AWAKEN ; benny weir [2]

three

Ethan squinted his eyes at the shining sun of Saturday morning cracking through the window. He lifted his back off the floor of the magic room to check on Ellie and Sarah. They hadn't moved a muscle.
Benny's cot was already empty, prompting Ethan to assume that he was already upstairs and starting his day.

Lifting himself off the carpeted floor, Ethan rubbed his eyes as he stepped up each stair of the grandmother's home, greeting Benny and Ms. Weir at the kitchen counter.
"Good morning, Ethan. How did you sleep, dear?" the grandmother asked, folding her newspaper onto the table.

"Great, if you count sitting and staring at the ceiling as sleeping," Ethan mumbled, slumping himself into the chair across from his friend. "Benny talking to himself didn't help much, either."

"Sorry, dude," Benny apologized. 

"You two look like you didn't sleep at all."
Ms. Weir couldn't help but frown at the giant eye bags that sat under the boys' eyes, with crust from old tears not helping their cause.
"We didn't."

"...Well, I better go check on the girls. Ethan, there's more cereal in the cabinet."
As Ms. Weir took her coffee mug and newspaper downstairs, Ethan was left sitting at the kitchen table with an unaccustomed Benny tapping his cereal spoon.
Not only were his eyes puffed from lack of sleep, but the injuries from the blast made Benny look almost unrecognizable. His face was badly bruised and beaten from the collision with the cement street, along with a bad gash through his left eyebrow. He looked horrible.

"I heard you last night," Ethan said, breaking the silence.
Benny looked up from his cereal bowl, unable to remember what exactly he said the night before. He said a lot of things.
"Yes, Ellie is going to be okay, and yes, I feel the same way about Sarah right now."

"I just..." Benny began, at a loss for explanation. "Like, what am I supposed to do, Ethan? I feel like a dunce sitting here waiting for Ellie to wake up. I could be doing something, but Grandma says that I 'need to rest.' That's such bullshit! I should be in there trying to—!"

"—Okay, stop."
Ethan threw his hands on the counter. "You're never like this, Benny. You never overthink things or ramble that much."

"BOYS!"
The two heard Ms. Weir's voice call for them downstairs, with neither of them hesitating to race down the stairs. Ethan and Benny almost fumbled over each other as they bolted to the magic room, leaning into the door frame to find a certain girl with long brown hair and piercing yellow eyes sitting up in her cot, holding her hand to her forehead.

"Ow..."

"Sarah?"

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"Sarah! Oh my god, are you okay?"
Ethan ran up to her and held onto her shoulders, unable to believe that she was finally awake. God, he missed her.

"What's your definition of okay?"

"I'm just glad you're alive."

Ethan looked to his beloved babysitter as if she was the only person in the room. He couldn't help himself to throw his arms around her and hug her tight. Hesitating at the sudden embrace, Sarah sank into his arms. It felt right.

"Sarah, your fangs aren't going away for a couple hours. The Lucifractor's explosion was stronger than I thought," Ms. Weir explained. 

The vampire scanned the room with her vibrant yellow eyes, seeing Benny's arms crossed by the door frame and Ellie still unconscious on her cot. 

"Oh god, what happened to Ellie?"

"We all got stunned by Stern's explosion," Ethan explained, "but, we have the rest of the week to wait for Ellie to wake up."