Chapter Text
Autumn is slipping in through the corridors of earth, the leaves are dead, the air outside smells like navy blue, the leaves have fallen, and Alison has risen.
Against her will, of course.
Alison wakes to pots banging from downstairs, and her mother shouting for her to wake up.
Alison has nowhere near the energy to be shouting this early, but god, those pots are deafening.
"Okay, okay I'm up! Stop!" She yells, standing up with a frown, stumbling with tired eyes to her vanity, with a calendar plastered sloppily on the top rim, and photos of her and her best friend, Illi Mcmillin down the sides.
Today marks officially 6 weeks of sophomore year.
She grabs an eyebrow pencil and marks out today.
Turning to her left, she tried to take a glance out the window to see if Illi has awaken yet.
Illi and Alison are neighbors, and have been since they were eleven, however, their friendship only started in seventh grade, so the both of them were used to the other staring through the window and communicating through white boards and notebooks, though they had perfectly fine access to the house phone.
As Alison looks out the window, shes startled a little bit by Illi actually being up on time, face pressed against the window, staring straight at Alison.
Illi laughs, inaudibly due to the glass barriers between the two.
Alison places a finger on her chin, tapping, mocking a thinking face, and briefly sticks her middle finger at Illi, biting her lips inwards to hide a laugh, slowly turning her rotating chair to face the vanity once again, and the thought of Illi just slips her mind as she brushes out her hair, creating a big bird's nest.
"What the hell am I doing wrong...?"
Wetting it.
Shes not dampening her hair before brushing, and she knows that.
Illi gets irritated when people don't understand how to work with their hair types, so she's lectured Alison countless times, as you can imagine, but Alison never listens, so Illi no longer says.
Iritated, Alison whips her hair into two braids as fast as she can, not caring about the atrocious zigzag parting in the back.
She throws on her glasses, a long sleved shirt with grey and white stripes, boot cut jeans, pairing it all with boring, regular, faux everything, color fading, boots.
•••
Illi is in her room, treating her morning much different.
She brushes her teeth, washes her face, and puts on gel eyeliner without a care about how messy it looks.
she opens the bathroom cabinet, grabbing ibuprofen for the possible incoming headache she already feels coming on, and she dry-swallows two.
She carries on, irons her fringe to sit perfectly along her face,
Or so she thinks.
Really, she just looks unkept.
But you know what, that's the whole vibe.
She carefully throws on a black button-up she had ironed last night, black boot cut jeans, converse, and a red tie.
She contemplates adding a blazer, but that was a bit too fancy.
She rushes downstairs, practically tripping with every step, but makes it to the front door and steps outside.
She takes a deep breath,
The humidity isn't as thick and gross as it usually is, its a tad bit chilly, the sun hasn't fully risen, it's nice.
She closes the door behind her and locks it, now sprinting over to her neighbors house and banging on the door.
•••
Alison hears the loud thuds, now her mom yelling once again.
"Alison! Get the goddamn door!"
Alison rolls her eyes, still tired but makes her way downstairs, trudging, with dread in every step. She grabs her backpack from the floor, hugs her mom goodbye, and swings open the front door, rushing outside, not even closing it behind her.
Her and Illi make it down the driveway to the leaf-ridden paved sidewalk as they wait for the school bus.
"I could hear your mom yelling at you to wake up from my house, you know."
illi jokes, with a laugh from her nose.
"Im not surprised, I could hear it in my dreams."
Alison jokes, half serious. She loves her mom to death but the pots and pans have got to stop.
There's a moment of silence between them, but not an awkward one.
They'd never had an awkward moment of silence, it was always just the silence of being in one another's presence without much to say.
They hear sliding wheels from the opposite side of the street, and smell that sweet smell of a gas leak.
They knew what was coming.
Illi takes a deep breath, bracing herself as she watches the big yellow van full of horny, angry, stupid, mean kids halt to a stop in front of them.
"Here we go."
Illi mutters, Alison just standing and pulling Illi up with her hand.
They watch as the doors open to the bus, and it's like they've walked into another dimension.
Spitballs, borderline foreplay, evil bullies, sad kids, and one's as cool as a cucumber.
Illi has gotten used to this by now, all eyes on her, bickering, laughing, pointing, side-eyes, insults, she's seen it all.
Doesn't mean she doesn't dread it.
Alison on the other hand, is walking behind her, rolling her eyes at every pathetic chad with an ego three times too big.
"here comes the boy!"
"makeup is for girls, you know."
"Surprised he didn't wear a skirt!"
Nothing she hadn't heard before.
Illi simply sticks her middle finger up and turns it towards everyone on the bus, taking a seat with Alison in the third to back row.
