Revamped!

[I had to get something up before I returned to school. Second-year uni, here I come!] [2020: Anyone down to tell her the year gets cut short and third-year is depressing?]

Beware of Sharp Thornes: Part Five

After the Party

How they didn't realize that Cress or their phones were missing is a mystery to them. One they will never bring up. Now that they had those variables to solve, their logic is that those two are together somewhere. There was no way their phones went missing unless Cress somehow had them.

Since Thorne still has his phone, thankfully, he decides to initiate a video call with the group to get their phones ringing. There's no way all their phones were dead or on silent. As the call buffers, they wait on edge, hoping that none of their phones are on vibrate or else this would have all been pointless.

At first, they hear nothing. Their phones must be on vibrate. All of them, somehow. But they hear a small collective buzz coming from somewhere upstairs. It was only for a slight second and it stopped.

"Where did it go?" Winter exclaims. She pauses. "Wait, you guys heard that too, right?"

"My phone died!" Thorne yells as if the end of the world was happening which, in his current state of mind, is occurring.

"Well, this keeps on getting better and better," Wolf says sarcastically.

"Don't give me that attitude!"

As Thorne starts looking in the trash for a phone charger or someone's forgotten phone, Cinder runs her hand along her pants and feels something odd in her front pocket. She looks down as she pulls it out and it's even weird when it turns out to be Cress's phone.

Everyone gives her a strange look for many reasons.

"How did you just find that?" Kai asks her.

"I forgot these pants had pockets!" Cinder yells back.

"How didn't it ring earlier?" Scarlet asks.

Cinder plays around with Cress's phone and shows it rebooting. For some reason, it was shut off so no notifications were going through. They wait a bit before Cress's lock screen, a cute photo the group appears on her screen. For a moment, they thought that they solved their problems but realized they didn't know her passcode. Thorne takes control and tries the numerical form of his birthday, gets offended when that's not it. He gets the same result when he tries Cress's.

"Don't lock us out for good," Scarlet says, taking Cress's phone away from him.

"Okay…" Kai mutters, getting them all back on track. "Where do we think we heard that noise?"

"Upstairs," Wolf says with certitude, "it definitely came from upstairs."

Thorne claps his shoulder. "God bless your animal senses."

Wolf rolls his eyes as they follow Thorne upstairs. He locked off most of the rooms up here, leaving his bedroom just closed and the bathroom always open. When they walk past the bathroom and see it empty, they head over to his room. Thorne slowly opens the door and they freeze at what they see: Cress is fast-asleep on Thorne's bed in a fetal position, wearing one of his oversized band t-shirts. In the curve of her body are their phones. The group looks at Thorne for an explanation of that sight but he's as confused as they are.

"Let's not wake her," Winter whispers.

Cinder tiptoes closer to Thorne's bed and gently picks up Cress's hand. She uses her thumb to unlock her phone before turning back to the group. She goes through Cress's story to see if she has posted anything pertinent to the events of their night. First, Cinder shows them something Cress reposted from someone else that she got tagged in. It's a short video of Cress laughing as she's thrown over Wolf's shoulder.

The group looks to Wolf for some context. Wolf scratches the back of his neck, thinking over that short video before it hits him.

"There is an explanation for that," he says. "And it's not what you think."

-o-

At the Party

Scarlet and Thorne stand at opposite ends of his long dining room table. In front of them are semi-filled plastic red cups, stacked in a pyramid with some already missing. As the two of them continue bouncing ping pong balls to each other, Cinder and Cress stand to the side, watching the two of them and bopping their heads back and forth in the same directions.

"Isn't that cheating?" Scarlet asks Thorne after he puts three ping pong balls in his hand to throw at once.

"Is it cheating if there are no rules?" Thorne asks her in return.

Scarlet thinks it over for a second before shrugging. "Fair point."

Thorne throws three balls at once and they all miss. Scarlet laughs at him and Cinder does the same from the side. Cress smiles to herself as Thorne grunts in frustration.

