NOCTURNE » Nathan Prescott

» ii. change

When I woke up the next morning Mia was already gone and, judging by the sounds from the bathroom next door, showering. I took my time fully waking up, rolled over to the side and stared out of the window for a bit. It seemed to be relatively late already -- the sun was up high in the sky. In the hospital I always had to get up at six in the morning.

Watching the birds outside for a little longer I stayed in bed until my sister came back into the room and gave me a bright smile.
"Good, you're up. We're getting you new stuff today."
I raised an eyebrow. "Stuff?"

Mia laughed and vaguely gestured through the air around her. "Yeah ... like, you know, furniture. And clothes. A haircut maybe? If you're starting over might as well go all the way."

Rolling my eyes at her enthusiasm I got out of bed and grabbed the jeans I'd worn yesterday and one of her shirts and shuffled to the bathroom.

Looking at myself in the mirror for the first time in what felt like whatever I frowned -- I'd lost a lot of weight over the past three years. Too much weight. The medication made me less hungry, but I'd also barely worked out at all so I decided I'd at least give that a try.

As I came downstairs a little later my mother greeted me with a kiss on the cheek and motioned for the table. "I hope you're okay with eggs and bacon," She said and I nodded, sitting down next to the cat.
"Haven't had that in forever," I commented as I picked up my fork and began eating -- everybody else seemed to be done already. "Thought so," my mother replied and turned back to her notes.

The radio was providing much needed background noise while I had breakfast and swallowed my two pills with a swig of water.

"Alrighty," Mia suddenly spoke behind me and I jumped slightly. "You ready?"
I just shrugged and she already pulled me outside and into her car. The one hour drive to a nearby city was mostly silent as I just stared out of the window, up into the blue sky while my sister hummed along to the songs that were playing.

The first thing she wanted to check off on today's to-do-list was the clothing -- apparently mom had convinced her to just have a hairdresser come up to our house tomorrow, which I was thankful for.
"Just pick out what you like," she said to me as we walked into the first store. Last night I'd gone through my closet and put pretty much all of its contents in boxes to give away. It just all didn't feel right anymore, let alone that it didn't fit me.

Like I had expected, Mia came up to me just ten minutes later with ten different things to try on, while I hadn't even found one thing. This procedure then repeated itself throughout the next two hours until we finally left the last store and brought all the stuff back to the car.

"Remind me why I need all that formal stuff?" I asked while Mia started driving again. She let out a chuckle.
"Well now that I'm going to college and don't have much time on my hands it's gonna be your turn to accompany mom and dad to their business parties."

I snorted. "Yeah. No- no. I don't do parties. Not anymore." - "Come on! When you were a little kid you always got so angry that you couldn't go with them! Besides, now that you're back, I think it would mean a lot to them. At least think about it, okay?"

With a short nod I directed my gaze back at the sky and sighed. Mom was a fashion designer and my dad used to be an architect, but he worked his way up to be the CEO of the company. I wasn't too sure what they needed their messed up daughter for, but maybe I should go at least once.

"Hey uh-... can I ask you something?" - "Shoot." - "What did they tell everyone?"
Mia stopped at a red light and gave me a confused look. "You know ... where I went. Why I suddenly disappeared."

She grabbed onto the steering wheel a little tighter and I saw her blink a couple times.
"You were in England. You got a scholarship to attend high school IN Hastings and we just couldn't turn that offer down."

My eyes grew big.

"Hey uh-..., it's pretty late. How about we grab something to eat and just order the furniture online?"

I remained silent as Mia already headed back to Arcadia Bay. It was still silent when she pulled into the parking lot of the Two Whales Diner and I tried to push away the memories that came flooding back in when I saw the familiar RV. It was silent when we sat down in one of the booths and looked at the menus.

Joyce walked up to us and broke the silence.
"My, is that you, Madeline?" I nodded and gave the woman a smile as she grinned at me. "You've sure grown up over the years, have you seen Chloe yet?" - "No, I just came back yesterday," I informed her.

After some more small talk she took our orders and headed to another booth where a bunch of skaters were sat. I could smell the pot from over here but I turned back around when some other people walked in.

"How much?" - "Huh?" My sister gave me another confused look.
"How much did mom and dad pay Blackwell to keep that under wraps and out of my file? The hell did they even do with my file? Mia, you can't just fake two years of school. I thought we were done lying." - "Technically you did attend school." - "Yeah, in the nuthouse!" - "Keep your voice down!" She urged me and I rolled my eyes.

"What? So the Hastings High School isn't a school in Hastings but the Hastings Mental Hospital? Awesome." I scoffed and crossed my arms in front of my chest.

"Mads, please. What else were we supposed to do?"

I was too tired from walking around all day to argue right now so I just closed my eyes for a second.

Soon enough Joyce brought us our food and we dug in, and even though I wasn't hungry anymore I kept eating, hoping to calm myself down.

We paid and got up, and as we walked out of the diner I saw another familiar face -- the man from the RV, I believe Frank was his name, talking to a boy in a red jacket, probably selling something.

Seems like things haven't changed too much around here...