The thing about edibles is that they don't work until you talk shit about them not working. The first hour of the party flies by in a whirl of drinks, laughter, and ephemeral moments that Rory will wish she would be able to remember in the morning.

Rory and Zane stick to themselves, not caring much about what is happening around them, but rather finding joy in each other's company and everything  will be fine and fun until Zane says, man, I hardly feel anything. And everything will promptly go to shit after that.

Rory doesn't know when the edibles kicked in, but she and Zane were sitting on the couch and he was going off about people who bring their babies to theaters, and next thing Rory knew  she's levitating. Not physically levitating, but she feels light, like she is floating. Everything around her is moving normal except it feels like she is in slow-mo.

Whenever she moves, it takes eons for her body to catch up. She wants to explain this to Zane, but her tongue feels weird in her mouth and she gets distracted by the way it feels against the roof of her mouth. Zane's voice drifts back into her ears and she tries to zone into what he's saying.

If Rory is getting hit this hard, she knows that Zane is getting hit even harder. The pair have had a lot of drinks in the past hour, but that was when they met up. There is no telling what Zane had already taken, considering he was already a bit tipsy when she showed up.

To prove her point, his speech is heavily slurred and Rory can  hardly understand what he's saying anymore.  He switches between saying something coherent, to seemingly randomly selecting words that popped in his head and slapping them into a sentence together.

Slowly, she reaches out a hand and touches his face, marveling at the softness of his freshly shaven skin a bit before she says, "I have no idea what the fuck you're saying," And they erupt into another fit of giggles.

Anyone who would happen to see them would probably wonder what the hell they were on, but to the two friends it was just them in their bubble.

Rory and Zane, Zane and Rory.

Rory remembers that she's still holding her friend's face and she takes a good look at him. His warm brown eyes were a little hazy and red, but they were focusing intently on her.

"We're friends, right?" She suddenly blurts out. She didn't mean to, but she is finding it harder and harder to control herself. It's a stupid question, she knows that. But she couldn't shake the heavy feeling weighing down her thoughts. She just needed to know.

"Of course we are," Zane answers and he says it with such conviction that Rory would have never guessed he had been drinking.

"Promise?"

Instead of answering, he holds up his left hand, the circle on his palm facing Rory. She pulls her hand from his face and presses their palms together.

He looks like he wants to say something, and Rory waits as his lips begin to form syllables, He finally opens his mouth and all that she hears is a distorted, "Rory."

Like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on her head, Rory jolts and yanks her hand away.

No...

And then all of the voices are there, echoing against walls, growing louder and louder with each syllable, glaring loud over the music still playing in the background. No, no, no, no. Zane is saying something now, but between her head and her pounding heart, Rory can't hear a thing. A moment ago she was floating, but now she's sinking. The weight of everything is too heavy and it's pulling her under.

Zane's lips are still moving and she still can't make sense of anything. He suddenly tries to stand up, only to fall face onto the ground. That manages to bring some of Rory's senses back, now focusing on her friend. Her mind is still clouded, but she pushes through enough to crawl down to Zane's side. The echoes still bounce around the room, but now they chant Zane, Zane, Zane..

Despite the obvious situation the two are in, it hardly earns a glance from any of their peers. All of them are far too drunk to care or simply choose to not involve themselves. Zane manages to pull himself to his hand and knees and Rory places a hand on his shoulder.

"Gonna...vomit," He mutters and Rory doesn't waste any time.

Getting him to stand is a challenge, he's quite larger than she and in his current state he can barely keep himself balanced enough to walk.
But, she drapes his arm around his shoulder and half carries him into the nearest bathroom.

As soon as they reach the toilet, the small girl's legs finally give out from underneath her and the two crumble onto the floor.  Zane manages to latch onto the toilet just in time to empty out the contents of his stomach into it. He's sobbing now, choking up with tears and vomit.

"-Ry...I'm sorry...-" He cries over and over again until he finally falls asleep, arm hanging over the side of the toilet.

Rory curls up beside him and the bathtub, hugging her knees to her chest. The whispers have stopped, but now a feeling of intense numbness washes over her. The whispers were loud, but the current silence is deafening.

Throughout the years she has gotten to know their habits pretty well.

They are most active when she is alone, especially during the night, but they can awaken at any point of the day, and they come after her during her weakest moments. The biggest thing that Rory has learned  is that they feed off fear, and nothing is more scary than being left alone with your own thoughts.

Because of this, Rory can never just rest. She has to be doing something, whether that is partying, drinking, getting high, or even listening to music. She cannot be idle, because that is when they find their opening. And when they don't immediately reveal themselves, Rory can only wait with bated breath until they do. When it comes to the voices, the question has since turned from why, to when.

After pulling herself together enough to wake Zane up and awkwardly stumble out of the party, Rory walks with Zane to make sure he gets home. He lives closer to their current location than she does, but it's still a decent walk.

Rory doesn't want to call anyone for a ride, especially her brother. While she knows he would come in a heartbeat, she isn't ready to face him quite yet after their last encounter. While Rory has mostly come down from her high, the effects of the alcohol still are still hitting her pretty good.

It's hard to walk straight, so she latches onto Zane's arm for support, and to support her friend, who hasn't said a word since they left the party.

It's well past midnight and at least 10 degrees colder than it was when Rory first left the house. Zane's arm is wrapped around her shoulder again and she unconsciously revels in the warmth it gives off. She gives his torso a quick squeeze and receives one back.

Rory glances up at him. His gaze is focused on the ground as they walk, eyes red, from crying or the drugs, and droopy and Rory thinks he looks like a kicked puppy. She wonders what he's thinking about; what he's been thinking about the whole night, actually. While the two are not new to the party scene by far, tonight seemed a little heavier than usual.