"Would you play against me?" Cinder asks Cress, gesturing to the game with her hand that has her cup in it. "I'll fill your cups with soda or, spades, I'll even drink them."

Cress shakes her head just as Wolf approaches them, having heard their conversation on his way over. He leans against the wall behind them, looking at the game as well.

"You want to play against me?" Wolf asks Cress, leaning over to look at her.

"That's an unfair match," Cress says. "You're like a skyscraper. You could throw a ball airborne into a cup. I could barely see above the table. Why are you so tall?"

Wolf narrows his eyes at her with a small grin on his face. "Does it bother you?"

"As someone who stopped growing in the sixth grade, yes, it does. But let's face it, no matter how tiny I am, I'll never be intimidated by you. At least, not anymore."

Cress turns to face Wolf, standing on her tiptoes to be remotely close to his gaze. However, he has to hold her up so she doesn't fall over. But while he has a hold on her, he lifts her into the air and throws her over his shoulder like a rag doll. Cress yelps a little as Wolf spins her around before she finds the amusement in it. Everyone around them cheers, especially Scarlet and Thorne who look away from their game for a second before returning to their match.

Kai has to duck under Cress's legs as he walks over to Cinder. When she sees him, she offers him her cup and he shakes his head.

"I can't, babe, I'm driving you and Winter home," Kai responds.

Cinder nods, raising her cup to her lips. Her eyes never leave him and although she isn't saying anything, her eyes give off a seductive message. It may be the alcohol in her system making her act this way or the beautiful boy in front of her, but she's alive and in love.

"Don't look at me like that while I think about you," Kai says, attempting to resist her moves.

"Cress isn't drinking so she can drive us back," Cinder tells him.

Kai grins. "I know."

Cinder smacks him. "You tease!"

-o-

After the Party

"You spun my girlfriend around like a dreidel?" Thorne questions although the video they just watched clearly shows that.

"Yeah," Wolf responds casually, "you were playing beer pong with mine."

Thorne nods although he and Scarlet don't remember that match at all. If you were to ask them the results, they would both say they won. (Truth be told, they were too hammered to finish the game.)

Cinder continues using Cress's phone, making her way over to her profile. She views her story and stops at a post of Kai and Thorne slow-dancing on a coffee table which she captioned: why can't Kai dance with me like this? Cinder turns the screen around to show them and everyone but Thorne and Kai are laughing. Thorne is trying to remember how and why that moment happened whereas Kai was glad he forgot it up until now. And now he has to relive this memory? Stars…

"I have that on my story twice," Thorne says.

"Reposting your own post is like telling yourself a bedtime story," Winter says.

"Which makes sense since we fell asleep after."

-o-

At the Party

Feeling buzzed after countless drinks, Thorne and Kai sit next to each other on the couch, watching their classmates dance and grind on the floor to the beat of the thumping music. At one point, without any signals whatsoever, Kai and Thorne turn their heads and look at each other. They both stare at one another in a hazy silence before smiling.

"Do you ever feel like your mouth is so stupid but your mind is so smart?" Kai asks Thorne, leaning against the couch. "Like you're some next level genius but you don't have the words to share your intelligence?"

Thorne blinks. "All the time! Where was that wisdom before?"

"At the bottom of that red cup." He points to a random cup that wasn't even his. "Or maybe that bottle." He points at a bottle that someone else is holding and walking away with. "Or did I finish Cinder's?"

"There's no way that came from Cinder."

Then, a new song starts playing. The beat gets everyone cheering and bopping. Thorne and Kai feel extremely pumped at this new jam that they feel the need to move and let their bodies flow along with everyone else's.

"Will you dance with me?" Thorne asks Kai.

"Spades, I would!" Kai exclaims back.

Instead of grooving next to each other, Thorne and Kai hop onto the coffee table, kicking off the red cups in their way, and process to attempt to slow dance to a fast song.

Oddly enough, they're on tempo.