somebody else, matt sturniolo

seventeen

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XVII
the birds failed attempt to take over !

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»»———-real life———-««

matthew sturniolo had finally cracked. he'd finally and inevitably lost the battle in his head. he'd given in. he kissed her. the girl he claimed to hate for the last five years. not even once, but twice. how could he have let himself do that?

so when he arrived in her driveway to pick her up from school of course he'd been acting a little strangely all morning. nick and chris took immediate notice to it, but had yet to mention anything to their brother yet.

emersyn had thought about staying home sick, begging her parents to allow her to take the day off. but, she pushed through and gained her courage to jump into the van when matt arrived. most of the drive to elesia's was quiet. with chris on aux and nick glued to his phone. every once in a while, the brunette girl would look up and catch matt looking back at her through the rear-view mirror. they'd make eye contact, both expressionless, and then matt would be the first to tear his eyes away and revert them back to the road ahead.

when el go into the car, not much changed. only now, matt had taken over aux from chris and el and nick were talking amongst themselves. emersyn's eyes were focused outside her window, watching trees and streetlights fly by. suddenly, the car jolted, and everyone gasped. "matt! what the fuck?"

matt was leaning up in his seat, swerving the car to the left momentarily before getting back into the right lane. "fuck, sorry." he huffed. "it was a bird."

nick heaved. "what?" he yelped.

a bird had flown just in front of the car, nearly collapsing against the windshield. "matt, somebody needs to take away your license." chris taunted.

"oh, fuck off. that totally was not my fault."

under any other circumstances, emmy would have chimed in by now. she would have made a profuse joke about her trauma she'd suffered and the ptsd from being in the same car as matt. but, today the girl had very little to no words at all. as if her vocal chords were protesting against her, taking their leave. she had so many things to say but no words to put them into.

the day dragged out excruciatingly slow. minutes felt like hours, and hours felt like days. but, eventually the group made it into their shared study hall-- the last period of their school day. the friends sat in their usual spot, all sprung out on the floor in the back corner of the library. at one point, which now felt like decades ago, jake would sit with them. however, after everything that had unfolded, he no longer sat with them, in fact, no one in the group knew for sure where he went during study halls anymore.

the two girls had their biology textbooks out, both with pens in hand as they helped each other study for their very upcoming test. chris and nick were playing tic-tac-toe to spare time until cameron came back from the vending machines with their snacks.

"the soda machine was basically empty. all out of pepsi." cam informed, bending down to take a seat.

"god hates me." chris pouted, snatching his pack of trail mix from cam's fingertips. "worst luck." he frowned.

el tapped her pen cap against her lined paper, humming. "okay, what is the structure of DNA molecules?"

em looked up at her study partner, grimacing. "i don't know. the twisty thingy." she guessed.