Midnight Cherry | H.S.

Chapter 3 🍒

My eyes shoot open when I feel something fly into my face. I hear giggling that I instantly recognise as Sammy's. I force myself to sit up slowly and run my hands over my face, rubbing my eyes. I look in front of me and see a live love laugh cushion. Cringe.

I walk over to the giggly heap on Sammy's bed and throw the quilt, revealing her with her hand covering her mouth. "It's not even that funny" I claim with a smile, despite the headache banging like a drum in my temples. "Your face, you were so shocked" she says through heavy breathing.

I roll my eyes and Sammy opens her bedside table, pulls out a pack of ibuprofen and chucks it at me after taking two out for herself.

"Where's Jace?" I ask, gesturing to pick up the cup of water on her bedside table, asking for silent permission. She nods her head as she says, "He had to go home". Although there was limited information there, I didn't really care and don't need his actions justified so I simply nod in response as I swallow the two tablets with a mouthful of water. "Doing much today?" Sammy asks me; I literally had nothing to do today. "No, I'm going to call in sick, my head kills" I whine, flopping forwards dramatically onto the bed. She laughs at me, "You'll learn to cope with it better" as she runs a hand on my back. "I'm never drinking again" I groan, at least I meant not that much. In Sammy's eyes I basically drunk next to nothing, but before last night I could never make it past half an alcopop.

I decide to hang around Sammy's for a bit, at least until I was normal enough to avoid any possible questions from my mother. Sammy's mother didn't say anything, but I couldn't help but notice a little knowing look on her face. I like Sammy's mum. She's cool. Though, I don't understand her - she's both very strict yet quite laid back.

We don't do much, mainly just chilling in Sammy's room on our phones. Showing each other a meme every now and then. Sammy was probably texting loads of people, she was quite popular. I just kept going back to view my post of the butterfly. The likes still continue to go up, slowly though.

We hear the letterbox. Sammy, nosey as ever, goes straight down and files through the pile of mainly junk letters; fliers for fast food places and other promotional leaflets that nobody will ever read. She comes back upstairs with a confused look. "NieNie, there's one here with your name on" she shows my a purple envelope with 'Melanie' hand written in a beautiful cursive font. There was no stamp or address, so it had to have been hand delivered. "Let me see" I reach forward and she passes it over.

It's A5 sized, I slowly open it and pull out a piece of card. Like a post card, there's a photo on the front of a purple cherry. I look at Sammy and she returns a look that says "oooooh girl" and I roll my eyes with a slight laugh. Well it was more like when you shoot a bit of air through your nose. I turn the card over, written in the same hand writing as my name on the envelope, it said:

Meet me tonight, 10pm
You know where
Don't be late, come alone
~HS

I read it out loud before Sammy takes a look for herself. "NIENIE!" She squeals excitedly. I raise an eyebrow, confused at her sudden electrified mood. "What?" I take the card back, rereading it a couple times.

HS? - That must be Harry Styles.

"Being as you only found out who he was yesterday, you have no idea why this is such a big deal do you?" She says through her wide grin. Still confused, I reply, "uh no". She honestly looks like she's going to burst. Through her giggly stance she says, "Every girl wants one of these cards" she flicks it, "he likes you" she continues to smile.