But, Rory knows her friend. If he wanted to talk, he would have said something.
That's the glory of drugs and alcohol, you can just blame all your problems on it.

After what feels like eons, which would actually turn out to be only 20 minutes, the pair arrive at their destination; a humble little blue house at the end of the street. Rory is relieved to see the tacky little thing, for once. She is exhausted, physically and mentally, and honestly she's felt off ever since they left the party. There's a dull pull in the back of her mind, a muddled voice trying to come through, but her head is too hazy to make sense of it.

They clamber up the two front steps and pause in front of the door. "Zane, gimme your keys," Rory commands. Zane's head spins around a bit before looking down at his short friend, as if just realizing she was there, "Wha..."

Rory internally groans. She was starting to think he was sobering up a bit, but his slurred speech and then stench of alcohol invades her nostrils as he opens his mouth promptly kills that hope.

"Your keys, Zane. So we can go inside."

" -'Side where?" Rory doesn't have the energy for this right now, he can sleep outside for all she cares. His little doormat will keep him warm enough.

As she's trying to pry her friend from her side, the front lights flicker on above them making them wince, and the front door swings open. In the doorway stands a sleepy boy.

His sun burnt hair is tufted out in weird places on his head and faint red creases make a pattern against his pale cheeks, obviously having just woken up. His blue eyes take in Zane, who's still blabbering about his keys, and then land on Rory.

And that was the moment the star fell.

Unbeknownst to the three, it streaks against the sky, in brilliant colors of gold and white. It happens in less than a second, and the sky is empty again. Rory's head starts pounding, the pull tugging harder, begging for her attention, but the drunken girl faces a different conundrum.

Rory has never been the one to care what people thought of her. Not when she bought up the entire carton of banana laffy taffy at the grocery store because it is the best flavor or drunkenly stumbling out of a party with an even drunker Zane. She didn't know these people, so why should what they think of her matter?

But as she stands in front of the star freckled boy, who even in his disgruntled state looked ethereal, who she didn't even know, his opinion suddenly mattered the most.

"'Sup?" Rory greets after a moment. The boy's eyebrows furrow together and this is it, Rory thinks, this is the cutest boy ever..

"Is everything okay?" He asks, his voice sweet and thick as honey, and Rory wonders why this can't be the voice that follows her around all day.

"Yeah, we had a few drinks. Okay, maybe more than a few, but Zane should be fine, just gotta get him to bed. I walked him home in case, so he wouldn't get hit by a car or something. So, yeah," Rory can feel herself starting to ramble so she tries to reel it back it, "He's okay,"

"Okay, are you?" It's a genuine question. Rory can't find any hint of judgment or disappointment anywhere, no matter how hard she tries to find it.

"I'm fine," She lies, feeling worse and worse by the second. It's an obvious lie, and going by the look on the red headed boy's face, he knows it too.

"Who are you anyway?" Rory then blurts out. She mentally slaps herself and hopes she didn't come off as rude. But if he felt that she did, he doesn't show it. He runs a hand through his hair, but it only makes his hair even wilder. He looks so silly and Rory can't help but find it endearing.

"I'm Ryder, Zane's brother. We were supposed to have dinner tonight with our parents tonight, but this one never showed up," He explains, referring to his brother," So, I came over to check on him, but he was gone and his door was unlocked."

This piece of information fills in a lot of gaps and realization hits Rory. So this was Ryder, the new step-brother. Zane had mentioned him a couple times, but this is Rory's first time to put a face to the name.

Zane hadn't mentioned anything about dinner today, though. Rory isn't exactly surprised, she knows that his Dad's remarriage is still a touchy subject for Zane. No wonder he seemed so out of it today. She makes a mental note to ask him about it later.

"Nice to meet you. Anyways, I should get going," Rory says. Her head is killing her now, feeling like it's going to split in half. The pain sobers her up and makes her finally realize what's happening. She can't make out what the voice is saying, but she needs to leave immediately. Zane is starting to nod off on her shoulder and it is getting harder and harder to keep holding him up.

"Why don't you stay here? I'm sure Zane wouldn't mind," Ryder offers. Rory knows that Zane wouldn't give a shit, and she had honestly planned on crashing there anyways, but she didn't expect new brother Ryder to be home.

"I should really go home-," Rory starts, but Ryder interrupts with, "Will you please stay?" 

Rory hesitates for only a moment. She knows he's only asking because she's obviously shit faced, and she's her brother's friend so he feels obligated to make sure she's safe. But Rory can't be here right now. She can already feel herself slipping away. With a hard swallow, Rory steers the conversation with, "Look, Zane, it's Ryder,"

"Ryder!" Zane exclaims and shifts from leading against Rory to throwing his arms around his brother. Ryder looks out of place and awkwardly pats him on the back, "Hi, Zane."

Just looking at them, an outsider would never guess that they are brothers. Zane; tall, wide-shouldered and dark-skinned with crazy curly hair and Ryder; scrawny with red hair, blue eyes, and the palest skin adorned with freckles.

Step brothers. Zane isn't very fond of his new step-mom, from what she's gathered, but he's always wanted a brother and when he met Ryder, he's doted on him ever since. Rory thinks it's gross, in a cute family but still a gross kind of way.

Using this new distraction, Rory tells them goodnight before turning around and walking back down the stairs. She thinks she's made it out when Ryder calls out to her, she looks back.

"Goodnight, Aurora," He says.

"'Night, Ryder" And she continues on her trek to the long journey back to her home, not even catching how he already knew her name.
As she walks away, the voice inside her head finally comes through loud and clear.

"Kill him."