Spies in Skates [Book Three]

Chapter Five: It Came Upon a Two In the Morning Clear

Hello! Here's the next chapter - this one gets pretty serious, not much humor, sorry. But now that I'm done with APs i hope I can update mas frecuentamente! I mean, I've still got 3 weeks of school (I should actually be doing a chem lab and a Spanish packet as we speak) but I'm kinda past caring about school, so whatever. Anyway, i hope you enjoy this, and please, please, PLEASE shoot me a comment, because I really need to know what you think about this chapter...I'm not sure if I like it. It didn't quite come out as planned. But yeah!

Gracias! <3 vb123321

Chapter Five

It Came Upon a Two In the Morning Clear

I had expected my mom to freak out loads more than she did, really. I mean, I was hanging out at the house of some guy in his mid-twenties that she barely knew; but then again, Jer trusted him, so who was I to judge?

The biggest perk, as Patrick pointed out as he served us mac and cheese, was that we wouldn’t starve, since we had just gone to Walmart. Zach didn’t touch any of his food, pushing it away and sipping on water in silence as Patrick and I attempted to have a conversation. After the makeshift meal, we crashed in the living room watching TV until we all decided to just go to bed and hope the snow cleared up before morning, though the weather forecast promised otherwise.

Patrick’s house had two bedrooms, which he allocated to me and Zach while he crashed on the couch in the family room. He offered me one of his t-shirts to sleep in, but that felt kinda weird, so I just slept in the shorts I had been wearing underneath my sweatpants and the extra sweatshirt I’d brought. As I snuggled into the unfamiliar bed, I focused my eyes on the dark outline of the sky through the window, watching the snow drift to the ground.

It snowed in my dream, too. I ran down a cross-country race trail, my spikes pounding the white ground, but I wasn’t cold though I was in a tank top and shorts. No one else ran in the race, but a huge crowd yelled my name as I reached the finish line, my heart thumping with adrenaline and my spirits high.

Gradually, the crowd faded, but someone kept yelling, though it wasn’t my name anymore. A moment later, I jerked awake, realizing in that same moment that someone was yelling. Bewildered, I sat up in the bed and stared around the dark room, wondering for a moment where I was.

The sound of a door banging open came next, accompanied with rushing footsteps and then another, more urgent voice. Completely rattled, I clambered out of bed and pushed my glasses on my nose, hugging my arms to my chest as I crept across the room to the hallway, the cool air tingling my bare legs. The hallway light blinded me, and the door to Zach’s bedroom was flung open, and as I stopped awkwardly in the doorway, I saw the larger figure of Patrick leaning over Zach’s bed.

It was Zach who was yelling, though I couldn’t understand what.

“Wake up!” Patrick kept saying, seizing Zach’s shoulders and shaking him violently as Zach thrashed around on the bed. “Dude, you gotta wake up, okay? Everything’s fine!”

Apparently Zach wasn’t responding, because Patrick started slapping his face roughly until at last he stopped yelling and went dead still on the bed. Patrick stepped back, and the light from the hallway fell on Zach’s face, which was covered with sweat as he stared around the room with wild eyes.