[center][url=https://fontmeme.com/celtic-fonts/][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/210627/404431f1a0d621066509b03908a377e3.png[/img][/url]

[img]https://66.media.tumblr.com/a9da8570ac4146cf9799b30264b4b5a2/8075137316ff2588-b1/s540x810/d4b5b080f6eaed446d0aef4763db06c9da50fc2c.gif[/img]

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxRG7uoFDo4]Tell me again am I awake now
Maybe you can find the reason why
No one else is living this way...[/url][/center]

[indent][indent][color=darkgray]There were many things that were getting on Jillian’s nerves at the moment. Nerves that should have been dulled at this point to anything other than finding the sick SOB that was putting out these garbage diary pages and force-feeding them every gymnasium floorboard the assembled mob could pull up. But there were too many hooks pulling up things that she wanted to forget. Lanie showing up and acting like she didn’t need to be here. The mocking tributes to Alison Davies. Danny. Everything Danny. She spent so long trying to forget the past that having the various ghosts burst through the fog she spent the entire day carefully crafting were getting to her. But nothing could distract her enough from what was happening. This Danny was far different than the one she last spoke to in anger and hurt.

Not that she had changed her tactics much since then. Danny did though. He was never the take-charge serious type before… well, he stopped being a lovable doofus and became an untrustworthy asshole. She still didn’t see any sign of the latter yet. But at least he was leading a party out of this god-forsaken gym. Right now, the Edenridge gym was the last place Jillian wanted to be in the world. Aside from maybe the Pinehurst gym. She still hated them too. So she followed the growing Scooby squad around Danny as he led the way to the lockers to see if his hypothesis was right.

Walking the hallways again was giving Jill the shivers. The recent nightmares weren’t helping matters either. The tiles still looked the same, alternating pale and dark as they did when she got the up close look at them when she fell. Every time. Seeing the floor and the wall of lockers in reality were reducing any effect her liquid courage was having. She looked back, as if to try and find an exit, but only saw Mei walking behind her. Mei wasn’t scared. Why would she be scared? She wasn’t reliving those horrors over and over. She was reliving different horrors over and over. At least she was doing it by choice. Jillian swallowed a gulp as the grip on the nearly-empty bottle turned her knuckles white. 

It turned out Roddy was going to be the one to open up his brother’s locker. It made sense, even if for some reason it was Danny that had come up with the combination. Jillian thought that she couldn’t get more tense than she already was but hearing the clicks of the lock seemingly amplified by the hollow resonance of the halls was ratcheting up the pressure in her mind. Yet Roddy was able to open the lock with the given numbers. Jill half expected a boom or a jump scare to pop out of the locker when Roddy opened it. 

Instead, there was just more music. Fucking A/V nerd was really enjoying themselves with this soundtracking.

As the Callahan boy searched through what used to be his brother’s storage space, the only things he found didn’t seem to pertain to him. Roddy pulled out a photo and a sunflower, a wilted remnant of former cheery glory. How apt that he handed it off to Jillian. She stood there holding the plant, trying to figure out what it had to do with Allison as Roddy requested, but she was drawing a blank at the moment. [color=fd9100][i]I don’t know what sunflowers had to do with Allison. I don’t remember her being gung-ho about them. She didn’t have earrings or anything…”[/i][/color]

Roddy held up the photograph though, and being right next to him, Jillian was first to grab that from him as well. She shifted the flower into her bottle hand and stared at the photo. She barely recognized young Francis Callahan but got there after a few seconds. [color=fd9100][i]Forgot how hot he was back then…[/i][/color] Flipping it over though, her heart continued to sink. This hook was barbed, and it was pulling her back down with ease.

Jillian crashed back-first into the lockers and slid down to the floor, the bottle making an empty thud on the ground as she stared at the back. It was Francis, and some dude named Russ, but that wasn’t the key detail for her that triggered her fall. But it would circle back in a second.

The date was ominous enough. Everyone in Edenridge knew that day. That was the day that the innocence died. When the picturesque world of high school was shattered like… well Jill at that moment. In more ways than one.

It was the night that young Jillian O’Brien got her first taste of high-school partying. It was where she got her first taste of alcohol, courtesy her sister grabbing some Breezers for the rest of the freshman cheerleaders to partake while the seniors and juniors went for the harder stuff. She could still remember the syrupy-sweet strawberry flavor that seemed to herald sweet success for a fleeting couple of hours.

It was an address that she knew very well, having stopped by the place more than a few times lately. Whenever she thought confronting the ghosts head on would convince them to leave her alone for a moment’s peace, and when that didn’t work, to drink until she forgot they were haunting her. There was one ghost in particular she wanted to try and talk to and exorcise, and yet she couldn’t be shaken. She was here tonight after all. And that picture on the front may explain the unfinished business.

Jill muttered softly at first to herself. [color=fd9100][sub]”That was the night…”[/sub][/color] She looked up to see the rest of her former classmates staring at her. It was probably a mix of 20% confusion, 60% pity and 20% anger. She couldn’t tell where in particular the emotions were coming from, but as her glassed-over eyes stared up at everyone, tears forming, breakdown surely coming, she did her best to stammer out as she handed the photograph off to her partner-in-crime, Miss Midnight.

[color=fd9100][i]Say something! Everyone’s looking at you to say something![/i][/color]

Jill closed her eyes, trying to flush the sadness so she could explain herself. [color=fd9100]“That was the night…”[/color] she said louder this time, but still at a whimper’s decibel level. [color=fd9100]“While Francis was in the arms of another man… that was the night. That was the place. That’s when Ally died…[/color] There was no respite now. No courage. No bravado. No swear words for defense. The depression and regret was fully in control and there was nothing Jillian could do about it. [color=fd9100]”That’s when it all went downhill…”[/color] The flower was getting watered and the bottle started to regain some volume as a hundred bottles’ worth of liquor started to be shed for the first time in a while. [/color][/indent][/indent]