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"THE DREAD DOCTORS by T.R. McCammon..." Lydia said in a hum-like tone as she walked side by side with a very stressed out Aspen through the school hallway the next morning.
"That picture on the front cover—" Aspen said in a rushed voice, again looking like she was low on sleep from the night before, "That's exactly what they looked like, the guys that killed Tracy?"
"You know I never doubted you, right?" Lydia said softly as she turned to the side to look at the Bellator girl, "I would have kicked everyone else's asses for not believing you had I not been stuck in the ICU for two days."
Aspen smiled weakly, genuinely and wholeheartedly— but weakly. She sometimes wondered what her past self would think if she saw her now— best friends with Lydia Martin. The strawberry blonde who used to rule this school with an iron fist with a heart equally as cold. Aspen knew what it was that brought the two of them so close— Lydia did too. After Allison died, there was a huge void in both of their lives, a friendship that was more than just a friendship.
If this Aspen could say one thing to her sophomore self—it would probably be to get over herself, swallow her pride and befriend the girl already instead of making a constant enemy of her. The Lydia she knew now had always been there, she just needed a little help to remove the empty, mean-girl outer shell.
"Thank you," Aspen said with a pursed-lip smile, "for believing me..."
"Any time," Lydia returned, and then continued as she held the book up, "Besides— it's Beacon Hills. It's not like these freaky, masked 'dread doctor' guys are exactly anything out of the blue for us."
Aspen laughed a little, looking down at the floor as the two girls continued to walk through the hall together. Aspen's laugh soon faded out, and was replaced with a look of subtle discomfort that Lydia picked up on straight away, and furrowed her brows at.
"What is it?" Lydia asked Aspen.
"Nothing, it's just..." Aspen let out a sigh, "we're so desensitised to this crap. I mean, seriously— three guys in masks waltzing around town kidnapping teenagers, turning them into experiments, and then murdering them with mercury injections— we should be severely freaked out by all of this, but..."
"But we're not." Lydia finished the sentence for her when Aspen trailed off a little, "We should be, but we aren't... because it's just become normal for us."
"Yeah..." Aspen agreed in a low murmur, "I don't know— it's kind of depressing to think about, so, let's just go back to talking about the book, okay?"
"Sure," Lydia said, looking back at the book in her hands, "We can make our own freaky, supernatural book club."
Aspen chuckled, and then looked down at her phone, reading over her text from Stiles she finally got last night, way past midnight, for the fiftieth time this morning. All it said was,
