A Pocket Full of Posies (Book 3)

Chapter Two

A quiet murmuring wakes me up. It's not Mum or Dad this time, but Tom. Jamie too, and I think I hear Ava and Carmen. The whole gang are here. Great. I guess I'm back then. I try to be happy about it.

"... just seems impossible, given we have no idea what he's hearing, or how this all works, or anything," Carmen says, but I didn't catch enough of her sentence to make much sense of it.

It's dark outside, but light enough in the room for me to notice my friends' figures. I'm lying on the sofa I was sitting on however long ago it was, and I'm buried under a monstrosity of a fluffy blanket that has a slightly dusty smell to it. Carmen and Tom are sitting on the other sofa in the corner of the room, while Jamie stands above Ava as she searches through the wooden cabinet underneath the TV. No one is paying much attention to me.

I want to feel frustrated, annoyed at them for talking about me, but I don't. I feel okay. Calm. It's like the serenity of wherever I just was has left its presence in this reality. Best of all, there are no screeching voices in my head.

"You don't think he's just... just like, y'know, going a bit..." Tom lifts his hand to his ear, and makes a circling gesture with his finger.

Crazy. They think I'm going crazy.

"What? You don't think they're real? You think he's making it up?" Carmen snaps back, and it's the hardest I think I've ever heard her voice sound.

Ava hushes her, then jabs her thumb in my direction. I clamp my eyes shut before anyone's gaze can wander, and when I open them again a few moments later, the room is empty. I can still hear their voices, though. I think they're next door.

"He's had problems before, and it's a thing, right? Hearing voices is, like, textbook crazy person."

"Tom!" Carmen snaps. "Skirting the fact that's such an ignorant thing to say, there's a difference between having panic attacks and feeling depressed now and then, and literal psychosis."

"Those symptoms could have been a gateway," Jamie interrupts, and if it wasn't for the fact I'm playing dead right now, I'd punch him. "Psychotic depression, or something along--"

"He sees ghosts, which was apparently impossible, so why is this any different? I actually can't believe you guys right now, you're not even giving him--"

"Whoa, guys, stop," Ava interjects. Her voice is quiet, almost hesitant, and it makes me wish I could see her facial expression. "You might be right, Jamie, but gossiping about it behind his back doesn't feel right, and I--"

"Ava? Seriously?" Carmen again.

"I'm not saying the voices aren't real," she quickly argues back. "I just mean he's been through a lot of trauma, and we can't be--"

Someone scoffs, and footsteps charge into the hallway. A door slams. Everyone left in the room starts talking in hushed tones too quiet for me to hear, but I can tell Carmen's voice is now out of the mix.

I'm staring into the darkness, still enveloped in the calmness of before when I hear the door to the room I'm in creak open. I close my eyes. There's a shuffling sound beside me--No, below me? A warm hand brushes against my cheek, then gently moves some of my hair off my face.

Whoever's here sits down onto the floor, and the shuffling starts again. A hand burrows its way underneath the blanket until it finds my own, and fingers intertwine with mine. With my eyes now closed and my hand in someone else's, the calmness of The Beginning has washed over me in a way that's making me drowsy. That's what it was, right? Like last time, at Connor's flat. It was The Beginning. It has to be.

I appreciate Carmen's effort to dismiss the idea of me losing my mind, to back me up. I do. I just wish I was on her side.