The Envy Game (completed)

Chapter 5 - Night

That evening the girls were all together. Hazel was hosting the sleepover. Right now they were huddled closely in her old attic, above her room.

Light shone in through the gaps in the floorboards. The light in her room must have been on.

Outside the attic window, it was just past midnight.

"Hazel, you know I can't sleep here..." Brooklyn moaned. "You know I'm allergic to dust mites."

Fallon got out of her sleeping bag. She smelt the dust. It sort of smelled like old wood. She just sat on the floor, out of her sleeping bag, staring beyond the roof window.

"Try to get some sleep..." Hazel said drifting away already.

Brooklyn sighed and hid almost entirely inside her sleeping bag. After a few minutes she was asleep too.

"Girls?" Fallon spun around from the window sill. They were all sleeping. She didn't really know what to do, she definitely didn't want to sleep.

She quietly tiptoed across the creaking floor.

The lifted the hatch to open up the attic trapdoor. The ladder automatically flew out beneath her. She soundlessly stepped down the rungs until she was in the corridor of the second floor of Hazel's house. She tiptoed down the stairs to the living room and to the back door.

She found the key on the kitchen counter, and unlocked the door.

The air outside smelled of beginning Autumn. Some orange and dark yellow leaves crunched under her feet as she walked across the garden.

Her long, blonde hair flew.

Usually in a plait, but now the wind tore her plait apart.

She pushed her fringe behind her ear.

Over by the rose bush, under the maple tree, there was a engraved stone. Some Flowers were scattered around it. Now the wind was throwing them around like they were burning hot.

Fallon looked down at the stone.

Will never be forgotten. Ariana Thomas.

It was a little memorial the girls made for Ariana. It scared Fallon somehow. She didn't want to remember her, she didnt even want to know that she ever existed.

Those last words she said to her in the fire. And the eyes and voice that haunted her whether she closed her eyes.

"That's how you play The Envy Game, girls."

Fallon gasped and stiffened up. Who was that? She slowly turned around.

Hazel was standing behind her.

"That was one of the last things she said to me."

"It's you." Fallon breathed out, ever so relived. "What woke you up?"

"Someone must have opened the window. It flew open and slammed against the wall." Hazel fiddled with a mapple leaf she picked up.

She walked closer to the engraved stone.

"She told us to get back to her house." Hazel's voice seemed tightened.

"We waited for her at the gate but she never came. So we went looking for her and we found you..."

Fallon looked down at the engraving.

"But she wasn't there, and..." Hazel took a deep breath. "She never came back.

Fallon really knew all of this. She wasn't in the gazebo when the girls thought she was. The scream they heard was fake.

She screamed to lure Ariana into the fire. Ariana was always daring and adventurous. It was clear she would go see who screamed.

"You know, all that evening I had a feeling that someone was watching us." Hazel looked at Fallon. "Sarah did too."

"It was probably that perveous neighbour."