FORTY-FIVE
L A C E Y
Lacey was never a really strong individual - at least not when it came to Artemis. Or, perhaps, Artemis had a talent for getting things out of people.
Like, for example, the fact that Lacey, Emily, Eleanor, Dylan and Thomas plotted something together for Artemis. She thought it was all just to annoy her and pay her back for not being able to meet up with Thomas, but Lacey insisted it was nothing like that and it was supposed to be a really great surprise and Artemis was supposed to absolutely love it - oh god, she was beginning to sound like Lacey.
"Okay, so why are we still standing here?"
It's been nearly ten minutes since Artemis confronted Lacey about the ignoring thing and it took Lacey about five minutes to spill it. Now, Artemis had no idea what was going on because Lacey insisted on not telling her anything else.
'I can tell you who was in it,' Lacey had said, 'but if I say anything else, they're literally going to kill me.'
"You'll see," was Lacey's reply.
"I hate you," Artemis said.
"You've been telling this to a lot of people lately," Lacey noted.
"Yes. That's because I've been hating a lot of people lately."
The sound of someone receiving an iMessage broke the silence and Artemis raised her eyebrows at her friend, crossing her arms on her chest. She knew it wasn't her phone because, aside from the blubbering Lacey, everyone else was still ignoring her.
And, judging by Lacey's giggling and attempts to hide the screen from Artemis, something was up. She just wondered who it was to text her.
"Okay, I'm supposed to leave now," Lacey said.
"You're going to leave me alone here?"
"Yes. Someone's coming for you."
Artemis sighed in exasperation. "Jesus. Haven't you told my friend I bloody hate surprises?"
"You'll like this one," Lacey said with a small smile. "I promise."
"Right."
Lacey hugged her quickly and Artemis noticed how tense - read: excited - her best friend was. "Bye. And enjoy yourself."
"It's Thomas, isn't it?" Artemis finally said what she'd been thinking for about twenty minutes now.
Lacey shrugged as she walked away, but Artemis knew she was right. She was just waiting for his tall figure to appear - not that she was short. No, Artemis was just a mere half an inch from being 5'10". She always thought she was pretty average, really, even though she was taller than average and something it was a real pain in the arse.
Just like it was a horribly real and most definitely not fictional pain in the arse to listen someone walking in her direction and actually recognizing the coat she'd seen the other day on the picture. And, perhaps, it was a good thing Artemis wasn't like Emily - a teenager without a chill.
So she didn't freak out at the sight of Thomas Brodie-Sangster. However, she did slightly freak out when he finally came on the distance of a few feet, standing there and smiling at her. Because this, this was real - and this time, there was no way to delete the words like she'd deleted the messages.
She was going to slip and - oh boy - she didn't know if he was going to be there to catch her.
[MINI RANT: this story has cliffhangers. i love cliffhangers. i also update every day, so nobody has to wait long before finding out what happened. stop complaining about them. you should've already picked up on the fact that i won't stop writing cliffhangers in this story. it just annoys the shit out of me and let me tell you, i was ready to change the ending and just kill everybody. i still am. so stop being fucking children and realize that it took me a lot of time and will to write this story, to finish it, even though it's texting and relatively short. stop fucking complaining because i won't be nice. if you don't think you can manage five more chapters of cliffhangers, get out of here. but if you do, don't fucking complain.]