1.1 | Cherry Knots ✓

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[as seen in parker's eyes]

The clock is ticking. But time has come to a standstill.

At least, that's what it feels like to him, even though he has been sitting in the same position for the past hour.

He hears a deafening roar in his ears and something like an invisible python winding itself around his chest, slowly but surely squeezing the life out of him. He clutches his phone between his fingers tightly, so tightly until he hears a slight crack of the plastic.

It reminds him a fucking lot like the cracking of a heart. When the fissures of the heart begin to tear at its seams and it hurts, a dull throbbing pain – not quite heartache, not quite heartbreak.

But he is halfway there.

He glances down at his phone again, the screen a little blurred from his fingerprints. He rereads the black words on the white screen and wonders if words have ever been more toxic before. The message from his mother is simple but painful:

It's terminal. I'm sorry, honey.

He rereads the message several more times, trying to find a way to scramble the letters, scramble his father's fate into something like 'it's just a joke, honey' or 'he's actually okay; really, really okay'. But no, it's not possible because fate is a heartless, cruel bitch and when she plays her cards, there is really no way to escape her evil clutches.

He can see shadows outside, sweeping across the soft glow that peeks through the gap beneath the door. And he focuses on it – on her.

She's trying to keep as silent and as inconspicuous as possible as she paces outside his door, but her footfalls are clumsy for a teenager. He appreciates it, nevertheless, because she is his sole constant in his world, the only part of his life that has not worked itself into a frenzied pace destruction.

The home phone rings in the distance and he hears her run down the hall to answer it. She returns quickly, pausing outside his door once again.

"...yes, I know, I know."

He can hear her voice, clear and comforting. It drowns out the roaring in his ears, it makes him realise he's not deafened. Not yet.

"I know, twenty percent of my final grade. But I have an emergency to attend to...I'm not going! You can tell Ms Castelle to shut it and stick her face where the sun don't shine."

He doesn't know how he manages it, but her words make his lips curl up in a brief smirk. He can't quite believe it. He's actually smiling at a time where his world is on the brink of collapse. Only Isla Moore can get that sort of reaction out of him. Out of anyone, for that matter.

"Okay, don't tell her that, I'd get expelled. But I swear I'm not going!" She continues, heatedly. "Well, tell her something else, anything...make it up, use your bloody imagination! Alright – oh, that's actually pretty good. Shut it, you wanker, don't get cocky just because – alright, I owe you one. Yes, I know...didn't I already thank you? No? Not yet? Right, fine, Cas – you're a brilliant, wonderful jack – person, I was going to say person. But seriously thanks a million, Cas, I really appreciate it."

Then she ends the call and all is silent once again, save for her footfalls as she paces outside his room. And then that is when the silence hits him, that is when it all crumbles to ashes and dust, that is when he suddenly realises that his father is never going to get better.