Past
I MISS YOU. Ariel couldn't believe her eyes. She blinked once, then twice, wondering if the text message had just been part of her wild imagination. When it remained glued to her screen, the surreal moment finally began to weigh on her shoulders. Her fingers moved across the screen swiftly. 'April fools was months ago if you forgot, ' she typed. Ariel placed her phone back onto her nightstand, trying but failing to make sense of Tobias' sudden change of heart.
It hadn't even been a day since she came to visit him once again where she declared her loyalty to Tobias despite his obvious mental instability. She figured Tobias was possibly on the other end of the door listening in on their conversation. He was so adamant that he wanted them to break up, the entire ordeal made no sense to her whatsoever. Did a few heartfelt words sway his mind? The phone chimed and Ariel wasted no time grabbing it off the table.
'Then I guess asking you to come over isn't a trick if April fools were in fact in April.' She read the text over and over again until the glowing lights of the screen made her eyes water. She wondered if this was his sick way of leading her on or if he genuinely wanted to reconcile. There was only one way for Ariel's lingering questions to be answered and that was by facing him herself. Ariel slipped off her bed and sauntered out of the room. "Off to get boned?" Adele sing sang as she emerged from her room.
"You wish," Ariel responded as she climbed down the stairs into the foyer. "I do wish so that I can blackmail you into giving me money to keep my mouth shut." Ariel halted in her footsteps, "when do you ever not blackmail me? I could be going out for ice cream and I still have to pay for your silence. You know I can just lock you in a room and leave anyways right? Mom and Dad can't stop me. They're too busy with work to care."
Adele leaned against the wall, "fair enough. I'm still gonna blackmail you though, so pass me a ten." Adele didn't need money considering their entire family was well off due to their parent's high-paying jobs but she still liked the thrill of hustling Ariel for money and both girls were aware of that fact, yet neither stopped playing the other. Ariel smiled and lowered a ten-dollar bill into her sister's hand. "Thank you. You just got played by the way. I know you're just going out with Evelyn."
"What?"
"Stop playing dumb. I saw her car pull into the driveway from my window." Adele didn't elaborate any further as she disappeared down the hallway. Ariel quickly slipped on her boots and swung the front door open to find Evelyn standing at the foot of the porch, her hands nervously fumbling with one another. "Eve? What are you doing here?" For a moment she forgot that she was supposed to be mad at Evelyn since their last encounter at the baseball game. "Can we talk?" Evelyn muttered.
Ariel slammed the door shut behind her, "I have somewhere to be."
"Ariel, please. You're my best friend and we haven't had a proper conversation in two whole weeks. I didn't even know why you missed an entire week of school and that's something you'd normally tell me you'd be doing but we weren't talking and I-I just miss you." Ariel slowly began to trek down the porch, her eyes narrowed to slits, her lips turned up into a sneer.
"You're doing it again. You only wanna make up on your terms. You wanna make up when things aren't going right for you because you feel lonely and you miss me. Why? Why should we reconcile? Because we're besties? If we were best friends you would have believed me when I said I didn't mean to kiss back and it was just a reflex. You wouldn't have shut me out and refuse to listen to my reason! Instead, you pushed me away and then reeled me in then out like a goddamn yo-yo. What about me? What about what I want, Eve? Huh?"
She shoved Evelyn out of the way and stomped down the stairs leading onto the front lawn. Before Ariel could approach her car, Evelyn rushed to her side, frustrated tears barrelling down her cheeks. "I'm bisexual!" Ariel ripped her hand from Evelyn's tight grip, "and what the hell does that have to do with me and everything I just said?"
Evelyn shifted on her feet frantically. "I-I was scared to tell you because I feared that the one person I loved the most in this world would reject me. I wanted to tell you for so long but I didn't want to scare you away just because I liked you. I got jealous when I saw you with Tobias so I lashed out and I-I kissed you to prove my point because I didn't know what else to do. I blamed you because you kissed back and I knew that I would have interpreted it the wrong way knowing you're not i-into me like that.
I saw you and all I could see was you and Tobias over and over again and that made me angry all the time. So I pushed you away because my feelings can't just disappear like that. I'm sorry, Ariel. I'm sorry for playing with your feelings. I'm sorry for hurting you and for putting you in this uncomfortable position. I-I just want my best friend back, that's all."
Ariel stared at the girl who could barely contain the sobs rippling through her body as she wobbled on her feet. Her face remained passive and she contemplated whether or not to comfort Evelyn. She shoved her hands into her pocket and nodded her head, "fine." Evelyn's eyes met hers, "f-fine? What do you mean fine?" She stammered.
Ariel shrugged, "I mean fine. We can make up. I accepted your apology but I really have somewhere important to be right now. I'm sorry but I can't stay." She pivoted on her heels to leave but Evelyn's arms shot out towards her once again, "is it Tobias? Is that why both of you weren't at school for the entire week?" Without responding, Ariel snatched her hand away and sauntered towards her car, leaving behind a distraught Evelyn.
Present
Ariel didn't expect two weeks to go by as quickly as it did. Her suspension was up, meaning now she had the chance to return to the house of horrors. Despite the hundreds of eyes swivelling in her direction as she sashayed down the hallway, she didn't care and kept her chin tilted upwards so that they could see that none of their hurtful words and gossiping could sway her.
