Andy woke up with a pounding headache. He tried to stand but with every move he felt dizzy. Eventually, he took sharp breaths and gathered the strength to get up.

He rubbed his eyes and looked around in disbelief. How did he get home? The last he remembered, he was in a car with his friends. What was he doing? Where was he going? It seemed at bit blank now. He couldn’t remember the events of the car ride, were they arguing? It felt like they were arguing but he wasn’t sure. Then again, he wasn’t sure of anything.

He saw them crash, he thought. He was thinking that they were falling down a cliff. He wasn’t certain. He didn’t think that kind of thing would ever happen to him. What was he thinking? He was in a car crash and there he was, safe in his own bed without a scratch.

“Oh, you’re awake,” his mother said as she walked in.

“How did I get home?” Andy asked confusedly.

“What do you mean?” she replied, matching his confusion.

Andy decided to pick his next words carefully.

“What happened yesterday?”

His mother answered, “Well, you went to sleep right after your friends left. I offered to drive them home. I assumed you were really tired.”

“And?”

“And nothing. They went home.”

Andy sighed. He was utterly perplexed. How did this happen? Or an even better question to ask was, what was happening?

“Okay, thanks Mom.”

His mother nodded and left the room, heading to the living room. Andy sat back down on his bed and reached for his phone on the bedside table.

He opened his phone to see that his friends were already awake and in the same haze of confusion that he was in. It was more than confusion, however, there was a tinge of fear there somewhere. But, of course, he wouldn’t show it.

“Call?” Andy typed. They all agreed.

“I don’t understand, I was driving…. I’m so sorry,” Tony apologized.

“Don’t be sorry. None of us know what happened.” Aria said.

“None of you remember what happened?” asked Greg.

They were all silent. It was blank for all of them.

“You guys wanna meet at the park? I’ll pick Paul and Gabby up,” said Andy.

They all nodded and agreed.

They were all more quiet than usual but there was one who kept his mouth shut the whole time. Paul.

He knew. He knew what happened. He saw it all and somehow, he couldn’t say a word.

When the others woke up, it was in a blur. The events prior to it were unclear and they could all make out just one thing. They could only remember that they crashed and the next thing was them waking up in their own beds, safe and sound. There was a gap in their memory. Six of them had blacked out but not Paul. Paul had front row seats to a show of pain as he awaited the death that would be coming to him and his friends soon.

He yelled for Tony to look out when he saw the truck. But he wasn’t fast enough. He couldn’t save them. The next minute was spent in guilt and fear.

The truck had pushed them off the road, causing them to fall over the edge. Paul yelled and began to cry. Tears were running down his cheeks. Soon, all sound for Paul was replaced by a high-pitched noise and his surroundings had turned black and white. He was looking at the world, that seemed to be coming to an end for him, in gray and he could not hear anything but that high-pitched noise.

He looked at his friends. They looked unresponsive. They couldn’t hear anything. They couldn’t see anything. They were gone, Paul thought.

Then the vision took over. He heard voices. They were familiar voices. They were his friends’ voices. He saw them. He heard them laughing and speaking with one another. And he was there, enjoying whatever it was with them.

He felt an enormous weight be lifted off his shoulders. They lived. But the vision wasn’t over. There was more to come, way more than any normal teenager could want or imagine. He was screaming at the thought.

He saw the end of one and it was clear to him. He saw whom the end would come for. It was painful. He wanted to cry. He did not know what to do. How could he help? He didn’t want any of them to meet and end such as that or even get hurt.

And then, he saw pain. Not only would they lose one of them, one would lose themselves in the most painful way imaginable. He would lose what defined him. He’d lose his heart.

Then, he could sense a presence. It was only a voice but he could feel an entire soul. He spoke to it.

“Please,” he pleaded, “they’re good people. Please don’t hurt them.”

Whatever it was, it was silent.

“Please! Don’t hurt them, please!”

He recounted

“Don’t say a word, Pole,” the voice whispered.

He didn’t need to ask who Pole was. He knew. He always did somehow. And he knew he was not to say anything if he wanted to save his friends. He knew everything now. He knew who they were and what they are now. He knew what was going to happen, how it was going to happen. And he was going to do all it took to save what he could of his friends.

