Homecoming Horror Part 1

"Do you really have to wear a dress for homecoming?" My dad asks as I strutted into my parents room with my outfit on.

Sage had agreed to finally come to Homecoming along with Violet and Aryiana so I had some excitement leading me to the dance.
Plus Ian was chaperoning and made sure that I knew that he was going to be watching me.
"Dad what else am I going to wear?" I groan and he turns his laptop around to show a nun outfit he had bid on on eBay.

"I'd rather take the quilt." I say, rolling my eyes and my mom walks in from the bathroom.

"Greg stop it. She looks beautiful. Very classy and sexy at the same time." My mom compliments and hands me some of her earrings.
"Why would you want our daughter to look sexy?" My dad asks and my mom turns her nose up.

"Living in a male dominated world, where sexy can only be classified what a male calls sexy is unfair. She's a senior in high school, there's nothing wrong with showing off a bit. As long as it's not trashy. There's nothing wrong with being sexy, in fact I think woman should embrace it more." My mom explains and I raise an eyebrow.

"Well damn mom." I say with a short smile and put on my accessories.

"I just don't want men perverting on my daughter." My dad mumbles.

"Men are going to pervert whether she's wearing your mothers knitted quilt or Coochie cutter shorts. Let her have some fun."
And this is why I loved my mother.

"Just please be careful, I don't want anything happening to you." My dad says and I smile.

If only he knew that I was fooling around with my teacher- that would put him back in the hospital.

"I will." I promise and lean over to kiss his forehead and hug my mother.

"I'll call you guys when I'm on my way back." I assure and make my way down the stairs.

Aryiana is already outside waiting in her car and greets me with a smile.
"Hey gorgeous." I say and lean over and hug her. "Hey pretty lady." She chimes back and I glance at her outfit.

She's wearing a pink skirt with a black crop top and black heels.
"You seem to be feeling a lot better." I point out and she turns to me. "Oh come on Marley, I seem to be hiding a lot better at it is all." She says slyly, wiggling her eyebrows at me and I stare at her briefly.

That was a twisted way of seeing it.

But sadly all quite true.
"Sage's mom is dropping her off and Vi is already there. So it's just us heading off." I can hear the disappointment in her voice.

We had all talked about senior homecoming since freshman year. All walking off together in show stopping outfits and now it was just us two.
Except she wasn't here- emotionally. She was disconnected.

For the rest of the drive we were silent, which was oddly enough to pull up the car right next to Zachary's.

"I'm going to go get Sage." Aryiana tells me and gets out of the car.

I close my eyes and inhale, my goal wasn't to have a good time or even to mess around with my teacher. It was for all of my friends to be together in harmony...like we used to be.

I slowly get out of the car and I see Zachary is wearing a button up and some black pants. "Looking good." I bring myself to say and his eyes widen as his eyes trail down my body.

"You look amazing." He whispers and I pull down my black dress, fearing it was too short.
"Thanks. Shall we?" I offer towards the door and he holds his arm out and I loop mine.

He leads me into the gym area which was renovated into an actual dance floor.

Everyone was dressed up in either a dress or a suit, with music blasting and lights flaring across the room.

"I'm surprised all of these people came." I mumble.

"Primarily the seniors- trying to make last minute memories." Zachary says with a shrug and I nod, my eyes searching for Sage or Violet, but the first pair of eyes I meet up with is Ian's.
He licks his lips and glances at me and then turns back to look at Zach and frowns.
Uh oh.

"Do you want something to drink?" Zachary asks me.
"No thanks. I chugged about four bottles of water before I got ready." I hear myself say and then I mentally kick myself in the throat. That sounded just plain foolish. He wanted to offer me a drink.

"I mean, definitely yeah." I quickly babble and he smiles nervously and moves past me.

I look back over at Ian who's jaw is clenching and his eyes practically beaming lasers into mine. I slowly make my way towards Ian.

"Why the hostility? You look like you were about to burn bridges to get over to me." I say once I approach Ian.

And my oh my did this man look fine.

"Are you in cahoots with him?" I can't help but giggle as he says that.
"Okay old man. No I'm not. It's for the senior feel. He asked and I suck at hurting peoples feelings." I assure and the corners of his mouth turns into a smile.

"I don't know, 'old man' hit pretty hard." Ian says, holding his hand over his heart and I giggle.

"You look beautiful." He whispers, staring me in the eyes.
Mother of all things holy, I was searching for the holy grail and I'm pretty sure it was in his pants.

"You look nice too." I say, glancing him up and down.

"Well I better get back to Zach. He is my date."
"Date for the night. After that- mine. All mine." He says and I bite my bottom lip, forcing the thoughts of him and Ms. Evelyn away and I nod, making my way back to where Zach had remembered me to be.

I hear the music start to turn down, and I look up to observe two chairs that have been placed on top of the platform along with our class sponsor- Ms. Marshall, who instructs the DJ to turn the music down.
My phone vibrates and I see that it's a 4-1-1 text message from Aryiana, telling me to meet her in the bathroom.

I glance to the side to see Aryiana motioning her head towards the bathroom and see Violet standing in front, eyeing us to follow her.

"Ladies and gentleman. I am so glad to see that everyone is enjoying their homecoming." She pauses for brief applause but I know I have to wait until the announcement was over.

"As always, the funds used for the tickets do have a partial deposit elsewhere and this year. We have one of your very own students who this is support." Ms. Marshall steps back and one of the seniors, Lila Williams stands to the mic with a soft smile. She as also our class president.

"Hey everyone. I just wanted to tell you all that this really means a lot- this years funds is going to something...special." She pauses and everyone looks at her silently.

"It's going to help young teenagers who are fighting cancer...and I'm one of them." After she says this, there's mumbling and my mouth drops.

