The Falling

Chapter Five- Pregnancy Tests & Invites

“YOUR LIPSTICK STAIN IS A WORK OF ART! I’VE GOT YOUR NAME TATTOOED IN AN ARROW HEART AND I’M SO-.”

My hand smacks down on my slippery cell phone sending it flying across my fluffy dark blue carpet.

“Oh shit,” I curse, my feet wedged in the blankets like a fish’s fin caught in a net.

I crawl out, my forearms baring the weight of my chest as I spring my hand forwards like a lizard, attempting to grab the neon yellow phone as if it’s a life vest and I’m drowning.

“AND I KNOW NOW, THAT I’M SO DOWN! HEYYYYYYYY!” the phone spouts.

Natalie’s ring tone mocks me like a bully, beckoning me to spring forward once more and fall. I try to roll the lower half of my body out of my quilt. My arms falter, my palms sprawl out attempting to stop my face from smacking the floor.

SMACK!

“Crap!”

I land on the crook of my elbows with a loud thud, my knees slip off of the mattress, the sheet still tightly entwined around my ankles like an intricate booby trap which belongs in an Indiana Jones movie.

“Argh!” I roar, slapping the phone with my fingertips.

I reel it in like a fishing line, my eyes prizing the phone.

“HEYYYYY! HEYYYYYY!”

I press the smart phone angrily to my ear.

“Hey do you know what time it is? I swear to god when I find out what time it is-and I know it’s early- you are so dead!” I roar like an old man keeping kids off of his dying lawn.

I sink my free cheek into the floor and I rest my ankles up on the mattress creating an awkward sculpture.

“It’s nearly eight. You should be up already! School remember?” exclaims Natalie in response, “What’d you do last night anyway? Why didn’t you answer your phone? And you never said goodbye.”

I was shot last night and then Graysen smashed my head into the carpet.

“Wait. You don’t remember…the car park?”

“I waited on the bleachers and you never came back!” she whines, “And neither did Talisha!”

“Oh, well Talisha got called in to work so I gave her a ride,” I explain, the weary tears of sleep fogging my vision like fog on an eerie night.

Natalie’s inhale gushes into the phone like a gale-force wind, she releases inquisitively, “TALISHA DOESN'T HAVE A JOB. And why didn’t you come back? Or call me?” Natalie continues like a derailed train, “I’m never going to a football game with you again, it wasn’t even my idea to go.”

“I mean her mum got called into work so Talisha had to go home to look after her sister,” I belt out an excuse faster than it took Bad Neighbours to become awkward. 

“Yeah, well you owe me,” Natalie describes, “I had to eat all the popcorn on my own. I looked like a pig. And I had to drink your Coke Zero! That stuff is disgusting; no wonder you’re so sour all the time.”

“Natalie-.”

Natalie cuts me off, “You didn’t deny it! Are you saying I’m fat?”

“No-.”

“You’re so in the dog house,” she says tiredly, her words are muffled under a long yawn.

“OK Natalie, I’m sorry. Do you want to know the truth? I was shot by a gang of fallen angels and because I’m a Nephil I had to spend my night in the church with Graysen and Father David who were trying to heal me.”