Chapter Text
The first thing I heard as I gained consciousness was the sound of my best friend crying on the floor. Slowly, I opened my eyes, and saw my three other friends standing around the hospital bed that I was trapped in. They were all staring at Sunny, whose face was covered in tears. It took me a few seconds, but I came to realize what just happened. Sunny told them.
I was jolted out of my thoughts by a loud sound. I opened my eyes all the way and hear Aubrey yell. “You… you fucking psycopaths! How could you do that to her!” Aubrey clenches her fists and grits her teeth. She steps towards Sunny, defenseless on the ground. She stares at his face, covered in tears, before she realizes that she herself is crying. After a moment of hesitation, she slams the door to the hospital room wide open, and then escapes down the halls.
Kel is the next to act. He takes a few steps forwards as if he intends to pursue Aubrey, but stops short of the door. Kel glances back at Sunny. Kel is frowning, which makes me think about how I’ve rarely seen him without a smile on his face. He was the only one I was able to talk to in any friendly way over the past four years, although we stopped really talking after about 2 years.
Kel turns around to see Sunny.
He stops for a second, just a second, before he walks over, and hugs Sunny on the ground. “It’s… it’s okay sunny, I’ll forgive you. You’ll always be my best friend.”
The four people in the room remain silent for almost a whole minute. Hero seems deep in thought. I don’t think anyone’s realized that I’m awake.
Hero calmly walks towards the door. “I need a bit to think about this.”
Hero gently opens the door and leaves. Kel breaks away from Sunny shortly after. “Hey uh… sorry to do this to you, but I should probably go help him out, he seems a little upset. Seeya… Sunny.” Kel quickly follows Hero out of the room.
Sunny doesn’t leave the floor or the room. He stops crying, but he doesn’t get up. Not even 10 minutes after I woke up, I end up falling back asleep. That was certainly eventful.
I had to stay in the hospital for three weeks after I got in. I don’t remember all the details of that night, it was really blurry to me… but according to the doctors, after I had stabbed Sunny’s eye out, I had proceeded to stab myself in the stomach. They would’ve been able to let me out after 1 week, but psychological evaluation certainly took up some time.
They didn’t tell me when Sunny was released. I’m pretty sure he was let out before me because his only significant injury was to his eye. He lost it, but there were no other complications.
I was sitting in my bed, waiting to be released, when a nurse entered my room, with Polly close behind. After some boring clinical talk, they let me go back home.
One Week Since Release
I was doing… okay back at home.
I made a point to leave the house at least once every day, even if it was just to go check on my flowers that were in front of the house. One of these days, I decided to stop by the park and ran into Kel. We made some small talk (which was really hard, but I did at least a little! Baby steps!) and then moved on to a more serious topic… how everyone was doing.
Apparently, Aubrey and Hero definitely haven’t been taking things well. Kel says that Aubrey has only gotten angrier, and lashed out at him. He showed me a pretty big bruise he got. I wasn’t sure what to say.
Hero was back into his catatonic state from after Mari’s death. He still occasionally got out of bed to cook, and he was keeping up with studies, but he spent all of his free time in bed, thinking. I felt bad for him, but then I thought about how I was pretty much solely responsible for that. At that point, I tried to weasel out of the conversation. Kel caught on to what I was doing. He didn’t want me to go, but he let me off anyways.
I haven’t ran into Aubrey at all. I really hope I don’t, because she might bash my skull in with her bat. And I will deserve it.
But even with all of these things happening around me, I felt like life was getting… boring. Other than the day I talked with Kel, each day was basically the same. So I decided to start something new.
It had been a while since I bought a new planter. I could fill it with nice flowers, something good for autumn, since that was coming up rather soon.
I looked around my room, and saw that there was no space for a planter box. I checked outside, and there was no room on my shelves. I could put it just in the driveway, but that would be dangerous. The driveway rarely gets used, but just the idea that someone could run over my flowers made me sad.
I got a little anxious thinking about this. If I didn’t have any safe spaces to plant these flowers, then what would I do until school starts again?
School. Still 5 weeks until we go back. I really don’t want to.
Well, it almost physically hurt me to do this, but I decided to buy the planter and the seeds now, and figure out where to put it later. I grabbed my thin wallet, and headed out to Fix-It
It’s a short walk to Fix-It, but the fear that I would run into someone was tearing me up. I didn’t have a reason to be afraid of anyone but Aubrey, really, but it still felt… terrifying. I noticed Kel playing basketball with some of his new friends over at the court, but he didn’t notice me. I was thankful.
