Cliché

chapter 25. mad dog and feisty

Faintly, I register the hum of an engine as a car passes by on the street. No, it stops in front of my house. My back is to the open door, but I turn my head to find Brie running up my walkway, out of breath and she bursts into the living room. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy— mirrors of mine, I'm sure.

"Evan confessed to me." She breathes out.

I nod absentmindedly.

"But there's more. Brandon came back into awareness— permanently now. He's fighting with Evan."

Her words don't process inside my brain. All I can think about is my empty house, grief hiding in every corner and nook and cranny and crack and crevice. I'm alone.

"Iris?"

James and Maddie. I need them right now. I need them to tell me how to bring Mom and Jasmine back. With a renewed sense of urgency, I unlock my phone and exit out of the phone app, refusing to look at all the missed outgoing calls in my history, and look through my notes app. I thank my past self for not being stupid for once and writing down all the titles of stories James told me.

"Iris, are you even listening? Someone's going to get hurt!" Brie tugs at my wrist, spinning me around to face her. "You never take anything seriously because you're the main character and you get everything you want! You get Brandon and Evan, you get the freedom to choose, you have volition. But instead, you spend all day acting like you're above all this, like you're better than everyone else. Iris, we don't want to act like mindless, cliche characters either, but we can't do anything about it!"

Jealousy rears its ugly head in all of us. But for Brie, the epitome of sweet, to go on a rant of envy like that, she must've had it weighing down upon her chest for a while.

Now's not the time to space out. I snap out of the numb trance I've been put under, forcing my eyes to focus upon Brie and her quivering frown.

"Mom and Jasmine are gone."

Brie freezes. Shock and shame flits across her eyes.

When she lets go of my hand, I resume my search for the title, until finally landing upon the one I've been looking for: Nerdy Habits. With the words, an image of a girl with glasses and a boy about to kiss flashes into my mind.

Distantly, I can hear Brie's timid voice. "Iris, I am so, so sor—"

I look up at her, specks of gold swirling across my vision and wind whirlpooling around me. My voice is thin when I calmly tell her, "Later. You go deal with your love triangle, Brie. I'll be back. Good luck."

The gold sweeps me away from that suffocating world, the one filled with characters blinded by love and traces of my missing family. Finally, I'm out of there.

Take that, author.

-⚘-

Except, I land on the floor of a public school hallway.

"Are you kidding me? I'm in another hellhole?"

A school's a school: energy-draining, brain cell killing, and overall, fucking shitty. But looking closer, this school is different from mine. West Rose Academy is one for the privileged and the rich, with checkered floors, wide glass windows, and wooden-framed architecture— not to mention the statues and extra perks commissioned left and right). This school, which seems to be called West Side High School from a banner hanging down in the middle of the hallway welcoming the 'Eagles' back, is quite the opposite. Ivory tiled floors, blue metal lockers, and crappy fluorescent lighting that hurts my eyes.

But once I see three tall, attractive boys strutting down the hall like male models (complete with good lighting and wind that comes from nowhere), walking in a triangle shape that emphasizes the one in the middle, I take it back. They hurt my eyes.