21st March
Annie hadn’t even realised she had fallen asleep - until she woke up, to a far more stark daylight to the dim one she had been seeing in the first hours of the morning. Though she awoke with alertness, at the realisation of how much time had probably passed, and what she might have missed. Immediately, Annie slightly sat up to unlock the phone that had stayed in her hand all night; with undeniable dread for what could have happened in the hours she had been sleeping. But what she found wasn’t a call from the hospital, but a Blue Royalty post.
The revelation came out slowly, and in silence, as she read the post while the subject was still asleep. Annie went from sitting up completely when seeing her own and his name, to beginning to stand up when she was introduced to some ‘bet’ he had, to heading towards the door when she found a third party involved too; Paige. At some point in that series of events, Ricky had woken up and was asking what was happening. “I’m wondering the same thing,” She told him, with a clenched jaw, because - what the fxck did she just read? Though there was no sadness or anger portrayed to him - only harsh numbness. Maybe that was because in this moment she was putting hardly any blame onto him, instead onto her for believing things were different. How could she had not seen that quite literally everything was a lie?
𝄞 Was I stupid to love you?
Annie was already headed for the door when her phone gave her further motivation to leave. The notification she had been expecting in the first place, from the hospital. She walked with a blank expression past a protesting Ricky who had just caught up by reading the same post. How could he be talking himself out of this? Exactly, he couldn’t. Annie looked back at him attempting to stop her, for a fleeting moment after she opened the door, for what would be her final acknowledgement towards him for a while. “Save it for your next game.”
28th March
The call from the hospital had almost made her forget the prior news, with her baby brother surviving the night and further coming out of critical condition. Annie did not take this for granted, and made sure the visits to the hospital became a regular occurrence - because why confront her issues with one sibling when she could just spend time with her other three, who couldn’t possibly fvck her over yet. And if Paige wasn’t going to attempt to talk to her after that video had been very publicly shared, then maybe Annie had been wrong about a lot of people. That’s fine, she had become good at cutting people off, anyway.
It didn’t mean she wasn’t hurting, though. Annie thought she knew what loneliness felt like when her best friend had died and her father forgot who she was - and yet, here she was, becoming familiarised with a whole new level. Attending school had become occasional in the last 8 days, after she realised that people will openly comment about anything they have seen on Blue Royalty, and that her time would be better spent with her new siblings; and even though she had decided today she would make an exception, appearances in classes became a rarity that wouldn’t occur on this day.
“Are we skipping, Miss Williams?” A voice said to the back of Annie from the opposite side of the corridor. Annie looked up and sighed, before turning around to see Mrs North who had probably been noticing her frequent absences from her class in the last week. “I would say it was more of a stroll, not a skip,” She responded, as she walked slightly closer to her, though stopped when a lecture began towards her. “Annie, these last few months are so important, and I don’t want to see you throw it away when you have so much poten—”
“ANNIE WILLIAMS TO REPORT TO THE FOOTBALL FIELD, REPEAT, ANNIE WILLIAMS TO THE FOOTBALL FIELD.”
“It was great to catch up with you,” Annie told her with a shrug - not knowing what the source of this announcement was, but it can’t be anything worse than being stuck listening to this. Turning to head towards the broadcasted location, Annie ignored the calls to come back from her teacher, until they were no longer audible because of the helicopter drowning out all other sounds. Because, of course, there was a helicopter here.
Just because Annie walked towards Veronica Parker who stood beside said helicopter, it did not mean she wanted to be pulled inside. And it especially did not mean she wanted to be sat opposite Quinn and Paige. Possibly two of the three worst people in her life right now to be stuck in a helicopter with. “What the fvck is this?” She asked in distaste as she tried to stand back up to get out, though falling back down as it happened to be the exact moment they were taking off. Okay, this was actually happening then.
Looking back, maybe the pitiful lecture from Mrs North actually wasn’t so bad. “You know this is like a complete disrespect to my human rights,” Annie declared to the pair that she could tell, by their expression, were responsible for this. After a moment of silence she turned her head to Paige to make the next statement more direct. “But obviously there’s nothing new there, as if you’ve ever had the slightest respect for me,” She remarked, breaking her silence she had been having towards her for the last week. But the sound of a response being formed from Paige made her wince and then shake her head profusely, “No, no, no, if we’re going to have a conversation about it at least let it be on the ground so I can walk away.”
@/benitz786 Paige Pierce
@/CerealKiller Veronica Parker
@/Littlefeets Quinn Castillo