Little Somebodies, Big NobodiesWillowdale High School is the typical breeding ground for teenage angst, ruthless bullying, and a screwed up social order that only favors the superficial and socially adept -- the big nobodies. Most students pass through the four uneventful years by keeping their heads down, while others are forced to trek through the social battlefield while trying to retain as few emotional scars as possible. For misfits like Mary, Leo, Paxton, and Rachel, braving their way through is just the way high school is for people like them -- that is, until an eccentric girl named Sloane Riley comes along and changes their lives. With a mysteriously secretive past and a rebellious demeanor that seems to always get her into trouble, Sloane manages to bring the four misfits together and shows them the value of friendship and individuality. From midnight swims and campfire gatherings to a fantastical school production and prom, their senior year becomes the best one yet as the five friends grow closer than they ever could have dreamed. However, they soon realize that no one is ever left unscathed by the harshness of society when Sloane's miserable past begins to bleed into her adventurous, carefree present. As the months pass by and Sloane struggles with personal trauma of her own, she shows her best friends the importance and the quiet, subtle beauty in being little somebodies -- in being a guiding light for those who may be drowning in the darkness of their own lives.
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Chapter One: Mary
Copyright 2020 © Kayla Joan Baur
PEOPLE ARE LIKE STARS. There are billions of stars woven throughout the silky blanket that is the all-encompassing universe, each one burning with its own uniqueness; each one shining at a different degree than the one next to it. Sometimes, there exists stars that shine brighter than the rest -- stars which are sometimes too enshrouded by the thick darkness of the galaxy around them to be noticed by the plain eye. Though they are not always noticed, these stars share their brilliant light and warmth on a chosen few before they come to the end of their lives. These stars live in quiet, subtle beauty.
Sloane Riley was one of those such stars, and she shared her brilliance with four others.
Mary Reynolds was the first.
It was just like any other Wednesday at Willowdale High School. Mary dozed off through most of her first-period Trigonometry class, breezed through second-period English class, and endured throughout third-period Gym class -- a class crafted into her own personal hell. She was not the best at sports -- especially the sports that involving flying balls -- but she could be exceptionally mediocre at it when she was feeling the game. She wasn't feeling the game today, and she paid dearly for it.
Her Phys-Ed class consisted of about fifty girls, but they may as well have been blurs in the background when the three cruelest girls in the class -- Jessica, Bethany, and Roxxy -- set their malicious eyes on Mary. They like to pick on Mary for everything little thing they could and made it point to make her uncomfortable. Of course, they were smart enough not to try anything when a teacher was nearby -- not that Mary would sell them out to an adult, anyway.
The volleyball game today wasn't as terrible as the locker room scene afterward. All of the girls, sweaty and wiped out from fifty minutes of non-stop playing, stumbled into the locker room to wash up and change, and Mary was among them. She ambled through the maze of blue-painted lockers and panting girls until she reached her own locker by the wall near the sinks. After screwing in the combination, she grabbed her day clothes and glanced around self-consciously before stripping her gym sweats. She slipped on her tan skirt, then peeled off her damp uniform-top and discarded it into her locker. Just as she had slipped her white-ruffled blouse over her head, the three ghoul-ettes strolled into her row with mean rouged smirks and humorous twinkles in their eyes.
"Tired, Mary?" Jessica queried, staring at the rolls of Mary's stomach as the girl hastily pulled her blouse all the way down
"I think you should get a doctor's note. A girl your size shouldn't be running around like that -- you might have a heart attack."
Bethany, a brunette who was truly the leader of the other two girls, plastered the fakest frown on her face that Mary had ever seen.
"If she does that, how else is she going to drop the weight?" echoed Roxxy, playing with the spikes in her short caramel-dyed hair.
"God knows she needs to do something."
"Leave me alone."
Mary refused to meet her eyes. She stared at the floor and winced under their mean words as she slipped her black suede flats on. She pulled her school bag out of her locker and stuffed her sneakers in its place.
