Dawn Hollow

IV

Static.

That's all that appeared after the last few names for the credits of Mean Girls played on the small box TV that sat on the floor directly in the middle of Joseph and Noah's beds. The ground he sat upon was like air instead of the stiff, candied, crumbed, and popcorn-covered carpet that supported his slacking body and dense mind as it floated beyond time and space. He had been like this since he arrived, but the others hadn't seemed to notice yet.

The room illuminated an unearthly glow that coated the small space when the DVD ejected itself from the DVD player Joseph had hooked up. Joseph was a classic textbook geek, even if he wouldn't ever admit it. The twin was constantly researching and playing with and designing his own technologies. And what topped the whole thing off was: he was seriously into comics. Ever since PJ could recall, when Joseph received his first comic book, it was like his personality clicked in his head, like eyes coming into focus for the very first time. His favorite had always been the original Batman issues, but for all the wrong reasons. Joseph was a die-hard Joker fan. PJ recalled when he had dyed his whole head the same shade of green but decided to get rid of it at the beginning of high school.

With gray eyes, PJ was enraptured in the trance-inducing scripture of the static. And even though it was still pretty early in the night, they had all discarded their clothes in exchange for their pajamas. He could still see his mountain of old cloth sitting disheveled on his backpack with the expectation of his favored jean jacket, which had been sent to the wash after his pocket was dripping with the orange he managed to juice out of nerves on the walkover. He wished he hadn't changed though, it had done nothing except keep PJ's mind throbbing every time itchy fleece flicked his skin.

Erica was sitting on a pillow next to PJ, painting his nails while glancing towards her boyfriend as he ejected the DVD was stuck it back in its case. The nerdy twin graced over at the pile of the preset movie that had been set aside to Erica's taste. Finally, it was her turn to choose the variety of movie. PJ had chosen last time, Noah before him, and Joseph would choose the next set of movies for the next sleepover. "Keeping the train of chick-flick rom-com by the beautiful Erica's choice, our next film of the 8 o'clock hour is 1995's Clueless," Joseph marketed with a wink to his girl, who flushed crimson under the radioactive TV's glow.

Noah, however, groaned from his spot on his baseball-covered bed sheets, flipping over from his position on his stomach to his back to emphasize his eccentric self, "We've been watching these movies all night. Can't we watch something with a little more...I don't know: excitement?"

"Now now, dear brother," Joseph interjected with an adjustment to the vision on his nose, "You know the sacred rules of sleepovers! It's Erica's turn to pick all the movies for the night, and this is what she wants to watch!"

"Besides, I might just breathe my last breath if I have to sit through another one of those sports movies!" Erica sassed back. Noah struck a dramatic pose, pushing a hand to his heart as a taken hit. "Also, you should be manning the window! Zayn's party started an hour ago, the alcohol and teenage rampage should be setting in soon!" She nudged her head to Joseph's corner of the room, which housed the only skinny window in the box. Well, perhaps that wasn't true; Noah's corner had one too, but it was often hidden behind his small bookshelf and rendered useless for the shenanigans of the night.

"Technically, it's not my window shift anymore. It was PJ's shift half an hour ago, but someone decided to give him a little spa time instead! Isn't that right, PJ?" Noah shifted the talking to the shell of a boy who was too deep in his head to respond. He couldn't even hear them anymore, only the static. His brain was dormant, a ringing and muffled mess with the same looping pattern tumbling around. It was all of his questions; What has his Dad done? How does it involve Faye? And what the hell was the doctor talking about? It was a whirlpool of thoughts he continued to drown in, and none of it made sense, no matter how hard he tried to make an ounce of sense out of any of it!