PEARL

TWENTY-EIGHT

TRACK 28
WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN
ARCTIC MONKEYS

she's going after this one dw dw

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To summarise for those who have either tuned out entirely to the over-the-top and sure-to-undersell style of her story or scrolled to the halfway mark of this particular chapter:

IDA's writer had sold the last of her favour like Faust, by making their cast run away.

As a meagre mercy – or alternatively, as a moment of laziness that their form of narration made easy to integrate – the writer bestowed the back and forth between how crazy (Oh. You think?) Nate's idea was and how they would get caught in a heartbeat (Don't be so silly.) and how they had no other choice and subsequent details of how they managed to do it with little page/screen spotlight.

Too little for another round of alliterative headings, anyway. Bullet points, however:

1. Step 1 – Ida, Nate and Lily sneak past Winterson's door (having been closed by a combination of the snooping nurses and Ida and Associates' trusty plot armour) to pay the laundry and storing cupboard another visit for pills and a pair of shoes

2. Step 2 – they steal said pair of shoes for Lily

3. Step 3 – they steal enough of said pills (lithium for Lily, Prozac for Ida, and a blister pack or two of Thursday nights' makeshift molly just for the Hell of it) as they can feasibly carry, to last until they find a pharmacy on the road to re-stock themselves in

4. (Not a bullet point, but whether Ida considered herself wrongly-labelled sick or not, she thought that Nate pinched far more Prozac than she needed. Was that intended to be another feeding of mediocre romance, or something more? Non-seashells may wonder.)

5. Step 4 – Rowan and Nicole go to his room to get his brother's bag

6. Step 5 – they stuff said bag with said pills and the back door key once safely outside again

7. Step 6 – they shut the door of said key and stab Ida with her own cynicism by running away

Walking away, rather – not only did the whole set of circumstances feel rather rushed and poorly executed at present (And don't get me started on the narration – because seriously, where the fuck did the use and over-abuse of brackets come from?), but it all felt audience-annoyingly but honestly-what-did-you-expectedly (Sweet Jesus, we're harassing hyphens now.) anti-climactic.

In normal narrative terms: there was no need for them to run, since the gaggle of nurses were preoccupied with poking around Winterson's eviscerated room, but that was probably for best. It wasn't like Nicole could've run, had there been need, and the same went for Rowan and his lower back – although, one wouldn't gasp to hear/read/skim entirely, he'd probably refuse to admit it.

All of the above could also be applied to Lily, who had been hiding her pill-perforating pain with her lollipop and, now left with nothing but the stick between her teeth, was doing so unsuccessfully.

The rain had picturesquely picked up its pace, but not as manically as the plot it was a part of.

"Come here, Lily," Nate said, once Highgate's red brick was hidden by trees for the second time that night. After wiping the rain from his eyes and retrieving the crumpled piece of paper stolen from reception that he'd written Micah's address on earlier, he held out his arms to carry her bridal style. 

Fortunately (No, I'm totally surprised, what do you mean?), Micah's address had still been on file.

(See? Nate raiding reception's filing cabinet and using Rowan's bobby pin to pick the locks on the A drawer while Nicole went to Winterson and Ida/I stayed with Lily feeling nothing – No –  would've been an ideal filler chapter to pad out the plot some more, before having a homicide and all that.)