"I know you might think we're being harsh, Mary, but it's really for your own good." replied Bethany, "We're being good samaritans, really. If you ever hope to get a date to the junior dance -- or a boyfriend at all -- you need to drop a couple of hundred pounds."
Tears prickled at Mary's eyes. The outlines of their stick-thin figures loomed over her in her peripheral vision.
"And you can start by wearing nicer clothes. No one cares for your knock-off shoes or that hideous skirt." Roxxy chimed in. "It makes you look like a freaking elephant."
They were nasty, petty remarks for mean girls, but they stung. Mary slammed her locker door shut, pushed her way through the wall of girls, and fled the locker room with tears spilling down her face. Her things lay abandoned on the bench, but she didn't care. She wanted to get far, far away from those girls. An entire planet of distance would have been nice, but the ladies' bathroom on the second floor sufficed just as well.
The bathroom was empty when she flurried in and she was grateful because as soon as she locked the door in the stall beside the wall, she burst into tears. She couldn't understand how those girls could be so mean to her. They didn't earn anything from making her feel ugly and unattractive, so why was it that they couldn't just be nice to her or even just ignore her existence altogether? She would have much preferred that. Sometimes, she wished that she was invisible to those around her because then she wouldn't worry so much about if her rolls were visible beneath her blouse or if her thighs jiggled under her skirt.
She buried her face in her hands and wept softly -- softly, because she didn't think she deserved to lament too loudly. She sat down on the dirty, beige tiled-floor, ignorant to what kind of dirt marks it would leave on her skirt because -- hey, it was an ugly elephant skirt anyway. The bathroom door opened, but she didn't care to move. When she felt as though she could cry no more tears, she leaned her head back against the wall and stared solemnly, hopelessly, at the crude messages vandalized on the stall walls.
BURN IN HELL SLUTS!
BITCHES DON'T GET HURT
FUCK THESE PEOPLE
YOU'RE ALL UGLY HOES
Those messages were all etched on there by nasty girls who had nothing better to do with their lives, but all they told Mary was that nice girls -- nice people -- were difficult to find. She averted her gaze to her chubby knees and drew in a few shaky breaths before deciding to emerge from her hiding place of self-pity and loathing.
Mary walked over to the sink directly in front of her stall because it was the farthest from the girl who just walked in. She looked at her own reflection past the oily streaks and scratches on the tacky mirror, staring numbly at the girl she saw staring back at her. Shoulder-length auburn hair framed her freckled face -- her mom thought she had a heart-shaped face, but Mary was convinced she had fat baby-cheeks -- and her eyes were a dull green like a broken beer bottle. She was wearing her favorite blouse today because she thought that it looked flouncy and cute on her heavy figure, but when she got home it was going to go in the back of her closet never to be seen again. She leaned in closer to the damaged mirror in a feeble attempt to wipe the subtle amount of mascara that had run down her cheeks from all of her crying.
When she realized it was no use, she braced her hands against the edge of the porcelain sink and sighed. She glanced over at the girl washing her hands three sinks away and saw the water run pink under her hands. She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, but quickly looked away when the girl walked over to the towel dispenser and grabbed a wad of towels. After she dried her hands, she expected the girl to leave without a word or inquiry as to why Mary was in shambles, but she didn't.
Instead, she saw the girl offer her a small stack of brown paper towels from the corner of the eye.
"You shouldn't waste your tears on petty girls like that, Mary."
Mary finally looked at the girl when she took the paper towels.
She was a fairly pretty girl. Her ocean-blue eyes -- which seemed to stare right into Mary's soul -- stood out like twinkling sapphires in contrast with her pale ivory skin. She had a voluminous mane of wild, curly blonde hair that tickled her bare shoulders and fell down her back. She wore a simple blank muscle-top and tattered jeans, but Mary thought it was a perfect balance of casual and beautiful.
"It's easier said than done." She replied quietly, turning back to the mirror. She tried to rub the mascara off, but only got some of it off while the rest of it smudged her cheeks.
