tangled up in blue

03

mother mother- arms tonite

I tried not to laugh.

I really did.

But you know that feeling when you're being yelled at by a teacher, or playing an intense game of hide and seek, or even worse, someone's telling you how their Grandma just got hit by a truck (I'm terrible), and the fact that you can't laugh becomes the funniest thing in the world?

It's that desperate focus on how to not laugh that keeps you grounded. It can feel like the hardest thing in the world, biting your tongue or pinching your arm to stop your lips from twitching upward. That feeling where the temptation to let yourself go is almost unbearable.

Well, that's what I was feeling in that moment. Except I wasn't being yelled at, and no one's Grandma had just died. But the thick silence, coupled with the fact that Lee was pretending to be dead, Pacey's head was inside of a lamp, and the usually terrifying Jace Jackson had dark pink dye in his hair, made me want to snort.

So I did.

Extremely loudly.

The sound of me slapping a hand over my mouth as I burst out laughing only set off my friends. Lee slapped his hand on the floor as tears sprang from his eyes and I doubled over, bending down as I laughed the hardest I had in a long time. Then, we noticed the smile leaving Bethany's face as she took in Jace's furious expression. It took me a second longer to get there when I observed that he was only wearing loose basketball shorts, but we fell into silence with the realization that we weren't all leaving there alive.

But then, as our eyes fell back to his hair, we looked at each other again and erupted back into hysterical laughter.

Jace began to smile, though his eyes stayed humorless and cold. He shook his head, and slowly turned to go back to the bathroom.

Lee managed to gather himself enough to ask between breathy laughs, "Wait, what is he doing?"

Before I could answer, he re-entered the room, holding something at his side.

My smile faded. "Why does that look like a water gun?"

He grinned, and stepped closer. "Because it is a water gun."

I frowned. "Why the fuck do you have that lying around?"

Something about the way Jace was looking dead into my eyes, his expression flushed full of pure, psychopathic glee, made me fall quiet.

"Run," He said with a livid smile, before the water turned on.

I yelped in shock as I was instantly soaked, his tall figure diving for me.

"Holy- Jace, this is a carpet." Lee complained like a middle-aged woman as Jace attacked.

"And this," he growled in reply, shooting a burst of water at his brother, "is revenge."

Pacey let out a hauntingly feminine scream, even though he wasn't the one that was being attacked.

After bullying his brother, Jace had left the main door exposed. Seeing my chance, I dove forward after my screaming friends, who had abandoned me without a second glance.

Thanks, team. Great to see how friendship prevails, even through the hardest of times.

I felt him tug me back by my soaked, white shirt, but with a sharp elbow to the chest, he stumbled slightly, and I ran for it.

The speed I was going would have made Usain Bolt quiver in awe. Especially with the beauty and grace I so clearly possessed as I slipped along the wet hallway floor, and clumsily skidded down the stairs in pursuit of freedom. There was only a sight problem. Jace was actually athletic, having been a basketball legend when he was still at school. I only believed in exercise if it was absolutely necessary for my survival.