Monstrous ➳ Dunbar

[ in which they escape ]

Sydney sat cross-legged on her bed, still dressed in her pajamas despite the fact that it was currently five-thirty in the morning. Her and Stiles were scheduled to leave in fifteen minutes, though she couldn't find herself to get ready, as her eyes were glued to a single sheet of paper, as they had been since she had first seen it the night before. Her eyes scanned over the two names for what seemed like the thousandth time that morning. Her and Liam had both gone up in price by over five million dollars each, which only made the mixture of fear and anxiety that was constantly eating away at her insides increase even more.

A knock on her closed door caused Sydney to jump in place, quickly struggling to fold up the crumbled piece of paper as Stiles stuck his head into the room. His eyebrows pulled together in a look of concern as his eyes landed on the paper, which was sticking halfway out of his sister's pants.

"You are not looking at that again, are you?" he questioned, groaning as he stepped fully into the room. Sydney expected him to be dressed in his lacrosse uniform, as the team had yet another early morning practice, but instead he was dressed in a plaid flannel with his worn out Chuck Taylor's covering his feet. He was still in his boxers; why was a complete mystery to Sydney- one that she did not plan on finding out.

"I want you to throw that thing away," Stiles said sternly as he took a seat on the end of her bed, cocking an eyebrow at his younger sister. "It's not good for you to be worrying about it when you are already stressing about enough."

"Even if I did get rid of that thing, it would still be on my mind twenty-four-seven," Sydney retorted flatly with a roll of her eyes. "It's hard not to think about the fact that I'm on a dead pool, worth 12 million dollars, with assassins running around wanting to kill me and my friends."

"My friends and I," Stiles corrected with a small chuckle. He placed a hand on the girl's knee, squeezing gently in a comforting gesture. "And this is why we are not going to school today." Sydney raised an eyebrow, a signal for her brother to further elaborate.

"I'm sick of everyone worrying about that damned list, myself included. So we are going to take a stress-free day off from school, and worry about anything other than the dead pool," he explained happily. He clapped once and rubbed his hands together, hopping off of her bed. "Everyone's coming- including Liam. So get off your lazy ass and get ready. We're leaving in fifteen minutes."

It didn't take Sydney very long to get ready. Stiles told his sister to dress in a bathing suit- so she assumed that they were going somewhere where she was more than likely going to get wet. She didn't know why her brother had chosen to go swimming in sixty degree whether, but she didn't exactly mind. As a werewolf, she rarely got cold, so a bit of cool water wasn't going to faze her that much. Her brother, Lydia and Kira might be a different story, but that was a problem they were going to have to fix themselves. Sydney didn't bother putting on makeup, apart from a few strokes of her waterproof mascara. She tied her hair up in a messy bun before following her brother and Malia out the front door.

Sydney was currently crammed into the back seat of Stiles' Jeep in between Liam and Lydia. It wasn't the most comfortable ride, though she didn't exactly mind, as it gave her an excuse to lean her head onto Liam's shoulder without her overly-protective brother pitching a fit. Scott and Kira followed closely behind them on his bike, the engine revving as they drove dangerously close to them. Stiles would constantly slam on the brakes, causing his best friend to swerve in the road to stop from crashing into the Jeep.

Finally, after what seemed like lifetimes of riding in a cramped backseat with motion sickness, Stiles pulled onto a dirt road leading down to a creek. As children, their parents would always take him and Sydney there to swim, and it had grown to be their favorite swim hole in Beacon Hills. Unable to hide the smile that stretched across her face at the memories, Sydney quickly scrambled out of the back seat after Lydia, Liam following close behind her. His hand slipped into hers as the group began to make their way down to the river, his lips pressing against her cheek for a mere second.