Hope Andrea Argent

Frayed (Part 1)

Lightning ripples silently through the clouds above a traffic filled road. Leaning over the steering wheel, the bus driver peers up at the darkening skies ahead.

Coach looks over her shoulder, whistle hanging from his lips. He breathes a low grumble of displeasure at the storm. Until something catches his eye in the rear view mirror.

A blast of a whistle startles a teenager standing to talk to a girl in the seat behind him,"Back to your seat."

The teen drops back, revealing a bus filled with the Cross Country team. Some study, some text, others sleep. In one seat, Isaac and Boyd exchange tense whispers,"Stop thinking about it, man," Isaac whispers.

"Like you're not thinking about it too?" Boyd retorts.

"Well, stop thinking about it," Isaac says, not denying that he wasn't thinking the same thing too.

"I can't," Boyd growls.

"Well, there's nothing you can do about it either."

"You sure about that?"

He nods to a row behind them where Ethan sits, checking his phone for a message. Beside him, Danny watches Ethan push the phone back into his pocket with a frustrated breath.

"Everything okay?" Danny asks.

"Yeah. Why?"

"You checked your phone three times in the last five minutes," Danny reminds him.

"Waiting for a message," Ethan answers.

"Anything important?"

"No. Nothing," Ethan says nervously, glancing behind his shoulder at Stiles and Scott.

While Stiles taps a finger over his tablet, Scott leans his head against the window, heavy eyelids beginning to close. The air between them tense. Like neither one knew how to start a conversation that they didn't want to talk about, so they just ignored it.

But Scott couldn't stop thinking about the night before.

Yellow eyes snapping open. A roar of primal rage.

"Hey, you still with me?" Stiles says.

Blinking back to the present, Scott turns to Stiles,"Yeah, sorry. What was the word?"

Stiles looks down at a vocabulary app on his tablet,"Anachronism."

"Something that exists out of its normal time."

"Nice. Next word: Incongruous."

"Um... can you use it in a sentence?"

Stiles being the sarcastic person that he is, came up with one easily,"Yes. Yes, I can. It's completely incongruous that we're sitting on a bus right now, on our way to some stupid cross-country meet after what just happened... incongruous."

"Out of place. Ridiculous. Absurd."

"Perfect. Okay, next word: Darach," Stiles says, and Scott gives him a look,"Darach, it's a noun. We have to talk about it sometime, okay? And we're gonna be stuck in this thing for, like, five hours, so why not? Next word...Intransigent."

"Stubborn. Obstinate," Scott says, the bus hits a bump and he sits up with a gasp.

"Oh, buddy, you okay?" Stiles asks.

Scott nods, with a pained expression.

"We shouldn't have come. I knew it, we shouldn't have come," Stiles says, growing increasingly more frustrated.

Scott eyes him warily,"Hey, relax. We had to. There's safety in numbers."

"Yeah, well, there's also death in numbers, okay? It's called a massacre..." Stiles looks down at his tablet,"Or bloodbath, carnage, slaughter, butchery, wow..." He trails off when he notices Scott barely listening, chest rising with labored breaths,"All right, Scott, I'm telling coach that..."