Top Bunk

DAY 5

⌚ 3:32 AM

El is still very thoroughly exhausted when she gets woken up from her two hours of sleep by Grace Upland's piercing scream.

Doing so causes her to violently bump her head against the board above her head. Hard.

She's about to push the girl off the top bunk but she finds that the girl is mumbling nonsensically. "No," Grace whimpers. "No no no don't...don't please stop stop stop stop mine mine mine no please...don't do this don't don't no stop please please please no more no more no no no no no...STOP!"

If El wasn't awake already, Grace's last "stop!" might've made her head break through the board and hit Grace right in the face . (El knows for a fact that Grace sleeps facedown. How she is able to breathe, El might never know.)

"NO NO NO I SAID STOP! DON'T DON'T...please don't I'll do anything just don't  no no no no no no no no..."

⌚ 6:00 AM ON THE DOT

That godforsaken horn should be thrown into the lake.

When El's eyes flutter open, she is slightly surprised that Grace is not on the floor but is already curling her hair by the slightly cracked full body mirror in the corner of the cabin. El can't help but feel a little envious of Grace's long silky hair that looks like it came out of a shampoo commercial. She tries not to eye her own curly dark brown mop with distaste.

Grace's eyes, however, do so, as they flit to El while she's curling her long fringe.

"Sleep well?" she murmurs albeit slightly (very) sarcastically.

El knows that it's obvious that she hasn't with the dark circles around her eyes and the aforementioned dark brown hair which looks like a chicken spent its whole life in it, seeing as El has been tossing and turning the whole night. "Not really," she admits in a tired tone. "Thanks to you," she adds in an undertone.

"Pardon?" Grace lets another curl cascade down her back and no one's hair should look like that in these conditions.

"Nothing," El says as she pulls herself out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom, feeling Grace's eyes critically follow her every movement. El unconsciously tugs her shirt lower again.

"Tell me how your poison ivy is once you get a peep at it," Grace sneers at her before she steps into the bathroom. "I can ask my maid to send more calamine or something, Elizabeth."

"Thank you so much, that's so considerate of you," El spits then slams the door behind her.

She can hear Grace's cackles through the thin walls and even after three days, she has to admit these still unsettle her at the very least. But these aren't nearly as unsettling as Grace's sleep- murmurs last night. What was that about anyway?

By now, Grace's cackling has died down and El has turned on the tap for the shower, the water still nice and warm from Grace's bath. Grace has now gone to humming some Taylor Swift song that El feels she should know.

Maybe her dad had donated one of her Chanel purses to charity or something, El thinks as she takes her shirt off and tosses it into her laundry bag, still about Grace's sleep-murmurs. Rob always does that kind of thing. Because he isn't a snob like Grace is.

El feels the steam perforating through the bathroom already so she pulls her underwear off next and she thinks it's better if Grace wouldn't like to know what's happening down there.

 ⌚ 9:20 AM

"Well, it says here on our schedule that you're supposed to be practicing for dodgeball later with Cabin I," El looks up from the piece of paper with the color-coded schedule to find the Cabin A girls barely listening to her, "but I'm guessing you lot want to ditch practices again, don't you?"