Letters She Wrote | Outer Banks

𝐱𝐢. 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬

[ xi. under duress ]

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WILLA DEVERAUX FELT AS if she had barely managed to fall asleep before her eyes were abruptly snapping open once more, her sage vision now filled with bright blinding sunlight, its sharp yellow rays slipping in through the tattered brown curtains that barely clung to the windows above her resting form.  For a long moment, Willa was frozen where she lay, her clouded mind racing to catch up with her new, unfamiliar surroundings.  Upon her first startled breath, Willa had not immediately realized that she was still in John B. Routledge's living room, sleeping on his poor pullout mattress with unzipped sleeping bags for blankets, and had nearly set herself into a delirious panic.  It was not until the familiar smell of warm Pabst beer and rotting oak wood pulled a frazzled Willa back to her senses, and she was able to slowly sit up on the creaky bed.  Now hunched over and looking dazedly around the empty, quiet room, the only difference that Willa could tell between the current time and where she had been mere laying hours ago was that she was now all alone.

"Kiara?" Willa called out tiredly, brushing her knotted locks out of her eyes as she spared a careful glance over her shoulder to the empty side of the mattress.  "John B.?"

Receiving no answer, Willa slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed and let her bare, blistered feet fall flat against the warm wood of the floorboards.  It could not have been any later than ten in the morning, but the house was already uncomfortably hot.  As always, the scorching July weather was ever so persistent in the Outer Banks, becoming even crueler without the desirable additions of air conditioning—or even of creaky futile fans—to help anyone on the island.

A lone rooster crowed in the distance, pulling Willa from her thoughts as she finally tore her attention from the floor and let her heavy head drift towards the poorly constructed, wooden bedside table.  Its dark, carved tabletop was littered with food wrappers and beer bottle caps, but amongst the prevalent signs of a teenage boy left to run rampant in an unsupervised home, Willa's cell phone sat idly on the corner, waiting to be picked up as the day began.  To Willa's confusion, a single neon pink post-it note had been smacked in the center of her cracked phone screen; a note that had not been there the night prior, but now left in such a position that it would be impossible to miss.  The gaudy rings on Willa's fingers twisted uncomfortably about her sweaty knuckles as she reached for the post-it, her eyes narrowing suspiciously as she stared down to the sloppy scrawl.

TAKING CARE OF SOMETHING W/ JJ. 
DON'T OPEN DOOR TO ANYONE. 
BE BACK SOON.
JOHN B.

Willa Deveraux scoffed at the instructions left by the Routledge boy, her stomach recoiling at the thought of being left behind by the pogues.  She supposed, though, that it could only have been for a good reason; if it had been an emergency, John B. would have woken her up, right?  He would not have left her behind, especially if he knew it were not safe.  John B. would be back soon.  There was no other explanation.  Everything was going to be fine.  It had to be fine.  In her tired state of mind, Willa Deveraux was not willing to fall down any rabbit hole just yet.