"Clare? Clare, wake up," Ms. Dawes said, tapping Clare on the forearm lightly. Clare jolted awake within seconds, looking around to figure out where she was. English class. People were surrounding her, chattering mindlessly with partners. Clare wondered how they could all seem so...so calm and collected, after what had happened.
"Sorry Ms. Dawes...I'm just having a rough time, is all. It won't happen again," Clare stated, her voice hoarse from all of the crying she had done.
"Clare, it's fine. Really, I understand. What we're doing today, and for the next week or so, is writing a paper reflecting on our feelings about what's been going on in the past few weeks. I assigned editing partners, and people are currently discussing their feelings together before they write the papers. Your partner is Eli Goldsworthy, but apparently he's not going to show up today...so you can either work by yourself and have him edit your paper later, or join another group for the time being," Ms. Dawes explained.
"I think I'd actually prefer to work alone." Ms. Dawes nodded and returned to her desk. Clare sighed and pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen.
I feel...like my mind is disconnected from my body. I can't tell the difference between nightmares and reality, because it all seems the same.
Clare jumped as the bell rang, signaling five minutes of class left. She had been sitting there, lost in thought, without actually writing anything apart from the first two sentences, which were very relevant to her feelings. She was losing sense of reality, and sense of time. Nothing seemed normal anymore—she was seeing things from a distorted point of view. Was she going crazy from grief? Just then, the door opened and a boy stepped inside of the room. Eli.
"Ah, Mr. Goldsworthy. Nice of you to join us, with only five minutes of class left. What's the excuse this time?" Ms. Dawes asked. It was quite normal for Eli to be late for class, but normally he was only a couple of minutes late and didn't miss much class.
"Don't have one. Sorry," Eli replied blankly, taking his seat behind Clare.
"Normally I would have you go get a late pass, but since there's so little time left...Clare, would you mind explaining the assignment to Eli? He is, after all, your new English partner." Eli rolled his eyes as Ms. Dawes began to read her book again.
"So, Clare," Eli began, drawing out her name. "What's the assignment?"
"We have to write a paper on our feelings about what happened to Alli," Clare explained flatly. "We're partners because we're supposed to edit each other's papers when we're done."
"Oh," Eli said flatly.
"What's wrong?" Clare asked. "Don't have any feelings?" Her tone immediately softened when she saw the pained look on his face.
"Nothing," he snapped. Clare sighed.
"Look, sorry if I struck a nerve. It's been a hard week," she told him.
"It's...cool. I get it. It just...never mind," Eli said. "This whole experience just reminds me of something. Anyway, seeing as the bell is about to ring, we should make a plan to get together for this." Clare nodded her head in agreement.
"I'm free after school today, whenever," Clare offered.
"Uh...I'm busy until 4:30, think we could meet at the library then?" he asked as the bell rang.
"Sure," Clare answered and stood up, collecting her stuff. It was going to be a long day.

Clare began to walk to the library, her mind wandering. She sighed and entered the library, looking up at the clock. 4:25. He should be here soon.
Clare sat down at a table near the back of the library and pulled out her papers. She hadn't gotten anything done with the paper, but she wasn't surprised. It wasn't easy to write about how she was feeling in this situation.
She blinked and fiddled with her pen until someone sat down next across from her. Eli.
"Hey," he muttered.
"You apparently like to be on time," she noted, realizing that the clock was exactly 4:30. "Anyway, cutting right to the chase. What was your connection to Alli? I noticed you at the funeral, but I didn't know that she had ever talked to you before."
"I've almost never talked to her before, to be honest. I'm friends with Adam, and I go to his house a lot. His step-brother, Drew, was dating Alli, so we crossed paths a lot at their house. Adam also...wait, do you know about Adam's situation?" he asked, not wanting to talk about it if she didn't know. Clare nodded.
"Yeah, I talk to Adam sometimes. He's a pretty nice guy," she replied.
"Yeah, he is. Okay, so anyway, Adam was stuck sitting around with Alli during Drew's football practices, and they got pretty close. In a friendly way, of course. Anyway, he told me that Alli was probably the most accepting and understanding person about everything that he'd ever met. So I was there for moral support."
"My family was there for support, too. Which is surprising, since they haven't been getting along lately. My sister actually flew in from Kenya. She was there on a mission trip," Clare explained, a lump in her throat. She didn't like the topic on herself so much. "Look, I know I might be striking a nerve here again, but I've really been wondering what you were talking about during class today. With this whole thing reminding you of something. You don't have tto answer if you don't want to." Eli winced as she brought the topic up.
"Normally I would never tell somebody I had just met about this. But considering the fact that you're going to have to read about it in my paper anyway, I might as well." He looked hesitant to talk, but he still continued. "When Adam told me what had happened...it really reminded me of something that happened two years ago. My...my ex-girlfriend, Julia, was really depressed because her step-mom was abusive. I saw her on the rooftop of our old school, and I went up there to get her down. Before I could stop her...she jumped. It was so eerily similar to what happened last week, besides the fact that she did it on purpose, that I just couldn't help but go to the funeral. I don't know why it was so compelling. The fact that I needed to be there for Adam was what made me made the full decision to go." Clare began shaking as soon as he stopped talking. She felt like she couldn't breathe. This...this couldn't be happening. She ran outside, not even bothering to grab her things, and immediately collapsed on a bench near the doors, sobbing. She shouldn't have asked. Stupid, stupid, stupid Clare. Now the truth was going to come out. She knew that she wouldn't be able to stop herself from talking about what had happened after this.
As Eli burst out the doors looking flustered, he spotted her and jogged over, sitting down next to her.
"What's wrong, Clare? Look, I'm sorry if my story triggered any bad thoughts. I really didn't mean for it to do that, but—" Clare cut him off, wiping her eyes and trying to control her breathing.
"You don't get it. I lied!" she nearly shouted.
"You lied...about what?" Eli asked, obviously confused. Clare took a deep breath before speaking in a whisper.
"Alli's death wasn't an accident."

Author's Note:

First of all, cliffhanger...bum bum bum! Haha, sorry.

Second, oh god this is horrible. I'm sorry. This story is not turning out the way I had originally planned, and it's moving at a faster pace than I anticipated. To be honest, I'll probably be ending it very soon. I knew it was going to be short, but I didn't think it would be this short. Plus, since I don't like the way it's turning out, I honestly don't think I can work on it for much longer, so I'll have to finish it quickly before I lose the will to keep writing it.

Third, my writing got all messed up when I uploaded this. Meaning, the quotation marks were all gone, the spacing was all weird, and random stuff like that. I don't even know how it happened. So I apologize beforehand if there are mistakes. I tried to go over it as best as I could, but I don't know if I caught everything.

Lastly, again, I know that this sucks. I absolutely hate that it's going so fast but eh. I've never been good at slowing things down, so I guess I'll deal with it. Meh.

I apologize again. Plus, it's pretty short. Sorry again. I need to stop apologizing, man. OH, I ALMOST FORGOT. I don't know if there will actually be Eclare action in this story. probably keeping it as a friendship because I don't want to throw in romance in a story that's supposed to be about death. sorry if I got your hopes up :( and thank you to those who reviewed, I really appreciate it! 3