Four years isn't a long time, not to anyone who lives an ordinary life with no loss. Not to anyone who lives in Mystic Falls. It's just another set number of silly traditions, happy holiday's and town events, replaying over and over and over again...
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SEPTEMBER 9, 2030.
"HOPE?"
When Hope turns around, it's Landon standing there, fidgeting his fingers before a hand moves to play with the hairs on the back of his neck. For a moment, his eyes dance around the cafeteria table where she and Lizzie sit with MG. He almost looks regretful of his decision to approach them.
Landon clears his throat. "Can we talk? Outside, maybe?"
Hope looks to Lizzie for help, but she isn't sure why. Lizzie eats her ham and cheese sandwich like some kind of squirrel while avoiding eye contact with Hope all together. Instead, she exchanges looks with MG who does equally as much avoiding. Hope turns back to Landon.
She wipes her hands on her jeans. "Sure," she half-smiles. It probably looks pathetic, but it's all she can muster up. Behind that half-smile, Hope is screaming, begging for this moment to be some sort of lucid dream that she can snap her fingers and wake up from. Landon does some sort of nod, gives MG a short wave, and leads Hope out of the cafeteria doors and into the courtyard.
First period had been awkward enough. When she walked in, eyes darting around the classroom for the nearest empty seat, she immediately saw Landon placed in the middle of the room like a centerpiece. The second they made eye contact, his eyes pounced in the opposite direction and out the window. Hope could see his chest rising and falling at an unsteady pace.
She didn't know which of them she did it for, but she took the seat the farthest away from him in the back right corner of the room.
She didn't pay attention in history. Instead, she'd looked out the window and watched the birds and the squirrels. She watched the way the wind picked up the fallen leaves and took them somewhere new. She wanted to be one of them. She wanted to be anywhere but there.
Yet now, she's here.
Sitting underneath a tree in the grassy courtyard of Mystic Falls High, with the boy she definitely wasn't k-i-s-s-i-n-g-in-a-tree with anymore.
Neither of them say anything for a moment. Landon just unpacks his lunch and pulls out a sandwich from a container. Hope can imagine, despite his age, his mom prepping it for him in the morning. He'd always secretly been her favorite son.
He holds the sandwich up. "Um... do you want half?"
It's some sort of piece offering, she thinks, so she feels bad if she says no.
"Okay," she takes it slowly. Peanut butter and jelly. "Thanks."
He takes a bite, Hope just holds it.
For the first time, Landon laughs. He forms a fist over his mouth to avoid spitting out crumbs. "I didn't poison it, Hope," he says, voice slightly muffled from the surplus of peanut butter.
