✸  ANYONE ELSE
chapter twenty-eight ━━ empty, white walls

THE MOOD WAS for once not dull, as the eight teenagers made their way towards the beach house after a day at the boardwalk.

Julie was smiling at something Jeremiah had said, but the smile was quickly wiped off her face as the group stepped into the house.

It was empty.

All of Susannah's furniture was gone. All soul was removed and left was only empty, white walls and creaky floorboards.

There was no fluffy carpet to reduce the sound as Conrad stepped inside as the first one, so the loud noise of his trainers against the floor sounded throughout the entire house and alarmed Julia of their arrival.

Within seconds, she was standing there in front of them, a look on her face that held very little remorse.

"What have you done?" Conrad stepped another step forward. "Where's all of our mom's stuff?!"

"I'm sorry," she smiled sadly at them. "I talked to your father this afternoon—" her eyes lingered on firstly Julie and then Jeremiah as she tried to avoid Conrad's intense glare. "—and we agreed that it would be best not to drag this out any more than necessary."

"What are you saying?" Jeremiah stepped forward too, standing right behind his brother.

"Your dad and I—" she began to explain again.

"I don't care what the two of you decided on! You had no right to touch the stuff in this house! Those were her things!" Conrad was furious, and Steven had to step forward to calm him down.

Belly looked like she wanted to step forward as well, but Taylor held her back from the boys.

Julie stood back too. She had always hated confrontation and that hadn't changed after the death of her mother. The last three months of her life had pretty much consisted of keeping her brothers from killing each other—because their love of confrontation had only seemed to grow bigger every day.

In that moment, she couldn't find the energy to calm down her brothers.

The summer house was completely empty. Julia had removed all their stuff. It was like the soul of Susannah, that had been present when they left, was completely driven away now.

"Everything's in storage," Julia began excusing her actions. "I made sure the movers were careful with every single thing,"

"Oh, that was so nice of you!" Conrad snapped.

"I'm just doing what I have to do to sell this house," she sighed and went to touch her forehead.

Conrad didn't take well to her excuse, and took another step towards her as he grew angrier. "That's bullshit. You could've said something! You could've warned us! All you want to do is spite our mom constantly—"

Julia cut him off. "Okay, enough! You're not the only one who's hurting here. And I'm not the one you should be angry with. Your mother could have warned you that this would happen. She just wanted to make me the bad guy ... as usual,"

Conrad shouted another string of curse words after her before storming outside. He stood there seething for a moment before Jeremiah approached him.

"Should we call dad?" He asked.

"Dad doesn't care about us!" Conrad yelled.

For a moment it was silent among the group, but Julie spoke up, ruining the quiet.

"What are we gonna do?" Her voice sounded small.

"I don't know!" Conrad yelled once again, and Julie took a step back as his anger was projected towards her.

"Woah, dude, calm down," Steven put himself between them. "We should all take a deep breath. We can't get mad at each other,"

Conrad only let out a grunt in answer as he turned away.

"Where are we gonna sleep tonight?" Taylor asked, starting of with their biggest issue.

"I think there's some sleeping bags in the garage," Belly offered.

"I'm not sleeping on this house," Conrad stated solemnly.

"I might have a place we can crash for the night," Jeremiah stepped forward.

The others looked between them, but nobody had any other ideas.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

NOTHING HAD CHANGED about the country club in the last year. Well, nothing apart from the key cards apparently.

Jeremiah was desperately trying to get his old employee key card to open the door, but it wouldn't budge.

"We can use my mom's key number," Cam offered when it became clear that they weren't be able to come in using Jeremiah's card.

"Won't that get her in trouble?" Skye asked.

"No. She works at random times, so as long as we don't make a mess—" he looked pointedly at Steven and Jeremiah. "—we should be fine,"

Cam put in his mother's code, and luckily, the door opened up and they all went inside

"So ... what do we do now?"

✸ author's note ✸
i'm so so so sorry about the lack of updates seriously guys i feel so bad