But deep down, he knew he wouldn’t be able to.

He woke up, fully aware. He slowly sat up and stared at the window. Paul stood and walked towards the window to close the curtains. He shut them closed as he began to feel a lump in his throat. He was about to sob. He stopped himself from crying until he took a bath. He let the water pour on his bare skin as he finally let his tears come.

He couldn’t accept this. But he kept silent anyway. As he and Gabby were in Andy’s car, he didn’t say anything. Gabby was quick to speak to Paul though.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Paul only nodded.

Gabby, taking it as a sign that he didn’t feel like talking, faced forward. But she took his hand in hers. She always did when Paul felt scared. She could tell whenever his hands shook and when he was quiet with her.

After a short and silent drive, they made it to the playground in the park.

On the swing set, Aria, Tony, Greg and Lee were already sitting and slightly swinging back and forth. Greg and Lee were not so silently bickering about the witch in The Wizard Of Oz and her sister.

They all gathered at the swing set, the three who had just arrived sitting at the bench in front of the swings.

“Good thing it’s not raining today,” Aria noted.

“The weather’s pretty nice actually,” Gabby replied.

“Well, how else would we have out Losers Club-esque meeting?” Greg joked.

“I love that book. The film’s good too,” said Tony.

“I thought you didn’t like horror movies,” Lee pointed out to Greg.

“Ellie made me watch it once. Good stuff,” Greg said as he smiled.

Andy smirked at that. They were all going to ignore the elephant in the room for as long as they could. For a little longer, they talked about friends and little petty things that didn’t matter one bit compared to what was going on. Paul couldn’t take it.

In his head, there was the sound that resembled that of a kettle. Or more accurately, it was the feeling of a ticking time bomb with a high-pitched noise that will remind one of none other than boiling water. He was going to explode soon.

“Can we focus, please?” he shouted.

None of them said anything or felt like he was out of line, he was right. They did have to focus.

The wind around them got stronger. They got silent.

“Does anyone know anything?” Andy asked.

They sat silently. The answer was obviously no.

“I saw,” Paul paused.

He meant to say it. He meant to tell them everything. But he couldn’t. And he probably shouldn’t have. Or maybe he did. Hell, he didn’t know! Would saying something save his friends? Would saying something kill them? He’d gone over this. He didn’t know anything. Anything could happen. But he got this idea that if he kept his mouth shut, they’d have a better chance at surviving. He just knew.

“I saw nothing,” he continued.

“Well, if you remember anything, you’ll tell us, yeah?” said Andy with a genuine tone.

Paul nodded, as did the others.

“So,” Andy asked, “what do you guys wanna do now?”

“We can watch It. The sequel’s showing in theaters, I think,” Aria suggested.

They all agreed, even the anxious Greg, who was often the scaredy-cat.

They arrived at Asernam Square, one of the bigger malls in town that smelled like a fancy hotel room. Andy and his friends were there often. Tony had been going there alone ever since he moved since it was a walking distance from his house. Paul and Gabby had gone there as well due to some dinner after the successful decathlon that was held a few years ago.

After passing through a set of restaurants they reached the movie ticket counter. It was the typical Sunday audience. There was barely any line for tickets. There were mostly families watching whatever was showing. There were some teenagers watching what they would watch with their friends as well. Greg noticed this as he subconsciously looked for Ellie in the crowd. And sure enough, she was there.

Greg walked away from his friends.

“Where’s he going – oh?” Andy cut himself off as he noticed where his friend was going.

“Ellie! Hey,” Greg said as he walked over to her.

“Oh, hi!”

“I don’t even need to ask what you’re watching,” Greg joked.

“Well, of course!”

“Who’re you with?” she asked.

“My friends, y’know, Aria and the rest.” Greg replied.

“I’m with my parents,” said Ellie.

“Cool,” Greg said as he smiled at her parents.

“Oh, right, this is Greg. Greg Del Pilar. He’s my….”

At that moment, the courage of both teens had wavered if not completely gone out.

“…schoolmate,” Ellie finished.

