gone ✧*｡ luke a.u.

34: september 13 2011

ELLIE

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2011

Except for a couple of students passing through to the toilets or the occasional teacher, the school seemed deserted. No one was on the footpaths, no one was in the quad, nothing outside on the streets surrounding the school except pigeons and empty cars.

Ellie wandered aimlessly. She had no idea where she was going -- all she knew was that she didn't want to go to English and if a teacher asked, she was feeling sick and went out of class for fresh air.

The weather had finally started to warm up as spring took root, but despite the sun, Ellie didn't feel warm. She just felt numb, spent, like a heart monitor that had flatlined, a robot programmed into survival mode, set with a few basic instructions. Breathe, blink, take another step, and another, and another.

Somehow she found herself in the school car park, which was completely devoid of even a breath of life, even though each space was full with the empty shells of cars. She found a spot at the very back, sitting down with cars shielding her from the view of the school and her back pressed against the fence. Weeds leaked through the cracks in the asphalt around her feet, and she picked at them idly, forming patterns with the torn stalks. A grid, a haphazard circle, a star.

"Oh, hey, Ellie." Ellie's head jerked up and she jumped, startled, but it was only Ashton. She let out a heavy breath, and he laughed quietly. "I was definitely not expecting to see you out here," he said.

"I wasn't expecting to see you either," she said, turning her attention back to the weeds at her feet.

"I felt like a smoke break." He took a seat next to her, tucking his legs up to his chest. They were so long that his knees almost touched his chin. "Do you smoke?"

She shook her head silently, watching as Ashton pulled a lighter and a box of cigarettes out of his front blazer pocket. Instead of lighting up, he just sat there for a while, clicking the flame of the lighter on and off, on and off. He didn't say anything.

Ellie's thoughts drifted away from the cracked asphalt of the school car park and the lighter in Ashton's hand, and turned to Luke. She wondered where he was now. In lessons, most probably, unless he had snuck out with Michael or Calum to wreak havoc on some poor teacher's life. She wouldn't put it past them.

She still couldn't quite wrap her head around the events of the weekend. The gig itself was one thing, but after that, with Luke in his house, pressed up against the wall of the corridor then his bed. The way in which his eyes had scanned across her body like no matter what bruises or scars or imperfections she had, she was still some sort of perfect to him. For a while, when it was just them and their bodies and their feelings for each other, pure and unadulterated, her misery ebbed completely. The numbness left and she could feel again.

Luke drove her straight home without
hesitating after the phone call she received from Dan, whose voice was shaky, though with grief or pain or anger Ellie couldn't be sure. She got there just before two-thirty, and even though the rest of the street was filled with shadows, the windows of her house blazed with light. Everyone was awake.

Morgan wasn't home when Ellie went inside. Ellie had no idea whether that was because she had stayed out or come home, fought with Dave and left again in a flurry of rage, but it didn't really matter. Either way, Dave sat with his head in his hands on the couch, Roman curled up in a ball a few feet away. Dan paced back and forth in front of the TV, visibly agitated.

Dave stood the moment he saw Ellie. "Thank God you're home," he breathed out, rubbing a hand across his face. He looked exhausted, as though he had aged ten years since the last time she had seen him. "Sit down. Please."