The clerk at Fix-It was pretty familiar with me. The shop had plenty of seeds and plants in the back, so it was a frequent stop of mine. I never talked to the clerk for more than maybe… a minute at a time? Despite that, I thought we were pretty good friends. I waved to him on my way in, and then went to the back of the store.
To my surprise, someone else was there. A somewhat tall girl with light blue hair and a pink hoodie was browsing the aisles. Her hoodie had a lighthouse printed on it, and there was a small blonde spot near the top of her head. I passingly thought that she was kind of pretty, and then continued on to the seeds section.
There were plenty of seeds of all types here. I looked for something that blooms in autumn. My eyes stopped as I found chrysanthemums. The most well-known autumn flower. I grabbed a packet for the seeds, and then I started to go look for a planter box.
I turned to the left to walk out of the aisle I was in, then I suddenly felt a sharp pain on my head, and stumbled backwards. I looked up, and realized that I had just bumped into someone.
“A-ah… sorry” I mumbled. It was the girl I saw not two minutes earlier.
“Ah! No, I wasn’t looking where I was going, I’m sorry for that!”
I realized now that I had dropped the seeds. I bent over and picked them up. The girl looked at them. “Oh, chrysanthemums! My name’s Cris, I think my mom mentioned once that she thought about those flowers when she named me.”
“O-oh… I’m… I’m Basil.” I silently facepalmed, upset with my double stutter, which was combined with how slow I was to say my name.
“That’s cute!” She said in a chipper voice. “So uh… do you know a lot about flowers? I’m trying to decorate my room with some flowers but I don’t really know how to take care of them.”
“Yeah… I guess I do… uh, do you want to grow them yourself or do you just want some flowers? I w-wouldn’t buy flowers from a store personally, but if you don’t have a lot of time, it makes sense to by already grown plants.”
“That would make sense… but it’s more fun to grow them yourself! I think! I haven’t exactly done this before.” Cris had a determined look on her face as she said that. I blushed a little. She was cute.
“Well I guess I can help you pick something.” I immediately regretted saying that. I would prefer to get out of the conversation as soon as possible, but at this point I had trapped myself into giving her advice.
“Awesome! So… where to start?”
“So um, first you’re going to need to pick what kind of flower. There are a lot of different types, most of them don’t really make a difference to people but…” I started to blabber on about different types of flowers, their biological differences and how that affected their growth, I went on to talk about why different flowers bloom at different times and… oh shoot. I hadn’t even considered it. There was someone else here, and I was just ranting to myself about flowers.
I suddenly shut myself up, and my face turned a little red. “Oh umm… sorry if I bothered you. I j-just… know a lot about this stuff.”
“No, it’s fine! So based on that…” Cris looked over the seeds. “You mentioned these would bloom in fall, so I guess I’ll take them.” I didn’t see what she took, but it didn’t really matter. I was a little surprised that she actually used my knowledge in her decision, at least if her words were anything to go by. She started to head over to the front of the store.
“A-ah, wait! Unless you have one already, you’ll probably need a um, a pot.”
“Oh shoot, I didn’t even think about that! Thanks!”
Cris turned around and walked back over to me. I took a second to look at her. She was taller than me by about 5 inches. I turned a little red as I looked up at her, then turned around and motioned for her to follow me. I went to the section where pots and planter boxes were stored. I grabbed a simple pot that already had soil in it, and handed it to her. I looked around a little bit and found a planter box similar to the ones where I kept all my other flowers.
Together, we walked up to the front of the store. She checked out first, then I bought my seeds and box.
Once we were outside of the store, she stopped me. “Hey basil, I still don’t really know how to take care of a flower even if I have the seeds and stuff… so maybe tomorrow, we could meet at the park and you could teach me some of that stuff?”
“Um… sure!” I responded, without thinking, despite the pause.
Oh god… I just trapped myself into that, didn’t I. What if Aubrey shows up while I’m talking with Cris? What if Kel shows up and sees me hanging out with someone I’ve never met even though I was avoiding him the other day? This can’t possibly end well.
“Awesome!” Cris’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “Well then, I’ll see you tomorrow!”
“Y-yeah…”
Cris turned around and bounced away. She seemed to be pretty happy about these plans.
Well I’m certainly not… I might die tomorrow if Aubrey finds me and she’s in a bad mood.
I started on my way back home. I left for Fix-It pretty late, so the sky was orange with the sunset now. I started to think about Cris, and what I should teach her tomorrow, and my heart felt a little bit warmer.
Maybe this isn’t bad after all.
Wait, is that going to be a date? Did she ask me out? Am I overthinking this?
My face turned red as a tomato. I ran the rest of the way home.