Now that was a big shocker, I quickly turn my heels and walk towards Aryiana, who's equally as stunned as I am.

"Lila, who knew right?" I whisper. "I know. But we have an issue too," Ary tells me.

"What?" I ask and she grabs my hand and we walk towards Violet. "Somebody heard puking and apparently it was Sage but she's locked herself in." Aryiana explains and that gets me sprinting for the bathroom.

We turn the stall and I don't bother turning on the light, I just knock on the only closed stall.

"It won't work. I've been knocking for ten minutes and all it hear is her sniffling." Violet says propping up against the wall with her arms covered across her chest.

"Sage, please come out. Tell us what's going on." I beg and as Violet said, sniffling is all that's returned.

"Sage, is it all that bad to the reason why you're not telling us anything?" Violet calls out and she almost seems tipsy.

Aryiana is in the corner, pulling at her rubber band and I sleep alcohol.

"Violet have you been drinking?" I ask.
Violet scoffs and rolls her eyes, motioning past me.

"Please Marley. Take the attention off of me. This is about Sage and why she's throwing up." Violet calls out and I run my fingers through my hair.

"Sage, are you pregnant?" Ary whispers and suddenly the door opens.

Sage wipes her nose and her makeup is smudged, she looks broken.
"No. I'm not." Sage states and moves to the sink.

"Then what's going on?" I ask and watch as she turns on the faucet and puts water in her hand and drinks from it.

"Nothing." She finally says and Ary groans.

"You can't feed that bullshit to us Sage. We've been friends for years and you think we buy that poor 'nothing'? Try again and this time tell the truth." One thing I appreciated about Aryiana is that in order to get Sage to talk, you couldn't sugar coat anything with her.

You'd have to just be straight to it. Almost blunt with her.

Sage doesn't say anything and Violet shakes her head and begins to walk out.

"Vi, don't leave." I say and she turns around dramatically.
"What else am I supposed to do Marley? We can't force her to talk- after all. She didn't even tell me what was going on either." Violet says glaring at Sage.

"She didn't tell any of us." I remind.

"Doesn't explain why you two went to her house without me." Violet spats back.

"I called you, but you never answered." Aryiana intervenes.

"Another way, you went wrong. You should've known I wouldn't have answered a call from you." Vi whispers and Ary sucks her teeth.

"It's over now and we're just as clueless as you." Aryiana exclaims.

"I see that now but she's not telling us anything so why am I still here?" Violet retorts.

This was so unlike Violet, something must be seriously wrong with her.

"What the hell is your issue?" I finally snap.
"Don't worry about it. Please I'm sure you have better things to do." Violet says rolling her eyes.

"And you guys expect me to really tell you what's going on while you guys act like this?" Sage finally mumbles.

We're silent for a moment and I turn my head.

"You keep acting like you're alone and you're not." Violet says.

"Please don't try to patronize me Violet, seriously. I don't care how many times you offer to help. I don't care how many times we talk- I will always be alone. I may ask for help but the truth is- you can be of no help to me unless you posses some mystical powers to fight the demons in my mind." Sage pauses and wipes her eyes.

"Sage-" but she stops her.

"No. Do you know what it's like? To have these images in your brain of being a happy child and then flash forward years later and I am who I am. I can't talk about it without people I'm looking for attention." This time I stop Sage.

"We won't." I assure,

"No. Cause I don't know if you guys can possess the depth to understand. So please don't. Just don't."
It hurt me to see her hurt so much and not being able to do anything about it.

Tears filled my eyes and I could see emotion had washed over Aryiana as well.

"But I'm not alone..." Sage's voice trails off.

"I have Ana." She adds and Violet frowns. "Who's Ana?" She asks curiously and Sage looks at me and my mouth drops.

"A-Ana. It's a term to...describe anorexia." I whisper in disbelief and Sage snorts and turns away from us.

"So you're bulimic as well?" The two led together but I knew. Some people were bulimic but weren't anorexic and some people were anorexic but weren't bulimic.

Hers went and hand in hand.

"Yeah. Which explains why...I passed out. Why I haven't been eating...all of it." Sage whispers and looks back.

"Please don't apologize. What could you possibly be sorry for?" Sage adds.

"Sorry that you feel that way." Violet mumbles humbly.

"Sympathy for the hurt? Wrong source of direction my dear. Sympathize the arrogant and oblivious. For they will never get to see the world...see how it really is. Once you've hit a certain level of pain. And not by a love loss. But by a self loss....you'll never see anything the same again." Sage voice trails off and we all stand there.

Silent. Mentally sober and I was distraught. I wanted to wrap my arms around Sage but I knew she could handle that right now.

"You can say that again." Violet whispers and Sage raises an eyebrow.

"What are you hiding?" She asks and Violet flinches back.

"Excuse me?"
"Don't act like I'm the only one hiding something. Everyone here is. Especially you Violet. Showing up late for class or not showing up at all. Every time we'd come to talk to you- you'd blow us off. I may have been socially shut down but I notice everything." Sage says notable and suddenly Violet looks defensive.

"This isn't about me-" Sage stops her.
"Well I'm making it about you." Everyone lacked sensitivity to the other persons feelings in their voice and I couldn't get too mad.

Hurt people, hurt people.

"Sage, if she doesn't want to talk-" Ary tries to say.
"You guys made me talk so let's get it all out in the open."

"Everyone's not like you Sage!" Violet shouts.
"I never said that. I'm just tired of secrets. I have mine out and I don't want to be the only emotionally naked one," Sage states.

"Does it really mean that much to you? Cause if you really want to know I'll tell all of you guys." Violet says in a harsh tone.

"Finally -" Violet interrupts her.

"There's a reason why there's two chairs up there on the platform. I have cancer too."

~*~*~*~*

Well....here you guys go I guess.

x flower