She was awoken by a honk. A squawk. A crack. A disturbance to her soft, floating slumber. She burrowed her head deeper into the pillow, and let it come to her lips. Engulfing. She heard shuffling, and orienting herself, she realised it must be Garret. Awoken, by that screeching. Of a car? Or an animal?

When he stood up, or what she assumed to be standing up, he stood there for a moment. She wondered where his eyes were looking. At her perhaps, with the edge of her knickers on show, having slept in just her blouse. He then left the room, and she heard him on the gravel.

But she pushed herself back into sleep. She dug her mind deeper, stuck herself in the mud of her consciousness, and let it take her. But not for long.

"Elodie," said a woman's voice. A supple voice, that of.. Dora.

Elodie opened her eyes.

Dora was standing there, looking down on her.

"Thank god you're safe."

Elodie moved her (real) eyelashes up and down and up and down. She then moaned, the lightest of moans, and rolled onto her back, pulling the duvet over her legs.

"We've been looking for you all this moment when you didn't come home yesterday."

Garret stood behind Dora, clutching her jeans, waiting for her to get up so he could pass them. She beckoned him in as she sat up, and brought them under the bed as she squeezed her legs into them.

"Well, I'll be outside in the car when your ready," Dora finished, Elodie failing to reply to any of her words. Dora left. Elodie yawned and tumbled onto the floor.

Garret neared Elodie and offered his hand. her legs wobbled and she caught her balance.

"Good morning," he smiled.

She smiled back.

"Hello."

She smiled wider, looking down at his bed.

"I'm sorry about stealing your bed."

Garret laughed.

"No problem, seriously." He moved out of the frame of the door. "Did you not tell your parents that you were coming over?"

She knew he'd be thinking lots of things by now.

"I just wanted to get away from the house for a bit."

She walked into the hall, pushing her hair flat and behind her ears. Garret followed, thinking hard. Savouring her. Her time. With him.

She stopped at the door and looked at him. He awaited a hug. She didn't give. She rather thanked him. And then gave him a final smile. A smile he would think about.

And then she opened the door.

And saw him.

Alexander, sitting in the driver's seat.

He was staring at her now, he must have been staring at the door, waiting for her to come out of it. Dora sat beside him, but now looking at the beach. His expression remained unchanged as he saw her. But she felt him feel something.

She slammed the door, but smoothly. Garret stood on the other side for a while. As he heard her footsteps outside. Waiting for the car to leave.

She walked, smoothly, across the pebbles, not giving, nor gifting, eye contact to either of her 'rescuers'. She made her way to the back of the car and practically shoved herself into it. It was hot inside.

She shrugged herself into a little heap. She felt like she was being picked up from school.

"Hello sleeping beauty," remarked Alexander, glancing at her through the mirror. "How's the lost girl feeling this fine morning?"

Elodie scoffed to herself and turned to the window.

"Fine."

Alexander began reversing out of the driveway, as Dora's hair fluttered in the breeze that whipped up little sandstorms on the beach down below.

"You've talked surprisingly little," Dora added, her voice glittering and flittering.

Elodie moved her knees further towards the window.

"I just woke up."

Dora recoiled towards her own window as she received this , what she thought as harsh, comment. A little cut it was,  fresh, a prick of blood exposed. curdling, like milk, as she looked out onto the island.

"So why'd you run off?" Alexander asked, as he noticed Dora's removal from the conversation. He looked at her through the mirror as he asked this.

Oh Alexander! Take a wild guess.

And yet, despite her, and him, knowing exactly what it was, a notion, and wisdom, bloomed from her head. And it was true, and it was what she had done. And what she had relished in. What had liberated her ultimately.

"I wanted to wander. To go. To be lost. To be taken."

The trees along flamands beach swallowed them in a gulp and the car fell into shadow.

"Like youngsters rightly do," Dora replied, placing herself back into the conversation.

Dora sickened Elodie. Or at least at that moment, right there, in the car, as she held the hand Alexander wasn't using.

"You know I could have just gone home on my own? I just realised I left my bike there. Now I'll have to go back sometime."

Dora craned her neck further out of the window, looking, looking.

"You're mother was a little worried. Alexander suggested, since we have nothing better to do, that we should look for you."

Elodie allowed the conversation sink back into silence. The island tumbled, like her, by. She watched Dora watch the window. Dora looked hungry, greedy, like she wanted to consume it.

"Oh, Alexander, I am awfully hungry," Dora declared, as if on cue.

Alexander looked out of the window as the neared the creole village. Looking to provide.

"Can we stop at this village market?" Dora scrounged, the edges of her lips glistening as they passed through the creole village.

"Of course, darling," Alexander returned, pulling the car up onto the edge of the dirt road. Dora searched through her dress for coins, but before she found any Alexander handed her ten euros.

"Would you like me to come with you?" He asked, but Dora's hand on his knee forced him downwards and he relaxed back down into the seat.

"You'll have to stay with Elodie, no?"

He looked back at Elodie, who avoided his eyes.

"Do you really need a chaperone for sitting in a car?"

Elodie folded her arms in the most brawny of manners.

"No."

Dora was already out of the car by now.

"Do you honestly want to come shopping with me?"

"Yes, sweetheart," he replied, opening his car door.

"Okay then," she replied, slamming the car door in an in at Elodie's side. The dirty car window wasn't a pretty filter for her face. Alexander glanced back at Elodie has he undid his seatbelt. His grin was awfully attractive. She could feel herself wretching.

He looked back up at her as he brought the seatbelt back round himself, before he raised himself out of his seat and closed the car door excruciatingly. He met with Dora in front of the car and they walked together, her hand fumbling to grasp his. She watched as they neared the market shop, and dove inside. She watched the door. And watched it some more. Elodie's eyes relaxed into the position. 

Dora was the first to return, but, unexpectedly, with no food in hand and Alexander not following. She walked briskly towards the car, signalling with her scarlet nails for Elodie to lower the window. Elodie did as told ( albeit after being signalled to five times ). She stopped beside Elodie's door (the window now cracked a fifth of the way down) and rested herself on the car side, sucking her teeth.

"Alex asks if you would like the cherries in there." She looked back at the shop, the shop that glowed with a vibrancy of colour, strings of fruit adorning the entrance. "He says he'd think you'd enjoy them."

Elodie stared at the shop a little longer. Alexander was in there somewhere, feeling smug. Wasn't he? 

"Oh Dora, that's so kind of you. I would love some."

Dora smiled her fake fake smile and turned.

"oh and Dora,  tell Alexander he can ask me himself next time."

Elodie smiled a real, real, terrible real smile of ecstasy. Dora smiled her fake fake smile once more. It wasn't long before her little red heels could be heard over the concrete as she made her way back to the shop. She wondered why Elodie was being so strangely strange. And why it made her uneasy. Elodie relished in the desired effect of her comment.

The next time they came out of the shop they came together. In a gleeful utter-fuck of happiness, they walked towards the car, arms interlocked, smiles smashed across their faces. Alexander stared at Elodie all the while, and it made her uneasy. He relished in his desired effect. He relished in everything she did. Oh she was amusing! Perhaps a little too amusing.

The last stretch of the drive was luxurious. Alexander smirked every time he caught Elodie's glare in the mirror. Something twitched inside him every time he didn't catch her glare but instead was awarded time to watch her lips stained with the vermillion, bloody cherry juice. The way she sucked the flesh off the fruit. The way she moved the pip around her cheeks before spitting it out the window. The way she plucked the stem from between her teeth. The sound of her saliva, of her lips smacking against one another. Some might call it pleasurable. Most would call it euphoria.