Anonymous Caller

Chapter 5

Tatum's POV

"Alright, the house is all clear." I cleared the last two steps slowly. My heart has calmed down from once racing. My limbs felt heavy, coming down from the adrenaline rush.

I let the knife thud back into place in its holder. "Hey, how about we have a bit of a sleepover in the living room?" I shuffled back into the living room with everyone else.

"What for?" Sidney cocked her head to the side. She brought the last three knives to their rightful place in the kitchen.

"Well, (Y/N) wants to get to know us more. We were once strangers in their house. Why not do this tonight? They come off tomorrow." I slumped against the couch cushions.

"I'm in!" Stu dropped down next to me, putting his arm around the back of my seat. "We can watch horror movies until the morning. What do you guys say?"

"No, I don't watch them. They're all the same anyway." Sidney took a seat on my side instead of Billy's.

I spared her a glance, normally she would have sat in that seat next to him or something. She looked back in a way that told me that she'd tell me later, tilting her head toward the kitchen.

"Boys, we all need to get jobs to help out around here, yeah?" I looked up to Stu.

His smile lowered. "Alright, how would we go about that?"

"Find a job that you don't need a lot of education for." I glanced back at Sidney.

"Sid and I are going to get snacks. How about you guys set up the living room?" I peeled away from Stu.

"Okay," Stu pushed the coffee table forward a bit.

Sidney and I left for the kitchen. The furniture screeched horribly on the hardwood.

"Don't scratch the floor, Stu!" I popped my head back into the living room, looking him right in the eye.

"Alright, what's up?" I whispered as I opened the pantry doors.

"I don't know, it's just that Billy and I have been distant lately." She rested her hand against the pantry door. "He talked about how we used to be really...close."

I stared at the many packages on the shelves, now and then I looked at her. Her eyes stared downcast at the bottom of the pantry.

"I don't know what to say. I feel like I started to lose feelings for him. And what you said earlier..." She shrugged her shoulders as she slumped against the door.

I gasped, dropping the chips that I just found. "Really?" I grabbed the chips off the floor and gently tossed them to the counter. "How long did you know?"

"A couple of days ago, I think. He has just been incredibly distant like he has something else to do for a while." She pulled out a large, red, plastic bowl from the cabinet, placed it on the counter before her, and sat down on a stool.

"And I don't feel like I miss him being around that much." She sighed, pulling the chip bag open and pouring its contents into the bowl.

"Wow, Sid. Do you think you need to break up with him?" I put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm not sure. Let's see how this sleepover goes." She stood up grabbing the bowl with her.

"Okay, we can talk more about this after. For now, we got to prep everything." I snagged a few more snacks and shut the pantry with my foot.

"Are you all done in here?" I carefully tiptoed to ensure that I didn't drop anything. I dumped it off on the coffee table and looked at their work.

The coffee table was pushed close to the TV, with enough space for a walking path. The Ottoman was pushed against the middle of the couch with an armchair pressed against each side.

"Yep, we just need our star of the party." Stu twisted on the couch to look at the black-rimmed clock on the wall. "They should arrive in 5 minutes. And the party can begin!"

(Y/N)'s POV

"I'm home!" I pushed the door open and shut it behind me.

Tatum came to the door. "Hey, we're going to have a sleepover in the living room, come on." She grabbed my forearm and pulled me to the living room.

"Oh, okay!" I dropped my bag on the bench next to the door as she dragged me away.

"Hey, (Y/N)!" Stu called from a couch end.

The seating area was arranged in a large square. The table sat at the end of it just before the TV screen.

Billy sat hunched over his lap on the end of the ottoman. "Hey," He gave a wave of his hand and looked back down at the DVD in his hands.

Sidney came in from the hall and crawled past Billy onto the other end of the couch. She didn't bother to look back at him. Her mood seemed to be low, her eyes just as low as it.

"So what are we going to do during this sleepover?" I stretched my arms above my head and took a seat in one of the armchairs.

"We found this movie in your entertainment center!" Stu crawled to Billy and plucked it out of his hands to show me. He had a smile sprawled across his face.

The movie had huge, white, block letters on the top with a deep ocean blue below. "You guys, all want to see this?" I gently took it from his hands to inspect it more.

"Yeah!" He crawled over to my side to look at it too.

I flipped the movie over to read the back. A sticker below the movie's summary had smudged capital handwriting from one of my friends giving me this movie to try.

The sticker read "Trust me you will love this movie!!! -Sam" I drew my eyes up to the actual summary.

"On a beach trip, three boys and two girls explore a cave next to the beach on a dare. Will they make it out?"

I rolled my eyes at the movie description. Sam loved to try and gross me out with bugs and so on since we were little. This sounds like it would be just the same.

"Who wrote that?" Stu took the movie. His eyes traced the words over and over. His smile dropping with each pass-through. Billy came to look too.

"Is Sam a friend of yours?" Billy looked at me past his eyebrows.

"Yeah, I have been friends with him since we were little. He had to move to help his grandfather. We keep in touch some." I answered flatly. I missed him despite him trying to scare me every now and then.

"I think you two might like him. He is a horror movie fan like the two of you." I smiled with a bit higher spirits.

"Yeah, maybe," Billy mumbled, gently taking the movie. "Shall we?"

"Uh, sure," I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't want whatever murderous slimy creature to appear into my house. Hopefully, this will not turn out like the last DVD I picked up.

The DVD player accepted the disc and the play screen lit up the TV. Billy turned around with a smirk. "Ready everyone?"
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