PEARL

NINE

TRACK 9
OBLIVION
GRIMES

🚬

NATE and Ida, bandaged hand in hand, shot past what felt like as many trees as there had been hospital doors until the former ground them to a halt on the outskirts of a rather Edenic grove.

Surprisingly, Ida didn't feel free as she ran. She didn't feel as free as she had felt up until her seventh birthday, the aftermath of which one could irritatingly argue had sowed the seeds of futility in her soul, and she certainly didn't feel as free as Logan Lerman had felt standing on the back of that car.

She felt breathless, and a little intrigued, but by no means free.

(A little amused, too, because running through the woods on the night of her arrival with a stolen supply of pills and a rebellious clique she'd only just met, along with the way Nate kept making her lip flower-curl, were signs of somebody trying to speed the plot along at a ridiculously fast pace.)

As Nate had mentioned, a large round lake as black and twinkling as the night sky above it was situated in the middle of said grove, with trees standing around it like toy soldiers. The grassy soil of its banks was soaked through and soft under Ida's heavy black shoes, and had already left sizable grass stains on Lily's white nightdress - this was hardly shocking, though, since Ida and Nate found her lying on her back as if she were trying to make an angel with no snow. Nicole was sitting nearby, as silent as the stars over their heads, and Micah and Ro were unpacking Ryan's illicitly-filled bag.

"So Ida..." Nate nudged her with his elbow, then outstretched his unburnt brown sugar palm and gestured to the lake and its surrounding shrubbery, which bore a few flowers in varying shades of white and blue – Lily's flowers, Ida supposed, since the tarnished-gold girl had discarded her would-be snow angel to go over and marvel at them with petal-delicate fingers. "What do you think?"

Ida repeated her fringe-related stage direction, then gave Nate a combination of a shrug and a nod. Seeing as he was still holding her hand, and letting it go would ruin the cinematic shot, the shrug unintentionally came off as half-hearted, but nobody seemed to notice.

"We have to stay around here," Nate explained, leading Ida over to the kneeling Rowan and Micah and giving Lily a nod that told her to abandon her rosebush and do the same. Nicole trailed after them, as dark and silent as one of the many shadows that the watchful trees were casting onto the moonlit grass. Or a ghost. "Think of these trees as a ring you can't step out of. It's safer if we all stay together. Less risk of someone overdosing, or getting lost and dying of hypothermia or something."

He may have said it in a way that did Micah's earlier labelling of "melodramatic asshole" justice, but to be fair, it was cold. Freezing, in fact, so much so that everyone's breath stood out like cigarette smoke in the still air as it floated lazily towards the wide-eyed, pill-packet-white moon.

Talking of pills, the lovely hospital haven (as an agonizing fan of alliteration may have put it) was soon home to many. Micah and Rowan took over half of their pilfered packets out of Ryan's bag before setting it aside, and Lily contributed by removing her perverted present of two from its hiding place in the waistband of her underwear. Once the stash was out in the open, the six sat down around the pile of pills boxes (and one of condoms – courtesy of Ryan, Ida supposed) in a misshapen circle like little children, listening to Lily sing the grubby flowers' praises whilst holding out their assorted palms for whatever Micah had taken it upon himself to pop out of their blister pack.

Ida's hospital band dancing like a bangle as she held her hand out, and would've made quite an effective shot in her opinion. So would Lily, who immediately stuck a star-white pill on the tip of her tongue and looked as contradictory as the prettily-painted hospital bathroom, due to the way she was little-girl-giggling.