"Here, let me." The girl took one of the towels, wet it under the faucet, and stood expectantly for Mary to turn.
Mary turned shyly and stood with her arms hanging loosely at her sides as invitation. The blonde smiled softly, kindly, at her as she dabbed at her cheeks with the towel. It wasn't a pitiful or tragic smile, but rather an empathetic smile -- as if she had been in her shoes before. Mary dismissed the thought almost immediately. A girl this gorgeous couldn't have suffered through an onslaught of verbal abuse and bullying like she did, could she?
"You know my name," Mary spoke up after a moment of silence as she realized the blonde had called her by her name before.
Sloane paused and blinked at her. "Of course I know your name."
A whirlwind of thoughts plagued Mary's mind when those words left her lips. What did she mean by that? Oh god, had she been paying attention to her plight in volleyball class today, too? Or maybe she had witnessed the confrontation in the locker room -- of course she had, or else she wouldn't have known why she was so upset. She knitted her eyebrows together, watching the blonde carefully as she dabbed at her other cheek. Maybe she was just as conspicuous as she feared she was.
"You're Mary Reynolds. You're top of the class in drama class. And that poem you wrote for English last year -- the one about the flowers in the snow? That hit me hard. You have real talent."
Mary was flabbergasted. She could swear that she had never seen this girl ever in her life, but that didn't mean much of anything when she was always staring at the floor when she walked through the hallways. It was possible they shared a few classes, but she felt as though she would have remembered a girl this beautiful.
She managed an embarrassed smile. "I'm sorry. I-I don't know your name."
"Oh, I wouldn't expect you to." She chuckled and waved her off. Mary frowned as she realized the sad aspect of her words, but the blonde didn't seem to notice. "My name is Sloane Riley."
"Sloane Riley. That sounds like it could be the name of a movie star."
The blonde, Sloane, gave the girl what she thought was a tragic smile, but before she could analyze it any further, she stepped back and tossed the used paper towel into a trash bin.
"There you go."
Mary leaned close to the mirror and saw the her cheeks and eyes were clear of streaked mascara. They were just red and slightly puffy now. She turned to thank the kind girl when she noticed her bag and some of her books which didn't fit in her bag on the floor next to the sink where Sloane was washing her hands before. Sloane followed her gaze and grinned, nodding.
"I almost forgot about that."
"You brought my stuff. T-Thank you. I didn't want to go back in th- Wait..." She paused as she grabbed her bag. "You're in my gym class?"
Sloane walked over to another trash bin where her own bag sat and picked it up. It was a thin drawstring knapsack with the school logo -- a knight's armor-- on it. She slung it over her shoulder and reached into it, pulling out a hot-pink tube of mascara.
"Want to reapply?"
Mary shook her head and smiled grimly. "I don't want it to run again if I happen to bump into Bethany and her crew again."
Sloane shoved the mascara back into her bag and slung the other string over her shoulder. She walked over the one of the mirrored and scrunched her hair. "I wouldn't worry about them. I have a feeling they won't be bothering you for the rest of the week."
Mary chuckled to herself. "I'd say they met their quota on cruel comments, but Bethany always has the ability to surprise."
Sloane grinned back at her through the mirror then paused with her hands in her hair as she appeared suddenly think of something. She bit the inside of her cheek, looking unsurely at Mary, and then turned to her. She leaned back against the sink.
"If I may ask: why do you listen to those girls and take their insults to heart? Is it because they look the way they do, or because they're popular?"
Mary hesitated as a frown made its way onto her face. "I guess...I guess it's because they look the way they do."
If those girls knew anything, it was how to be pretty. They had enviable skinny figures, long hair, and the confidence of runway models. Mary imagined that they had to the stereotypical sour attitudes of runway models, too. Maybe she was just too thin-skinned. Sure, those girls meant to be nasty in their approach, but maybe they did have a few valid points...right?
"And me? Do I look like those girls?"
Slowly, she nodded.
