We're Not in New Jersey Anymore

Brooke liked to go through life in blissful ignorance.

She enjoyed being thought of as a ditsy blonde.

It was easier that way.

"Do you think that like Spiderman has ever killed someone? Like accidentally? Because like, he has several times the normal human strength and—"

"Ohmygod Brooke, please stop with the nerd shit for one second and tell me which dress looks better!"

Brooke stopped chipping away at her nail polish momentarily and glanced up to see Chloe swaying two dresses in front of the store's display mirror.

She waved her hand dismissively and tugged her phone from her clutch, "Oh um the blue bodycon, it'll make your butt look great."

Chloe blinked and then shifted her intense stare to dart between the short blue dress and the light pink A-line.

Scrolling through her feed, Brooke's lips turned down as she scanned a skeevy message, blocked and reported, "Jake would love it."

Chloe hummed and tossed the pink dress aside, holding the blue against her body, "He would, wouldn't he." Not waiting for a response, she strode past Brooke, presumably to pay.

She continued scrolling, a "Brooke!" making her pop her head up and trot over to the register.

Craning her head to scan the store, Chloe snapped her fingers at Brooke, "Did you see where I left my purse? Kind of a totally life or death matter here."

Brooke shrugged a chain down her shoulder, grabbed the purse that had been hanging, and handed it over to Chloe. "I did, in fact."

With no further incidents, the two girls were able to exit the store, and immediately were faced with a decision that was perhaps the most difficult to answer yet, where to go in the mall next.

Chloe started to propose, "We could stop by Pi—"

"Stop right there, I love Pinkberry, you know that I do. But if I don't get some actual food in me first, then my body is going to stage a rebellion and I won't be responsible for my actions."

Chloe hiked an eyebrow, "So food court then?" She spun on the heel of her rose gold hi-tops and made off for the center of the mall, calling out to a Brooke trailing behind her, "And seriously? Don't ever interrupt me again."

On the way, Brooke dragged on the top of her browser to refresh her feed, a certain person's selfie popping to the top. She felt a stone drop to her gut as her best friend stiffened next to her. With a time stamp of four minutes ago, and Jake's grinning face posing outside of a SBarros with a certain Christine Canigula, there was only one possible person that Chloe could have spotted.

The thing was though, that Chloe was Brooke's Best Friend. But Brooke was not Chloe's Best Friend, or even best friend, she was a good, maybe above average friend.

There's a certain level of acceptance that has to come with knowing that there was not a mutual level of regard. Acceptance does not mean that it did not hurt however, simply that there were a few truths that she had to come to terms with to continue being around certain peoples.

Jake Dillanger was Chloe's Best Friend however. The two had been sharing secrets and swapping blackmail ever since an incident that Brooke secretly dubbed Budapest that had supposedly occurred in elementary school. Neither would admit the details but all it would take is one mention, and they would be ducking curfews and 'borrowing' cars for one another.

Jake was Chloe's first everything as far as Brooke knew. First crush, first kiss, first heartbreak. He knew her and that he would more than break up with her, throw her away, abandon their happiness, made Brooke see red sometimes. The only thing that stopped her from keying his car and slitting exactly three tires of his Jeep when she heard the news was Chloe, red rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks, tears still running down her face, saying "I need you here right now".

Brooke's fingers whispered past the chiffon sleeve of Chloe, who was charging ahead full speed, painfully bright smile in place and voice pitched slightly higher than usual, "Ja~ake! What a surprise!"

She crossed her arms and watched the scene guardedly; one wrong move and that pizza tray was going down his shirt.

The tall almost man, but still seventeen, still a boy, god they were all still children practically, slid his tray evenly onto the counter, not wobbling the two fountain drinks at all, and in a well practiced move reminiscent of art, violently reminding Brooke of hours spent in a studio to a sharp voice counting and counting and counting, swept Chloe up into a spin. Lifting her up and twirling her around, settling her down with an exaggerated bow, and as suddenly as he had appeared, as suddenly as the panic and pain and memories had crashed over her, dragging her down into the tide, back out to the one, two, three, one, two, three, again, Brooke angled her head away from the scene and took two quick unsteady steps back.

"Aw Fuck!"

"There goes my bar mitzvah money…"

The steady drip of syrupy running liquid falling over the edge of a table soon accompanied the grumbling.

Wide eyed and face frozen in shock, Brooke mechanically turned around slowly, taking in the disaster scene that she had inadvertently created.

Their faces ghosted déjà vu across her mind, although they must have been unknown to her. She was sure that she has never spoken to either of them and yet the seeing the two gangly teenage boys, hazily familiar, like seen in the background of a dream once, or a classroom, each holding a fistful of napkins frantically trying to sop up a soda spill invoked a sense of routine. Like she had seen and known these two to always be getting in and out of mischief.

"One minute Jeremy, I got this!"

Jeremy, that sounded right. Somehow.

The speaker, the not-Jeremy, quickly yanked up the hem of his large red sweatshirt, impeded by his glasses tangling in the fabric as he attempted to get the mass over his head.

Chloe was bargaining for Jake's attention, which he freely gave, while Christine was drawn in by sharp interrogations, keeping up with the barbed nature of the other girl.

'Jeremy' was scrambling after the glasses precariously teetering on the edge of the hood, hooked around a cluster of fabric just enough to not shatter to the ground. Each jerked motion of the other boy twisted the hoodie further and trapped him more tightly than before.

Thus, Brooke was left.

She was the only left whose eye had a hope of catching the spark of light, whose attention could be caught to utter, "Hey guys, is that supp—"

The only one who witnessed the explosion.

One, Two, Three, Again. One, Two, Three, Again.

"One, two, three. One, two, three…" muttering filled her ears, drawing her out of the fog. Her eyelids were unusually heavy, not since Chloe's last birthday party had she felt this combination of exhaustion and fire racing through her veins. That might have been the vodka back then though. "two, three. One, two, thre—" Brooke cut off with a start upon realizing it was her creating the count.

Forcing her eyes to open and focus, Brooke heaved herself into a semi upright position, supported by her arms. Everything was blurry, she blinked slowly, trying to force her contacts back into position. She balanced on one arm to rub at her eye, groaning in frustration when instead of regaining her vision, her contact dropped out and disappeared between the grass leaves.

Blinking back frustrated tears, Brooke climbed to her knees and stood up. Wiping away the moisture with the back of her hand, she gazed out at her surroundings. One eye perfectly clear, the other with a hazy veil over it. Shaking back her hair, Brooke took a deep breath. She picked out her other useless contact and the world sharpened, etching into her mind the burning realization that this was real, a reality that her mind had been doing its best to block out.

A rolling deep green field unfolded itself in front of her, dotted with wildflowers, as a wheat farm stretched out into the horizon beyond. An older but well-kept windmill slowly turned in the gentle breeze, the mid-day sun warming the wooden slats.

She was almost charmed.

A shadow and deep heat fell over her, blocking out the sun momentarily as it passed. The large shadow glided across the field, leaving withered grass behind and a sudden chill in her bones. Off in the distance, by the peacefully spinning windmill, a creature dropped down, balancing across the blades.

It appeared to be a large lizard, colored a venomous green from the tip of its snout deepening across its scaled body down to a forest green coating its barbed tail. It shifted, fluttering webbed wings, before tucking them in close to its body and settling down.

"Oh Fuck"