The Grove (Ravens #1)

vii. the anniversary

 "Happy anniversary, Donny-Boy," Jacob yelled as he turned on the lamp in him and his friend's one-room hut. He was crouching on Donovan's bedside table, holding the string that turned on the light and staring down at the sleeping boy.

"What are you doing?" Donny muttered, barely opening his eyes. He turned away so that he wasn't facing his friend and the exposed light bulb, and pressed the thin pillow over his face.

Jacob laughed and got down from the table, "Wake up already! The girls want to see you!"

"Why?" the other boy groaned.

"It's been a year since you woke up. You were in a coma, remember that little detail? And then you woke up? Yeah, it's been a year, get out of bed!" Jacob called loudly, stomping around the hut, being as annoying as he possibly could.

"I wish I didn't wake up," Donny said grimly. His voice was still tired, and clearly irritated that his friend had chosen to wake him up so unnecessarily early. Despite surviving the end of the world, Donovan Mayler was still an eighteen year old boy who would stay up until the earliest hours of the morning, and opt to sleep until the mid-afternoon.

"Well I wish you didn't set that grenade, and then proceed to push Harper out of it," Jacob laughed. He then took a seat on the edge of his friend's bed and his demeanor got serious, "For five weeks, I thought my best friend was gone, and I didn't know how to handle it, or what to do with myself, or anything. And that was in the midst of getting excommunicated from Harper's posse. Am I not allowed to celebrate that you're alright, and you've been alright for a year?"

At that, Donovan sighed and sat up, realizing there was no use fighting his friend on this matter, and also that this day really did mean something to Jacob. "What do you have planned?"

"Nothing," Jacob smiled, "But the girls do. Get dressed and we can head over to Paricida."

"The land of the parasites," Donovan said, running his hand through his dark hair as he sat up, "How come we ended up on the side that literally translates to loyal?"

"We wouldn't have if you had let Harper get blown up," Jacob said.

"That's not funny. She was our friend once," Donny said.

The other boy turned around as he began to get ready for the day, "The key word in that sentence is 'once'. She didn't bother checking in on you once when you were comatosed. She didn't acknowledge you once when you woke up."

"I'm sure she was busy," Donny said.

"Yeah, busy having twincest with Phoenix," Jacob smirked.

"I was going to say setting up her dictatorship, but okay." Donovan had now stood up and was beginning to get dressed. He combed his hair with his bony fingers so that it stuck up near the front. There was a time he would have used some product to keep its shape, now he could not care less. 

"Why are you defending her?" Jacob stepped back, seeming almost offended by his friend's position on the matter. Donny, of course, claimed he wasn't on her side, and suggested that they leave for Paricida as an excuse to change the subject. The other boy agreed to this, and they embarked on the thirty minute walk. There was always the option of taking the old bus across the neighborhoods, but for someone to travel from Fidelus to Paricida was rare, and they often received strange glances. Nobody ever paid much attention though to two boys walking around in tank-tops and broken flip-flops in the earliest days of September. As long as they seemed like they knew what they were doing, they were clear of questioning.

"IDs?" A guard asked as they reached the border between the two sides of the Cabener sect. They pulled out the plastic cards that marked their residency, and their names were jotted down on a piece of paper. "What are you two doing here this early in the morning? It's not like there's anything to do in this area." The guard was from Fidelus. They had seen her around often; she used to always follow Harper around, trying desperately to be a member of the Six. Jacob wished he could have given her his spot in their group, then he wouldn't have to deal with the repercussions of having once been up at the top.