“Oh, so you’re Greg. Ellie talks about you.”

Ellie’s eyes widened. “What? No! I mean – no! I mean, I’ve mentioned you a couple of times, I guess,”

Greg no longer knew what to say. Now, there was an expectation for him.

Then behold, deus ex machina. Andy and Aria walked over to them and introduced themselves, and the rest of the group. He and Aria then asked Ellie’s parents if she could watch the movie with the group. Her parents agreed, seeing that Andy and Aria were quite responsible. This caused Greg to light up in excitement.

The eight teenagers all sat next to each other on the fifth row. They had showed the trailer for the other movie Ellie liked, causing her to let out a small squeal in excitement, which made Greg smile.

Andy, on the other hand, watched Aria nervously fiddle with the cloth of her jeans.

“What’s wrong, Oryang?”

Aria internally swooned at the sound of that nickname. He had been calling her that since they were kids. No one else called her that. No one else reached the level of closeness to her that Andy had.

She remembered his mother once say that when they were kids, Andy would say it was going to be him and Oryang against the world forever.

She couldn’t help but smile at the idea of forever.

“Oh, nothing. I just, like, am really scared of these horror movies.”

Andy smiled, “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I had to watch the first one with Greg over and over again so he could learn the lines of the one with the glasses so he could impress Ellie.”

“And?”

“And nothing. It’s really scary,” Andy joked.

Aria looked down at her feet. And he chuckled at that.

“I’m just kidding! I’ll keep you safe, Oryang. I’ll keep you safe from everything, even from scary sewer clowns.”

And with that, he grabbed her hand.

Aria smiled and held on to it and planned to hold on to him for the rest of her life.

The movie went by in a breeze. It didn’t feel like three hours at all for anyone. Well, in different ways. Andy and Aria had surprisingly enjoyed the movie. Greg was comforting Ellie who was audibly, but not loudly, and visibly crying through most of it. Gabby and Tony were living for the jumpscares, competing with each other about who can go through the movie with a straight face.

They ate at Ellie’s favorite Japanese restaurant, thanks to Greg’s nudging, for dinner after watching the film. It was a little late, after all. At the restaurant, Tony was talking to Gabby about Marvel superheroes. Andy and Aria were, as always, talking to each other about random things, completely oblivious to each other’s feelings. And Greg was spending his time with Ellie.

Speaking of Ellie, she had noticed something that none of the others had seemed to, though it was revolving around them. It was a light, resembling a halo above their heads though less firm. It looked soft. Ellie just dismissed the thought as her ‘author mind’ going wild with imagination again. Maybe the fact that she was with Greg made it more energetic. But she asked anyway, however as a joke.

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Greg asked.

“The light. Like a halo-ish.”

The group silently exchanged looks.

“Are you guys on some awesome, magical, evil-fighting adventure that you’re not telling me about?” asked Ellie, eyebrow up jokingly.

The group was silent, but it was a nervous silence instead of a judging one. This made Ellie burst out laughing.

“I’m just messing with you! Since when were you guys so serious?”

All of them felt an enormous weight be lifted off their shoulders. Most of them laughed at her joke. But Lee and Paul were the ones who remained silent.

The food then arrived. What came first was a set of pork buns. They looked like tacos. The pork and vegetables looked like they were pressed or squeezed out. Some of the pork was coming out in bits.

Paul wanted to cry because of it. The evil was taunting him. It paraded the thought of death and pain through his mind. It showed him a reminder of something he’d seen already, something painful. He hated it. He hated all of it.

And now, for different reasons, Paul’s known by none and Lee’s known by all, they both felt like they needed some air.

“I think I’m just going to step out for a bit,” said Lee.

He stood up and walked out of the restaurant.

Greg and Aria both gave visible grimaces. They knew what he was going to do.

“Is he going to smoke again?” Aria asked.

Andy replied sadly, “I think so.”

“We need to do something about it,” said Greg.

There was something about Lee that night that made Andy say what he was about to say. He looked sadder, as if he needed it.

“Yeah, but just let him tonight. You know, just for now.”

The other two reluctantly nodded.