Keep Your Head ↠ IANOWT ² [O.H.]

iii. the longest weekend

CHAPTER THREE
❛ the longest weekend. ❜

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H A L L I E
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THEMES:
why are sundays so depressing? — the strokes

THERE ARE CERTAIN moments in one's life where you ask yourself: how the fuck did I end up here? A perfect example of this was last night, when I was walking shell-shocked down the street to Sydney's house, wearing Stanley Barber's vaguely weed-fragranced clothes and carrying a blood-drenched dress in a black bin liner...

     Sounds like a horrible nightmare, doesn't it? That was what my mind had accepted it to be when it groggily awakened the next morning; rays of sunlight pierced the pores of the flimsy curtains and warmed my skin. It was almost comforting — not the faint backache from rolling on the inflatable bed, of course, but the warm welcome to the next day. Last night never happened. Homecoming was a fever dream. Bradley Lewis is still completely intact.

     Then, the rude awakening — the empty bed above me. Sydney's sheets were still strewn messily around, just how she had left them before we took off to Homecoming last night (Maggie would be so mad...). There was even an indent in her pillow from where she'd forgotten to plump it up.

All of a sudden I felt sick to my stomach. It was real. All of it. Hugging my knees to my chest, I clenched my eyes shut and tried to retrace what followed the nightmarish incident. Stan's house, I remembered that... showering and changing my clothes... discreetly leaving, and trying to look as normal as possible walking down the street. Then I recalled circling around to the back of the house, ducking under the window pane as Maggie watched TV; I'd stuffed the bin liner with my bloody dress into the trash, shoving it as deep down as I could. After that, I only remembered staggering in through the back door, clambering up the stairs and collapsing onto the inflatable bed...

     I rolled over, my body aching with fatigue, and checked my phone: nine unread messages from Calvin. Unlocking my phone, I scrolled through my messages app to find a string of panicked texts, headed with the haunting date and time of the Homecoming bloodbath:

          Calvin: WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED WTF WTF WTF WTF

          Calvin: HALLIE WHERE TF ARE YOU

          Calvin: ANSWER ME

          Calvin: I THINK BRADS DEAD BUT I CANT SEE

          Calvin: HALLIE ARE U OK?!! PLS REPLY ASAP BC I'M SHITTING MYSELF HERE

     Then, half an hour later came another string of texts, a little calmer than before but still considerably freaked out: