Our Bittersweet Lives

[six]

My eyes open and I stare up at my white ceiling. I glance at my alarm clock on the desk across the room. The flashing white digits read 3:44. Looking out of the window, I can see nothing but inky blackness and a few stars.

Something must have woken me. What woke me?

I ponder it for a moment, then shrug, roll over and am just about to go back to sleep when I hear it. A weird, loud humming noise. What is that? It goes on for about 10 seconds, then stops. I close my eyes again for just a moment and then I hear it again.

Suddenly I know what it is - my phone vibrating against my bedside table. I lunge to get it; who is calling me at this hour of the morning? It must be important. My eyes widen as I take in the notifications - 17 missed called from Zoe, 12 from Kyra, 8 from Regina and 19 from Kate. I also have 3 messages from May's mum, one from her dad, and 51 messages on our girl group chat. I panic and quickly unlock my phone. Just as I go to read the messages, Regina's name flashes up on my screen. She's calling me. My shaky fingers slide the green button along the line to answer the call.

"Hello? Regina? What's going on?"

"Thank goodness! Taegan. Finally. We've all been trying to reach you for ages!"

"What is it? What's wrong? Reg, you're scaring me!" I croak back. For some reason my throat is raw and I sound like a frog. Oh well. I need to know what's going on!

"Taegs..." Regina bursts into tears on the other end of the line. Frantically, I yell down the phone,

"Regina! Tell me what's going on!"

This only makes her sob harder of course, but she manages to compose herself with a hiccup and sniffle, and then she says,

"Ok, so you know us girls were having a sleepover tonight?"

I nod, realise she can't see me, and say yes. They were sleeping over at Kate's tonight. I was going to go but my mother decided that, in light of our recent 'disagreement', as she put it, I was not allowed to spend any time with my friends outside of school for a month.

Regina continues, her voice broken and teary, "So we were happily watching Netflix until, like, 11:30, then we ate a bunch of junk food before going up to bed. We got in our PJs and stuff, got under the duvets and then gossiped for *sniff* a while. We talked about nothing and everything, really, like we always do. Then we went to sleep, or at least the twins did. May, Kate and I stayed up talking for a bit longer. By this time it was, like, *sniff*, like, two in the morning. So we were about to go to sleep when May said "hold on, I'm quickly going to go downstairs to grab a glass of water. Anyone want some?" I said yes and Kate said no. So she padded off downstairs and we heard some clinking of glasses and things. Then silence for a while. And then..."

Regina bursts into uncontrollable tears again. She tries to keep talking,
"Then...then...we heard *hic* an al-almighty c-c-crash... *sniff* and...and a y-yell and...*sniff* the tw-twins woke up and we all *hic* rushed d-down and...we found...found...we found...M-M-May...laying at the bottom...of the s-stairs with blood...*sniff* blood e-everywhere..."

Fresh round of tears. I try to say comforting words to poor Regina, but my heart is racing unbelievably fast, pounding against my rib cage so fast and hard I really truly think it's going to come flying out in a mess of bones and blood.

Blood. Like May was lying in, at the bottom of the stairs. And the others had to see her!

But Regina wasn't done. She has more bad news to deliver.

"May...May's in hospital now, so are we, all of us, the doctors are still there with her. We called...called and ambulance of course and it came really quickly but they all said she might...might...might..."