Her fingers itched to flip off every person who stared at her for too long but considering that it was her first day back since the incident with Theo, she wanted to keep a squeaky clean reputation. When Ariel arrived at her locker in one piece, she plugged in the combination and swung the doors open, still trying but failing to ignore the people who stumbled on their feet as they lost concentration at the sight of her.
A red sequinned envelope caught Ariel's attention. She hadn't put it there and the last time she checked, Larson wasn't brave enough to be this bold and neither did any of her friends know her combination. "Another one huh you scared little punk. Why don't you come to my face and threaten me?" Ariel whispered under her breath as she snatched the envelope from the space that it was neatly tucked into.
She opened it as neatly as possible and was met with one message scribbled messily across one of the many photos stacked into the single file: Welcome back, whore :) She slammed her locker shut and shoved the photo back into the envelope. Ariel gritted her teeth in anger as a sudden surge of rage coursed through her veins. She didn't know when last she had this burning urge to rip someone's head off their feeble body but as she marched down the hallway, she knew that this had to come to an end...no matter the cost.
Past
"You came," he said below his breath as he stood in the frame of the door. Ariel smiled, "you knew I would." With a disbelieving chuckle, he stepped out of the way, allowing her to step into the house. The moment the door had closed shut behind them, Tobias cupped Ariel's cheeks in the palm of his hands and lowered his lips down onto hers in a gentle kiss as if he were afraid anything less than that would hurt her.
She kissed back with zero hesitance, however; Ariel could feel his uncertainty bouncing off the walls of the house. She drew back and tilted her head upwards, never breaking the distance between them, "I missed you too." She said, referring to the message he sent her earlier. Tobias gently brushed a strand of hair away from her face, "I feel like I can't say sorry enough for hurting you." His eyes still refused to meet her neck despite Ariel covering up the bruises with makeup.
"I hurt you physically, emotionally. . .mentally. Yet still, you're standing in front of me right now as if nothing happened. Why? I'm mentally unstable, Ariel. I could stop taking my medication any day and I snap again and hurt you. Why are you willing to risk that happening? Are you stupid? Of course, you aren't, I'm starting to think you're just crazy." Ariel chuckled softly. She wasn't crazy, she was in love or infatuated. Whatever it was, she interpreted it the way she pleased.
Ariel wondered why she was so drawn to Tobias in the first place. On the outside, he wasn't the type of person she'd date, but on the inside, that was the total opposite. Ariel thought Tobias would have simply been a rebound that could have developed into something more. But instead, he became more. He meant more; she never planned for that to happen yet here she was standing in the foyer of the boy who captured her attention with a simple hello in their school's courtyard.
"I'm not crazy, Tobias. I just love–" he lowered his finger down onto her lips before she could finish her sentence. The look in his eyes had suddenly morphed into the same unrecognizable gaze that made an appearance every once in a while. It wasn't the frightening one that bored into her soul that day but it hovered between the depths of an icy cold abyss and an emotionless void. "Don't say what I think you're about to say."
"You can't tell me what to say and what not to say." He sunk his teeth into his lips, "Ariel, I'm warning you." She captured his hands in the palm of hers and lowered them down onto her cheeks. The stoic gaze in his eyes disappeared and she was met with the reflection of a guy who could barely fight his inner turmoil. "I'm not leaving this house until you hear me say it."
He lowered his head as tears pricked at his eyes, "Ariel, please don't."
"I love you."
He flickered his eyes shut and chuckled humorlessly, "you just don't listen do you?" He grabbed her hand and tugged her down the hallway, ignoring Ariel's cries of protest. She stumbled behind him, unable to keep up with his rapid pace but she didn't need to worry about that for too long as Tobias arrived at his destination. He raised a leg and kicked the door to the washroom open with enough force to send it flying off its hinges. Ariel watched as it careered towards the wall in shock but barely had a second to comprehend what just happened as he went throwing more doors off its hinges.
"What are you doing!?" She screamed loudly, her voice piercing through his ears. He shoved his hands into the cabinet where just a portion of his medicine was located. He then pivoted on his heels to face Ariel and one by one he pelted the bottles beside her head and despite his burning rage, he made sure that each of them had missed and instead went flying towards the wall standing behind her. "Is this the person you love!" He screamed, his pupils once again dilating to the point where she could barely see his blue irises.
He grabbed her hand and shoved a bottle into it, "read it, tell me whose name you see and what the prescription is." Ariel peered down at the bottle in her hand then those spread out on the floor at her feet. "Fluoxetine, Sertraline, Ziprasidone, Clozapine, Aripiprazole." She muttered as her eyes flickered over each and every bottle. Ariel scoffed loudly, "you think a few anti-depressants are supposed to scare me off?" She inquired as she sauntered towards him, her head cocking sideways. The fear Tobias had expected her to have on her face was non-existent.
He raised a bottle to her line of vision, "you think these are only anti-depressants?" She ripped the bottle from his hands and stood tall at his feet, her blazing eyes penetrating through Tobias' faltering gaze. She was more than just nonchalant: she was simply. . .thoughtless. "If you think being on antipsychotic drugs will scare me, think again. I'm not stupid, I know what a psychotic episode looks like, Tobias."
~~~