Soon the bell rung and the students flooded from the room, hurrying towards their next classes. Spencer let herself be swept up in the mob, eager to escape from those insistent brown eyes. Fortunately, English was the only class they shared and the rest of the day flew by in an indiscernible blur. Spencer arrived home exhausted, her muscles aching painfully as she laid herself down on the couch. Her little episode this morning had wore her out completely and combining that with the small amounts of food she’d been ingesting lately and it made for an extremely low energy level.

The next morning Spencer awoke to the sound of rain pelting her roof. She sat up, looking out the window with slight confusion at the grey world outside her window. It never rained in Los Angeles during September; hell it hardly even rained in the wintertime. Groaning she rolled out of bed and pulled some warmer clothes from her closet, working on autopilot because it was too early for logical thought. Once again she met her brother at the bottom of the stairs and once again they drove to school, already settled into the mundane daily schedule that is the school year.

Spencer found her English class and took a seat, trying hard not to notice Ashley. Her eyes stared out the window at the rain, watching it empty from the sky in big fat drops. Eventually she turned her head towards the teacher, trying to focus while also putting her best effort into not thinking about Ashley. But, it’s hard to avoid someone when they are sitting directly behind you and she soon found herself staring at the girl out of the corner of her eye. The brunette, as if feeling her gaze looked over at her, and their eyes locked for maybe 5 seconds before Spencer had to look away.

The girl tried her best to think of something else, anything else, but her mind consistently kept wandering back to Ashley. She missed the girl to death. She missed her voice, smile, scent, taste, skin, and then all at once the feeling started again. Her heart began racing and her stomach churning, her breaths shorter and quicker as invisible weights were lowered onto her chest. And the worst part, that terrifying sensation of losing control. It was like that feeling you get when your driving on a wet street and your car hydroplanes, and for a split second your car is at the mercy of the road and your heart seizes up into your throat. It was exactly like that, that terrible fear of whatever might happen if that moment of helplessness was long enough for something irreversible to happen.