Nochelle - Our Stories

L E T T E R S & T H E L U R G Y

~Season 6~ Noaquie never happened

Despite having known him nearly half of her life, nothing could prepare Richelle for the anxiety she felt as she pushed open Noah's front door.

He had been over an hour late to rehearsal, and despite his history of sleeping through alarms, this was pretty out of character. Usually he strolled in fifteen minutes or so late, never an hour. And all of the team's calls went to voicemail, which had everyone concerned.

Richelle was the one tasked with stopping by his house to check on him before anyone got too freaked out. Henry wanted to go, but Emily suggested that he may be too emotionally invested. And Richelle was the mature option, plus, she was the one with a spare key. She could remain objective. There was nothing going on between her and Noah, no feelings there whatsoever.

That's what Emily thought, of course. She didn't know that somewhere deep down inside Richelle, she felt like combusting at the thought of anything bad happening to Noah. Or maybe she did, maybe that's why she was so insistent she go. It's all hypothetical.

"Noah?" Richelle called into the quiet house, voice tense as it shattered the silence. There was no reply. She knew the rest of his family were in LA for the week, but there was no way he had gone without telling her. From a distance, Richelle could hear a shrill noise, and her brows pulled down as she tried to decipher what it was.

Richelle stalked up the stairs and down the hall towards his bedroom, where the sound was growing louder. She nudged his door open and stepped in, surprised to see that it was pretty clean, save for a pile of laundry on the floor. She realized the noise was an alarm blaring from Noah's phone, which was thrown haphazardly on the bed. She frowned deeply and approached the phone, seeing that it was his alarm from this morning, set for 8AM to get to dance. It must have been chiming out for over an hour.

Richelle killed the sound and glanced around the room, extremely alarmed that something awful had happened to Noah at this point.

Then, she noticed a beam of light coming from beneath the closed bathroom door. Careful to not startle whoever was on the other side, she moved toward the door, taking a deep breath as she pulled it open, only to gasp at what she saw inside.

Noah was strewn across the tile facedown, curled up next to the toilet. He wore a pair of sweatpants and nothing else, arms stuffed underneath his head. Richelle let out a shrill, unintelligible yelp of panic and dropped to her knees beside him.

"Noah, Oh my God!" She squealed, dropping her bag and reaching out to touch his forehead.

Suddenly, Noah jolted a bit and sat up, wide-eyed and alarmed. He seemed to realize there was another person in the room, and he flinched away from her, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. Richelle took in the sight of him; he looked positively awful.

His skin was white as a sheet, pale and translucent. There were deep purple circles beneath his normally jubilant brown eyes. His lips were dry and chapped, hair greasy and disheveled, and there was a decidedly green hue to his ghost-like complexion. Obviously he'd been up all night vomiting.

"Richelle?" He managed in a raspy, strangled voice.

"Oh, Noah." Richelle realized aloud, "Are you sick?"

"No!" He hit back defensively, but the crack in his weak voice gave him away, "Why are you in my bathroom you creep!?"

"You slept through your alarm." Richelle explained, "We were all worried about you. I came to make sure you hadn't been kidnapped."

Noah scoffed, but didn't argue back, it was almost as if her words went in one ear and straight out the other.

Richelle hesitated, and then reached her hand out to press her knuckles against his forehead. He seemed surprised by the touch, but he didn't shove her off like she expected.