"Then listen to me when I say this: you don't want to be like those girls. They're not pretty. They might be if they were kind to the people around them, but they're not. They're rotten inside and they use make-up and hair dye to mask it." Mary was taken aback by the fervor with which Sloane spoke. It was almost as if she was giving a pep talk to someone she had known her entire life. "You're beautiful, Mary Reynolds. Sure, you don't look like many of the girls here, but why would you want to be like someone else when you can be yourself? Unique. Kind. Gorgeous in your own right."
Mary averted her gaze to the floor. "That's easy for you to say."
"No, actually. It's not. I hate being me. But you?" She dropped her hands to her sides. "I think you're awesome. This school is full of misery, fakeness, and drama -- you are one of the very few people who don't take any part in it. You're real, Mary."
She didn't know how to reply to such a speech. She hung onto her every word with secret longing and tried her very best to allow the unsolicited kind words to sink into her skin, but they sunk slowly and had little effect on the blemishes already left by the bullies' mean words. There was something awe-inspiring about this mysterious girl giving her such words of encouragement when she knew nothing about her.
"It's just... It's hard to defend myself to them. It's not like I have friends to back me up like Bethany does."
Sloane bit her lip and took a moment to consider something to herself. "I'm having a gathering this Friday night -- you know, with the rest of those real people I mentioned. You're welcome to join. Here," She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "That's the address."
Mary gingerly took the piece of paper from her and unfolded it. She frowned apprehensively, "I don't know-"
"You're a star, Mary." She walked to the doorway, then turned back to her with a subtle smile and a twinkle in her eyes. "Come to the gathering. Let me prove it to you."
Sloane left the bathroom after that and the door swung shut behind her. Mary stood dumbfounded in the middle of the tiled floor and stared at the piece of paper with the peculiar address and directions. If she looked up at the dingy bathroom mirror, she wouldn't have been able to see it, but she was glowing just a little bit brighter than before.
Sloane Riley was one of those such stars, and she shared her brilliance with four others.
Mary Reynolds was the first.
It was just like any other Wednesday at Willowdale High School. Mary dozed off through most of her first-period Trigonometry class, breezed through second-period English class, and endured throughout third-period Gym class -- a class crafted into her own personal hell. She was not the best at sports -- especially the sports that involving flying balls -- but she could be exceptionally mediocre at it when she was feeling the game. She wasn't feeling the game today, and she paid dearly for it.
Her Phys-Ed class consisted of about fifty girls, but they may as well have been blurs in the background when the three cruelest girls in the class -- Jessica, Bethany, and Roxxy -- set their malicious eyes on Mary. They like to pick on Mary for everything little thing they could and made it point to make her uncomfortable. Of course, they were smart enough not to try anything when a teacher was nearby -- not that Mary would sell them out to an adult, anyway.
The volleyball game today wasn't as terrible as the locker room scene afterward. All of the girls, sweaty and wiped out from fifty minutes of non-stop playing, stumbled into the locker room to wash up and change, and Mary was among them. She ambled through the maze of blue-painted lockers and panting girls until she reached her own locker by the wall near the sinks. After screwing in the combination, she grabbed her day clothes and glanced around self-consciously before stripping her gym sweats. She slipped on her tan skirt, then peeled off her damp uniform-top and discarded it into her locker. Just as she had slipped her white-ruffled blouse over her head, the three ghoul-ettes strolled into her row with mean rouged smirks and humorous twinkles in their eyes.
"Tired, Mary?" Jessica queried, staring at the rolls of Mary's stomach as the girl hastily pulled her blouse all the way down
"I think you should get a doctor's note. A girl your size shouldn't be running around like that -- you might have a heart attack."
Bethany, a brunette who was truly the leader of the other two girls, plastered the fakest frown on her face that Mary had ever seen.
"If she does that, how else is she going to drop the weight?" echoed Roxxy, playing with the spikes in her short caramel-dyed hair.
"God knows she needs to do something."
"Leave me alone."
Mary refused to meet her eyes. She stared at the floor and winced under their mean words as she slipped her black suede flats on. She pulled her school bag out of her locker and stuffed her sneakers in its place.
