The Phoenices Volume 1 - Expired

Chapter 28 - Reilly

I began cheering after the announcement sounded, my arms above my head and a huge smile on my face. I was soon wrapped in a big hug by Celia, and I hugged her back, both of us laughing loudly. Shortly after Celia came Henry, then James, then Ali, all of us laughing so hard our guts were aching. I was released from the center of the bear hug, my hair messed up and my face reddened from laughing. I sighed happily, turning away from the group slightly to grab a cola, brushing shoulders with Marissa, shooting a small, happy smile her direction, she grinned at me, also pulling out a cola before going to another group of us on the other side of the bathroom. As I was walking back to the group with Celia, Ali, Henry, and James, I noticed Ben and Aidan by themselves, quietly embracing, Aidan's head resting on Ben's shoulder.

"Aw, guys look at how cute they are," I nudged Ali, gesturing over to the two boys vaguely before cracking open my can with a satisfying hiss.

Ali followed my finger with her eyes, taking in a sharp breath and covering her mouth with her hands, her eyes smiling as she quietly mumbled a soft aw, before resting her hand on her heart and gently patting it a few times, causing both of us to burst into laughter once more, doubled over holding our stomachs at Ali's reaction to the couple.

"What? What is so funny, guys?" asked Celia, heading over to our side of the small circle, the guys following her with their eyes. I made eye contact with Celia, a stupid grin on my face before looking past her, staring straight at the boys, who were now releasing each other from their embrace, Ben standing just behind Aidan, his right arm gently draped over the smaller boy's shoulder in a passively protective stance, both of them standing as if the position was perfectly natural to them. Celia followed my eyes, her eyes widening when she saw what I was looking at, she squealed a little, jumping off the floor a few inches once or twice before looking back at me with a shit eating grin, her eyes wide and sparkly like a kid on Christmas morning. The boys were still quite confused as to what was going on, both of them staring at me before looking to each other and then back to me, confusion in their eyes.

"What the heck just happened, guys?" James asked, his left eyebrow raised, giving him a questioning look. He let his eyes travel back and forth across the three of us, all of us stifling laughs as we stared back at him with most likely the stupidest expressions in all existence. The two boys shook their heads in sync, quietly laughing together before we began to count out the papers for our first lunch toss, all of us excitedly whispering and discussing throwing techniques for the best coverage and flutter effect. An alarm went off, and we all gather our papers, heading to the catwalk.

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1!" mouthed Marissa, standing up and throwing her papers over the handrails, the rest of us following suit almost immediately after her. We all started laughing, watching the loose sheet flutter to the floor before turning to run back to the bathroom to start the process over again, counting the papers, tossing the papers, running from the papers, repeat. We had just arrived back in the bathrooms and had begun counting out the flyers for the second time when Henry hissed dramatically, jerking his hand away from the papers he was holding and into his chest, clasping it with his other hand.

"Ah shit," he swore, dropping all the papers he was sorting as he held his hand, a droplet of blood oozing from a massive paper cut across his palm, "I hate paper cuts so much wow um do we have like duct tape?" he asked, looking around the room for anything even slightly tacky that he could use to bind his hand to relieve some of the pain from the cut.

"I mean I have some super sparkly rainbow stuff in my bag," I mumbled, jerking my thumb over my shoulder before leaning over to my bag to grab it while he held out his good hand, nodding his head and accepting the holographic roll of duct tape.

"I'm going to die in a few days, my social integrity no longer matters, I'm afraid to say," he joked, grabbing the roll of craft duct tape before heading into a stall and pulling out a lot of toilet paper. He came back out with a messy trail about the size of his head, "It's one-ply," he responded to all of our doubtful and judgemental faces, as if that cleared up anything. We all kept staring at him as he wrapped the single ply toilet paper around his hand again and again and again, before ripping off a long strip of glittery duct tape and wrapping it over the toilet paper. I began to giggle quietly, the volume slowly increasing until I was full blown laughing, everyone soon joining in for a good long laugh. We all eventually settled down, heading back up to the catwalk for another good toss, and coming back to begin counting out our third and last stack, which thankfully didn't take long, because even as it was we finished right when the phone went off. I began to wonder why this break seemed so much shorter than the others, brushing it off as another classic case of 'time flys when you are having fun', freezing in place as we opened the door, emerging into a packed hall, several of the students nearest the doors stopping to stare at the bigender group of students that had just emerged from the dark bathroom, the boys one at that. I began backing up, shoving whoever was behind me violently back into the bathroom without taking my eyes off of the crowd of students that was gathering. Someone went to check the phone that went off, discovering that it was but a simple text message, not the alarm for the middle of third lunch. We all sat quietly in uncertain discomfort, triple checking the alarm when it finally rang before heading out to do our final toss. We all arrived back, bored with nothing to do, some of the group was over by the sinks working on something, and Marissa stood, heading over to see what they were doing. They explained, something about a story and leaving their mark or whatever, but I was so tired, I slumped against a wall, sweatshirt hood on my head, my forehead resting on my knees. My eyelids drooped shut, and soon enough I felt myself drifting into a well deserved rest, as I had woken up at 2 AM this morning, and I had run around the school all day, and I had been crushed between several people several times.

I jerked awake when someone gasped in shock, my eyes snapping open and my back cracking in several places as I sat up in alarm. I looked around the room, frantically searching for something going wrong, only to find Sean Paul freaking out about something Marissa drew on the mirror. I relaxed, leaning over to check the time on my phone, jumping when I realized it said 3:08 PM.

"Guys school got out 20 minutes ago," I began, my heart rate escalating to unhealthy feeling levels,"and I did not tell my mom I was staying late, oh my god she is going to kill me," I said to the people on this side of the bathroom, a few of them looking up at me as I frantically back and forth before stopping over to gather all of my things, shoving them into my backpack as best I could and preparing to leave. "Bye!" I shouted over my shoulder at the slightly smaller group of people, none of which were listening, as I scooped my bag up, tightening the straps on my shoulders and heading out the bathroom door into the sparsely populated hallways of the school.

A/N: 1377 words according to nanowrimo

P.S: still looking for people willing to help me edit a few pages of this at a time,  it wouldn't take very long, I would just send you a copy via email and then you could comment and correct whatever you saw fit whenever you could, if you're interested send me a message here, on Sweek, or on Instagram at dying.before.death, you should be able to find it by searching it, it might even come up by searching The Four, but the profile photo is the book cover and you'll be able to tell trust me.