love is embarrassing | j. grace

i. the voices in her head say you're her boyfriend

tw; talk of heights, being pushed off heights

one. the voices in her head say you're her boyfriend

IVY WAS ALMOST ONE HUNDRED percent positive that she fell asleep in the safety of a bed, and in the arms of her boyfriend last night. You can imagine her surprise when she jerked awake to find that she was not being cuddled by her boyfriend, nor surrounded by comfortable blankets, instead she was pressed against a smeared window on a smelly, over-crowded, too-loud bus.

The scariest thing was she couldn't even remember her boyfriend, only his name and a vague idea of what he looked like.

"Rise and shine," A boy beside her grins.

That's when the panic begins to set in. The boy beside her was not her boyfriend, in fact she had never seen him before. She must look panicked because the boys smile immediately drops. Ivy looks around at her fellow peers, she doesn't recognize any of them. In fact, they all look like faceless blobs, and now so does the boy beside her. A purple haze grows in her vision.

'What's going on?' A masculine voice speaks and she jumps, looking beside her but finding nothing but her scared reflection in the window. 'Oh, not again. I thought we were working on this —'

"What?" Ivy mutters out loud, looking all around. It was getting harder to breathe and to see, she tugs at the collar of her sweatshirt

'Where's that cute blond — oh what's his name —'

"Shut up!" Ivy grips her hair, squeezing her eyes shut.

"Vee — hey," The boy beside her says but it's all muffled. He tugs her hands out of her hair, and instead places one against his wrist, she feels the familiar beat of his pulse. "Just focus."

She hopes the look she gives him is "why don't you try and focus?!"

"Ask her if she took her meds today," Another voice chimes in and she's pretty sure that one is real, not one inside her head.

Ivy feels her heart slow down and her breathing slowly come to, she keeps her hand against the boys wrist just in case.

"I — I dont —" She pauses to try and recollect her words and thoughts.

Meds. Blond boy. Her boyfriend. Oh gods, where was he? She hopes he ended up somewhere better than a smelly bus.

Ivy looks to the boy beside her who was watching her carefully. He was definitely not who she was looking for.

This boy had curly black hair that swept over his forehead, and elvish facial features. She noticed his hands were constantly moving, right now he was making something out of paper clips. Then, she took notice of the girl sitting in the row behind them, she was focused only on Ivy. She had choppy brown hair as if she had done it herself, and there were a few braids scattered around. Her eyes were unlike anything Ivy had seen (well, she couldn't really remember if she had seen anything like it), flashing green, and then blue, and then hazel. Like a kaleidoscope. She was an effortless type of beautiful and Ivy almost felt herself blushing under her gaze.

"I don't know who you are," She says looking between them both.

"Real funny, Vee," The boy laughs and Piper laughs too.

"Yeah, nice try," The girl giggles.

Her eyebrows furrow, "My name is Ivy, not Vee." She wasn't sure why, but the name "Vee" coming from their mouths didn't seem right. Didn't sound right.

"Yeah," The girl nods, "We know. I'm Piper and that's Leo."

"I don't know you," She tries again.

"Yeah, okay, if this is another one your weird things to make us feel crazy . . . well, stop it," The boy says.