tear in my heart | tyler joseph

Chapter Fourteen

     It was the day after Cynthia's birthday, and even though she was happy that she was twenty years old, she couldn't shake off the feeling she had had since she and Tyler encountered Justin.

     "Cynthia? You okay?" It was Tyler. She had woken up an hour ago, and she couldn't go back to sleep. "I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

     "You're stress reading." She sighed and closed the book. "Why are you awake? It's four in the morning."

     "I woke up an hour ago, and I couldn't go back to sleep."

     "What's wrong?"

     "You know that guy we encountered yesterday?"

     "At the hospital? What about him?"

     "As he was walking away, I heard him call us depressed freaks."

     "Why would he do that? He doesn't even know us."

     "Yes, he does. Tyler, that was Justin Miller." His eyes went wide. "What was he doing near the hospital? That jerk doesn't care about anyone."

     "I don't know." She sighed, then said, "What if he's trying to get to us again?"

     "Well, then, we'll just ignore him."

     "You're right. Let's go back to sleep."

     "Goodnight, Cynthia."

     "Goodnight, Tyler."

....................

     Cynthia was at the mall with Gracie. She figured it would help clear her mind.

     They were nearing the food court when Gracie stopped. Cynthia bumped into her and said, "What the heck?"

     "Look." She raised her arm and pointed at the store they were standing in front of: Hot Topic. In the window, there was a Twenty One Pilots poster. "We have to buy merch."

     "Why?"

     "Because we're going on tour with them, and we have to look the part."

     "Fine." They walked inside and looked for the Twenty One Pilots merch. As soon as they found it, they bought as much as they could, then walked to the food court.

     They found a table and sat down. "Thank God. We can finally sit down," Gracie panted. "Why are you panting so much? We didn't walk that far."

     "It's because of all the stuff I had to carry." She gestured to the five bags beside of her seat. "Hey, you're the one who wanted to buy all of this merch. Plus, you didn't have to carry as much as I had to carry." She pointed to the ten bags beside of her seat. "Fair point. I need energy. Can we get some food now?"

     "Yeah." They got corn dogs with French fries and two DQ Blizzards. Once they were seated, they began to talk. "I think we wiped Hot Topic clean of their TOP merch."

     "Wouldn't be surprised if we did." She looked through one of the bags and pulled out a phone case. She quickly put it onto her phone and grabbed Gracie's phone. "Hey! I was in the middle of doing something on there!"

     "Oh, really?" She looked at the screen and said, "Gracie, why are you stalking Brendon Urie's Twitter?" She looked at the search history and said, "And apparently writing a fanfiction about you and Brendon dating-" Gracie quickly took her phone and said, "A girl can dream." She deleted everything in the search history and handed her phone back to Cynthia. She took it and took a picture of her phone case. Then she posted it. She handed the phone back to Gracie and said, "Well, that's that done." She got a text from Tyler saying, "Where did you get the phone case?" She then got a text from Josh, who was asking the exact same thing. She turned it into a group chat: