To Wake The Dead

Chapter One

Chapter One

"Thank God you didn't choose the red one,"

The door to my locker slams shut, and I blink myself back to reality. The fresh buzz of the student body swarms around me, and the intense heat makes my pale skin clammy and moist. With the end of the academic year drawing closer each day, a wave of sound and squeaky footsteps hangs all around. I'm lost in a void of my thoughts. Again.

"Ally!" Tanned, slender fingers snap in front of me, and my attention is immediately brought to the blonde next to me. Scarlet. Her blue eyes study me intensely, and they squint; her long, mascara tipped lashes sweeping across her cheeks. "You still there Al?"

I collect myself, brushing aside a fallen strand of black hair from my face, and turn to lean on my locker. "I'm sorry, what were you saying?"

"I was talking about prom," She turns to face me as she speaks, seemingly oblivious to the infernal commotion surrounding her, "You know, that thing we have been planning since freshman year!"

Yes. Prom. The one event of the school year that every girl craves and most boys dread. An excuse to make out with random people, confess your love to your high school sweetheart and generally, be a different person. The time where appearance and the dire need of a date are the frequent conversing patterns. Inescapable. And it is undisputed that the past few months, the atmosphere was flooded by junior prom hysteria. Almost every leaflet plastered on the walls was advertising some conventionally-beautiful-but-secretly-a-bitch popular girl for prom queen. What an honour they believed it to be. It was almost laughable.

But it is true. Me and Scarlet had been talking about junior prom since our first week of Silver Creek High, and the idea has never truly left Scar. For days, all I have been hearing is her dress, what shoes she will wear, which of the fifty boys she has to choose from that she will take. And I am at fault. I have been ignoring her the past few days. I couldn't be less excited, I just want school to be over.

"Oh, right, prom. That thing..." I trail off, still lost in my thought bubble and apparently, unable to form words.

"Good God Ally! Have some passion," She grins at me, showing off her set of straight white teeth. "It's not every day you get to go to a masquerade,"

The theme is masquerade. The idea of ball gowns and masks is greatly weighing between oddly beautiful and surprisingly melodramatic. As an artist, to me the theme spoke out, influenced me to want to write. But with the school hosting it, and a large majority of the school's bad characters turning up; the dream is shattered.

"Look, if this is about Chase..." She turns her head, her fingers playing with a strand of hair as she does whenever she is stepping over a boundary that she most definitely should not be crossing.

"It's not about him. Trust me, I would not waste my time on him right now,"

"But you and Chase, you're meant to be together Ally," Her voice renders an overly dramatic tone. Why does she do this?

My shoulder gets pushed into as we stop resting against the lockers, and begin to walk and talk down the still busy corridor. It's almost nearing the end of lunchtime, and I already want to go home. I get so tired nowadays. Scar loops her arm into mine, and I still keep my alternate wrapped around my books. I pop an Icebreaker and my mouth is overwhelmed by the substitution of my lunch. I start nibbling small sections off. Course of habit I guess.

"Look, me and Chase, as much as you cease to believe me, are never getting back together. We're not getting married at eighteen, we're not going to kiss and make-up and we are certainly not going to prom together," I exhale, and rip my eyes away from the hallway ahead to look at her. "Now, can we please just get this day over with so we can go home, eat some pizza and watch some American Horror Story reruns?" I feel her let out a breath, and a smile tugs at her lips.