs. "Hi," she says, lifting up her hand and tilting it to the side a little bit, "I'm Mo."

I smile a little and wipe my eyes. "Hi. I'm uh. I guess I'm Laces now."

She picks up her cards. "Pepper isn't home right now, but she wanted us to watch you," she runs to the other side of the room and wedges the cards between two mattresses, "You seemed pretty out of it. Were you hanging out with Billy?" she sprints back, jumping onto my mattress and almost making me fall.

"Um. I talked to him in the third period. He helped me home I think."

Mo stares at me for a minute. "I guess not then," she says, smiling wide, "So..." she crawls onto my mattress kind of like a cat and sits in front of me, "What are you all about?"

"I'm not really about much. I mostly do homework and am apparently helpless. Pepper has been helping me a lot lately" I say, awkwardly side smiling.

"I'd say that's like me and Molly," she says with a giggly undertone, "but you and Pepper are different than that," she wiggles her eyebrows at me.

Molly walks in. "If you say anything else Pepper might kill you, so shut up," she says, tossing me a sandwich as if she was uninterested in my very existence.

She casually drapes herself over Mo. It looks like it should be awkward, but they just kind of melt into it. Mo picks up her braids and tries tying them together. "Do you think we should tell her? I mean, it would probably help her out," Mo asks Molly.

Molly rolls her eyes, "Come on. She just woke up. Let Laces not die for a minute."

I sit there and wrap my blanket around myself. "Do you know what happened to me?" I ask after too much silence and a few bites of my sandwich.

"Not really, Pepper thinks you need to take it easy. You're way too stressed out. Between leaving home and whatever else is going on with you. Take it easy it's gonna be more stress pretty soon. Billy offered to help, but we all know how that would happen," Mo says, talking about Billy mostly to Molly instead of me, giving her a scowl.

I don't know. Why do they talk about Billy like that? What do they mean about Pepper? Mo interrupts my train of thought, "You threw up a lot last night. Rose and Misty had to watch you for most of the night, but they're at school now. Every time you would start to shake either Billy or Glasses had to pick you up and run to the bathroom. You kept waking up all panicked"

"I don't know why they couldn't leave you in there," Molly says under her breath.

I finish my sandwich, and my stomach doesn't feel bad. My throat burns, but I should be fine. I glance at the wall and look for my binder. It's not there. I turn back to the girls who are playing cards again, "Do you know where my school work is?" I ask, slightly panicked.

"Oh yeah," Molly says, "everyone's pitching in because apparently, you need your homework. Pepper got everyone to help get you. Don't worry nerd."

I nod, letting out an extremely uncomfortable sigh. I'd rather be at school again, but I guess I could do something. I try standing up. It's hard at first and I'm very dizzy. Both the girls are staring at me. "I'm fine," I say through my hazy thoughts.

I can't leave my bed. I lay back down and go back to sleep. I wake up in pockets for a while. Sometimes Mo will come over and talk to me. She likes making cake, cats, and drawing comics. Her favorite thing to eat is bean sprouts. All of which she found very important to quiz me on whenever I woke up.

Molly on the other hand just tries to stay away from me. I don't really know much about her besides that she and Billy might be dating. Maybe they're almost dating. Regardless she seems a little possessive over him.

This time I wake up to Mo laying beside me on my mattress. Her cards sort of slid everywhere. I sit up. It's dark and raining. It's so cold.

I clean up Mo's cards. She looks cold. She should be in her own bed, but she does look cold. I sacrifice half my blanket to her.

She curls up up a little but doesn't really do anything else, so I lay back down. Out the window the sky is gray. I wish it could rain with the stars out. I close my eyes, the scent of the rain and the night taking over. It's calm. The smell of the wet air, it's so clean. The very thought of any weather is sad. Slowly sleep fades in again.

In the day, I wake up to a sleeping Mo with an arm draped over me and her face pressed into my back. I try to move, but she starts to stir. Instead, I give up and stare up at the sky. Its nice to feel the warmth of someone else.