"God, I hate taking the bus. It's like people are worse than they are in school just because they know the bus driver doesn't care."
Alison groans.
"Yeah, tell me about it. I really don't get what people gain from being bitches, y'know? You could gain everything by simply shutting your trap, but it's so easy to lose everything if you keep talking."
Illi stresses, preparing for yet another day of hell on earth.
•••
Today is rehearsals for the school band concert next month, both Illi and alison are in band, and while it's nerdy, it's fun.
The band group gets to go on field trips all the time, play around with expensive instruments, pizza parties like everyday, all at the small price of putting on a performance now and then.
While those performances will certainly get anyone involved shoved into their lunch tray, it's all worth it just to have all those privileges they don't.
So Illi and alison have both gotten off the bus, the herd of teenagers all flood into the gates, pushing and shoving just to get in first.
They walk into the school, and suddenly everyone wants to be all goody two shoes.
The girls with six boyfriends who don't know about each other hold their books tight to their chest with an innocent smile, the jocks playfully ruffle a nerds hair, instead of jumping him—unlike what they'd do outside, the stoners stand together with sunglasses and smiles on their face, when normally they would be shaking and begging someone for a drag.
It disgusted them both.
How could you be so evil, desperate, and angry, anywhere else, but so perfectly kind and nice when It comes to school hallways?
They both rolled their eyes in sync.
"I gotta head to chemistry, I'll catch you at band practice, okay?"
Illi mutters, her head hanging fairly low as she scratches the side of her face.
"Yeah—! I'll see you later"
And they both split.
•••
"Oh no, not again, Illi. Back to being depressed for no reason?"
Frank teases, as illi takes a seat next to him, holding her head in her hands.
Frank is Illi's lab partner, and quite frankly, a terrible one.
There's been countless times he's done something stupid; like drink the chemicals, mix a forbidden green liquid with vinegar, anything lethal thing you can do in science, he's done it.
Although, that doesn't change that he's a good friend.
"Just because I'm not smiling doesn't mean I'm depressed. im doing quite well actually! I've just had a lack of sleep—oh, and I have band later so my days really looking up."
Illi says, blank look on her face.
"Yeah...band...woo-hoo?..."
Frank forces a supportive smile.
Illi shrugs, if he doesn't get it, he doesn't get it.
But what he does get, is a girl who has had her eyes on frank for quite the while, now.
Hayley.
Hayley Williams.
Now, Illi has never really gotten an inside look towards if frank likes her too.
Though he is wildly ignorant towards Hayley's affections.
Haley leans over with her whole body, dodging the teacher, right behind his back.
"Hey, Frank!"
Hayley whisper shouts.
Frank does a double take.
"...yeah?"
"...You wanna sit with me at lunch today? Doesn't have to be a forever thing...but I've got some friends who would like to get to know you."
Hayley says slyly, speaking as low as a whisper can go.
"Sure...! That sounds fun!"
Frank whispers, nodding his head in approval, and he and Hayley both quickly jolt back properly into their seats as the teacher turns around to show the board.
•••
"Okay, what was that? She's like totally into you!"
Illi now shouts, roaming the crowded halls, trying to find her next class, but still keep up with frank's love life simultaneously.
"Is not! All she did was invite me to have lunch with her and her friends, it's not like she asked me to marry her."
frank counters, pulling his sliding backpack back into him.
"oh shut up, frank. you know damn well she was romancing you up in chemistry class."
"romancing isn't a word!"
"yes it is, you dimwit!"
Illi smacks him upside the head, not gentle, not hard enough to hurt, just a smack.
"Shit—ow! What was that for?"
"For being a dumb son of a bitch. anyways, don't think you can escape this! I will be calling you after school for details!"
illi says, hopping away.
"Kay, tell Allison I said hello!"
frank shouts, waving goodbye as he watches Illi's silhouette get smaller and smaller down the halls.
•••
Headache, throbbing, stabbing, squeezing kind of migraine.
Illi can't stop thinking about the ibuprofen she took earlier, why isn't it working, when she took it for this very purpose? Did she take the wrong pills? Is it just a migraine that will be over in 30 minutes?
It feels like hours now, they've been playing these instruments. Illi has never had a headache like this before, typically she really enjoys band practice.
But this—this is brutal.
Another horn blows, another clarinet sings a tune, another throb, going like a heartbeat in her head.
She stops playing, no one notices.
She turns her head, the world moves slow.
She turns towards Alison, next to her, who has also stopped playing, but her head is ringing too loud to understand why.
"Hey...you don't look very well..."
Were the last words Illi heard before everything fades to black.