Revived [on hold]

5

4 days before

Reluctantly straining themselves at the sunlight that was glaring at me through the windows, my eyes opened as the late morning became the early afternoon.
"Zara! Its nearly 12 o clock, we have the entire room to unpack!"
I yawned loudly and sat up in my single bed, rubbing my eyes, "Jeez, sorry, you could've have woken me up you know."

Lillie sighed as she sat down on the floor, unpacking one of her many cardboard boxes, this one was filled with various pairs of trainers, football boots, netball trainers, running trainers, you name it, she probably has trainers for it.

Dragging myself out of the bed took a lot more effort than I imagined, my body clicked in several places at once and my legs were so weak from exhaustion that I proceeded to sit on the floor almost immediately. Clearly unimpressed by my chronic laziness, Lillie rolled her eyes and threw me a large cardboard box, labelled with my own uniform handwriting, "Random Crap". Obviously I'd had enough with sorting my belongings by this point.

Lillie had already set up everything on her desk, and was busy pinning various memories onto the cork board hung above. A photo of me and her taken by Eleanor at my 16th birthday, Lillie wearing a short, silver, sequinned dress with her arm round me, wearing my favourite black skater dress, which I had received that very day. The photo was extremely well taken, Eleanor had wanted to do photography since she could hold a camera, and I loved to be the subject of her work.

I could see tears pricking her eyes when she picked up the next photo, a polaroid of her as an infant in the arms of her father, whom she lost when she was just 4. We bonded over the shared loss of the only truly important man in our lives, and it was clear to see by anyone who saw us together that this connection created a seal to our friendship stronger than no other.

Soon these tears evolved into a soft smirk as she picked up and read the tickets that we had both received to our first concert. We were 14, and as an early Christmas present our mothers had both put money towards us going to see our favourite band, Twenty Øne Piløts. It was safe to say, that was definitely the best night of both of our lives.

Despite the joy I had watching Lillie's every emotion unveil itself as she relived her best memories, I was extremely tired and in dire need of unpacking myself. So I began to do so, for 15 minutes until I came across my ukulele, which I used to play a couple songs before Lillie interrupted, "Okay, I think we need a break, Starbucks?"

Between us, we barely knew how to get out of the University, let alone how to get to a coffee shop. But with a bit of help from Google Maps, we made it to Starbucks and sat by a fogged up window, admiring the blurred view whilst devouringly sipping on overpriced lattes in disbelief that we'd made it, and by that we didn't mean the relief of finally making it to Starbucks, but the relief of being 18 and finally starting university. I felt alive for the first time in forever, and this was only the beginning.