jaded [tara carpenter]

viii. goodbye sheriff

Layla's heart was racing, and she could feel her pulse pounding in her ears. For a moment, she stood there, trembling, as she tried to get her head together. She was grateful to be alive, but the shock of the near-miss left her feeling even more unsteady than before.

The car slammed on the breaks, the driver rolling down the window as they went to hurl abuse at the girl before they realised who they had almost hit.

"What the fuck? Do you not watch where you're going?" Sam asked, her eyes angry before she recognised the girl when she looked up at her. The fresh tears on the sides of Layla's face told her that she had been running off a lot of emotions, and it reminded Sam of when they had just been kids in Woodsboro, before Ghostface had came back into their lives.

"Shut up, Sam," Layla replied, rolling her eyes as she began to storm down the sidewalk and away from the older Carpenter sister. She was still pissed that Sam was so suspicious of her being a killer when she had done nothing but try her best to protect Tara over the years.

She ignored as Sam shouted for her to come back and get into her car. 

The grey car slowly pulled up alongside the girl as she continued to try and storm away.

"Get in," Sam repeated, motioning to the passenger seat as she waited for Layla to accept her offer. She sighed as the girl continued to stand with her arms crossed, not making any movement to get into the car. "Look, she might not want to see us but I'm going back to see Tara. Get in, or I'll leave you here."

_____

Sam drove the car down the empty suburban road, her knuckles straining as she gripped the steering wheel tightly. Beside her, Layla stared out the window, lost in thought. It was the first time that the two girls had been alone, like properly alone, since Sam had left Woodsboro almost five years before.

After a few minutes of silence, Layla turned to Sam. Her eyebrows were pulled tightly together, and Sam was surprised to see that she had toned down her usually high levels of judgement when looking at her. "Why did you think leaving was a good idea?"

Sam sighed heavily and turned to look back at the road. She knew that the question would be asked eventually, and while Tara knew it was because of her finding out who her father was, she knew that Layla wasn't going to just take that for an answer.

"I needed to get away from everything, from everyone."

"But why then?" Layla asked, her voice tinged with hurt. "You could have stuck around until Tara was a bit older, until she would have understood the truth behind her father walking out."

Sam continued to face the road in front of them. "It wasn't enough, Layla. I couldn't just stay in one place forever, doing the same thing every day, living with the worry that somehow I was going to end up as fucked up as my father."

"What, Tara wasn't enough of a reason for you?" Layla snapped back, her voice tight and angry as she mistook Sam's wording. "You left her, with your drunk of a mother and no way to contact you. She phoned you EVERY DAY for a year, and you didn't even leave her a voice note."

"I get that it was shitty but-"

"NO! You don't get it, Sam. We didn't even know you were still in the same fucking country as us, let alone state," Layla continued, feeling that familiar bit of heat rise in her neck as she got more frustrated.

"I knew she would be fine, since you were with her!" Sam snapped finally, making them fall into an uncomfortable silence once more.

The air between them was thick with tension as they sat in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. They had been friends for years prior to Layla finding Sam's diary, and something had changed between them. Now there was a palpable distance that neither knew how to bridge.