A Flash of Red

Chapter Thirteen

Harry

After another 10 minutes of watching the sunrise, Tara and I quietly tracked back down to the basement, careful not to draw attention to ourselves. We were walking back towards my bed when Tara whispered that we couldn't let anyone know about this morning if we wanted any chance of doing it again.

"So I made good company then if we plan on doing this again?" I asked, smirking. She grinned.

"Of course."

We walked back to our respective "rooms" with whispers of "see you later" and went back to sleep for a few hours. I woke up again around 9:30 which was late for me and hoped no one would ask about it when I walked into the main room.

"Morning, sleepyhead." Scarlett said as soon as I entered. "Why so late?" I shrugged. So much for that.

"Just felt like sleeping a little later today." I said nonchalantly. Lying wouldn't do any harm this time.

I poured myself a bowl of cereal and sat on the bench, leaning over the table. Scar brought up the subject of conspiracy theories and talked about some for a while, Ella joining us at some point. I almost squirt the unrefrigerated milk out of my nose when she started talking about how she thought the whole "man landing on the moon thing" was a fake because "you could see the strings."

"Ridiculous." I mumbled into my cereal. Ella nodded in agreement from her seat next to Scarlett.

"Hey! You weren't there! How would you know?"

"And you were?" I questioned, laughing.

"Maybe in a past life." I snorted. Ella shook her head, sighing.

"Okay, Scar." She said. Scarlett laughed and looked behind me before looking at a clock on the wall.

"Wow, 10:15? You're up late, too. What has the world come to?" She said dramatically. I felt the bench shift and turned to see Tara sitting next to me, yawning. "What's your excuse?"

"Didn't sleep too good last night. Woke up a few times." I watched her as she answered. She looked down at her twiddling thumbs where her hands rested on the table, biting her lip to try and hide her smile. Scarlett gave her a look and raised her eyebrow before turning to Ella and continuing the conversation on theories. I leaned over towards Tara who was still looking at the table.

"You're a horrible liar." I whispered in her ear.

She struggled to continue hiding her smile, shoving into me with her shoulder and shushing me. I shoved her back and she laughed. She looked up at Scarlett who was staring.

"What?" Tara asked. Scarlett narrowed her eyes.

"Something fishy is going on here." Tara raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She said, getting up. "I'm going to shower."

Scarlett rolled her eyes but got up with Ella to go with her.

I finished eating my cereal and watched them leave, feeling a tightening in my chest for a reason I didn't know, but it went away when they came back 42 minutes later.

...

That night was game night and Mrs. Adalyn decided that we were all going to play Bullshit. Tara's nose crinkled at the word but played nonetheless.

We gathered four decks of playing cards to account for the large group playing. Trevor and Emelie sat on the floor playing Candy Land. Everyone else pushed tables together and shared benches, sitting in a large circle. Tara sat between me and, much to her dismay, Noah. He played his hand, meaning it was Tara's turn. She plucked three cards from her deck.