constant condition of falling
who: merrick wood & chloe alpin
what: merrick & chloe take a break from riverside at a familiar old hang out
when: tuesday, october 15th, evening
Every day, it felt like things were exploding worse and worse around them. The school had finally realized that Garland was MIA, the cops were finally coming in to ask generic questions - when did you last see her, did she seem upset, could you think of any reason she might leave town - and Merrick had barely restrained herself from biting her tongue back at them, her mother sitting next to her with a hand on her knee.
It didn’t matter anyways. They didn’t actually care, they knew full well what they were doing. Which was absolutely fucking nothing. To them, Garland was an outsider, a transplant who’d just gone back to where she came from. If she was dead, it was one less person to worry about.
( She wasn’t. Merrick knew this. She could feel Garland, tucked away in her ribcage, alive somewhere but with no further answers for any of them. )
They hadn’t been able to ditch out earlier, but Merrick grabbed Chloe as soon as the interview was done, glad practice was cut short by the intrusion, and the two took off without a word. They both needed the break. A taste of freedom. A taste of air, which seemed to be suffocating all of them lately.
Chloe had always been the designated driver for them, the good girl of their trio and when it was just her and Merrick, Merrick usually refrained from substances on her own anyways. But she needed something to take the edge off - I can understand why Holly needs something - vaguely running through her head, and Chloe didn’t say a word as Merrick pulled out the flask she’d nicked from her fathers office, full of gin and tonic she’d mixed together at 7am that morning.
“How was your interview?” she asked finally, offering the drink to her friend though she knew she’d say ‘no’, the two parked and grabbing their bags full of junk food and cigarettes, Merrick’s fingers itching for a nicotine fix as they headed towards the trampoline in the middle of an abandoned meadow a friend had left a decade ago when they moved out of town. “Did they ask you the stupidest questions ever too?”