Brooke arrived outside of Peyton's house, eyes already resting on the blonde's bedroom window.
Something was wrong.
For hours, Brooke had been trying to reach Peyton to lure (or force) her out of the house. The blonde had somewhat withdrawn from the world and disappeared into the depths of her red and angry room, not coming out for much more than school. Sometimes even that didn't happen. Still, she was reachable via cell phone, but only with Brooke. If Lucas, Mouth, Haley, or anyone besides a very particular brunette called, Peyton wouldn't pick up.
Now, Brooke couldn't even get a hold of her.
As the brown-eyed girl approached the front door, she dialed Peyton's number again. There was no answer.
"Peyton?" she called out loud, hanging up her phone. She wondered if maybe she was asleep, but discarded the thought almost immediately after she had conjured it up. Knowing Peyton, the blonde probably hadn't slept for days.
Brooke pushed on the door, a multitude of other possibilities for why Peyton wasn't responding flooding into her head.
"Peyton?" she called, looking around. The house looked like a natural disaster had rampaged through. Probably it was a tornado, maybe a hurricane.
Brooke called Peyton again, and still there was no response. And it wasn't like the blonde wasn't home; her car was parked outside.
"How deep of a sleep can you be in?" Brooke whispered. She climbed the stairs up to Peyton's bedroom, sensing something off. The stairwell was absolutely silent, no music from Peyton's turntable spilling out into it. This in itself was alarming, considering Peyton's emotional state. Her music, along with Brooke, always seemed to be her support system when things in her life went awry. But now not even a CD spun in it's player. There was just nothing.
At the top of the steps, Brooke tried Peyton one more time before rounding the corner.
"Peyton Elizabeth Sawyer, I swear today I'm going to-" It was as if some beast had punched her in the gut and she doubled over, her eyes unable to look away from the expanse that was Peyton's bed. Her heart stopped and restarted over and over and over, dismantling her breathing pattern and stopping the thoughts in her head. There, on the bed, lay an unconscious Peyton on her back. A broken bottle of alcohol on the floor next to an empty pill bottle supported the whole scene, Peyton's still-bleeding wrists the accent. The blonde's eyes stared lifelessly up at her ceiling, the natural sparkle gone from them.
Brooke looked down at her phone, not remembering having dialed 911. She held the phone to her chest, not able to bring it all the way up to her ear, and crawled a short foot closer to the bed. She was paralyzed after that.
"Tree Hill Emergency," a man on the other end answered. His voice broke the silence of the room and Brooke burst into hysterics.
"Please… My friend, she… She's dead she's dying she's drunk or… I… there's blood and she's not… Help me, please! Help…"