"I know you might think we're being harsh, Mary, but it's really for your own good." replied Bethany, "We're being good samaritans, really. If you ever hope to get a date to the junior dance -- or a boyfriend at all -- you need to drop a couple of hundred pounds."
Tears prickled at Mary's eyes. The outlines of their stick-thin figures loomed over her in her peripheral vision.
"And you can start by wearing nicer clothes. No one cares for your knock-off shoes or that hideous skirt." Roxxy chimed in. "It makes you look like a freaking elephant."
They were nasty, petty remarks for mean girls, but they stung. Mary slammed her locker door shut, pushed her way through the wall of girls, and fled the locker room with tears spilling down her face. Her things lay abandoned on the bench, but she didn't care. She wanted to get far, far away from those girls. An entire planet of distance would have been nice, but the ladies' bathroom on the second floor sufficed just as well.
The bathroom was empty when she flurried in and she was grateful because as soon as she locked the door in the stall beside the wall, she burst into tears. She couldn't understand how those girls could be so mean to her. They didn't earn anything from making her feel ugly and unattractive, so why was it that they couldn't just be nice to her or even just ignore her existence altogether? She would have much preferred that. Sometimes, she wished that she was invisible to those around her because then she wouldn't worry so much about if her rolls were visible beneath her blouse or if her thighs jiggled under her skirt.
She buried her face in her hands and wept softly -- softly, because she didn't think she deserved to lament too loudly. She sat down on the dirty, beige tiled-floor, ignorant to what kind of dirt marks it would leave on her skirt because -- hey, it was an ugly elephant skirt anyway. The bathroom door opened, but she didn't care to move. When she felt as though she could cry no more tears, she leaned her head back against the wall and stared solemnly, hopelessly, at the crude messages vandalized on the stall walls.
BURN IN HELL SLUTS!
BITCHES DON'T GET HURT
FUCK THESE PEOPLE
YOU'RE ALL UGLY HOES
Those messages were all etched on there by nasty girls who had nothing better to do with their lives, but all they told Mary was that nice girls -- nice people -- were difficult to find. She averted her gaze to her chubby knees and drew in a few shaky breaths before deciding to emerge from her hiding place of self-pity and loathing.
Mary walked over to the sink directly in front of her stall because it was the farthest from the girl who just walked in. She looked at her own reflection past the oily streaks and scratches on the tacky mirror, staring numbly at the girl she saw staring back at her. Shoulder-length auburn hair framed her freckled face -- her mom thought she had a heart-shaped face, but Mary was convinced she had fat baby-cheeks -- and her eyes were a dull green like a broken beer bottle. She was wearing her favorite blouse today because she thought that it looked flouncy and cute on her heavy figure, but when she got home it was going to go in the back of her closet never to be seen again. She leaned in closer to the damaged mirror in a feeble attempt to wipe the subtle amount of mascara that had run down her cheeks from all of her crying.
When she realized it was no use, she braced her hands against the edge of the porcelain sink and sighed. She glanced over at the girl washing her hands three sinks away and saw the water run pink under her hands. She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, but quickly looked away when the girl walked over to the towel dispenser and grabbed a wad of towels. After she dried her hands, she expected the girl to leave without a word or inquiry as to why Mary was in shambles, but she didn't.
Instead, she saw the girl offer her a small stack of brown paper towels from the corner of the eye.
"You shouldn't waste your tears on petty girls like that, Mary."
Mary finally looked at the girl when she took the paper towels.
She was a fairly pretty girl. Her ocean-blue eyes -- which seemed to stare right into Mary's soul -- stood out like twinkling sapphires in contrast with her pale ivory skin. She had a voluminous mane of wild, curly blonde hair that tickled her bare shoulders and fell down her back. She wore a simple blank muscle-top and tattered jeans, but Mary thought it was a perfect balance of casual and beautiful.
"It's easier said than done." She replied quietly, turning back to the mirror. She tried to rub the mascara off, but only got some of it off while the rest of it smudged her cheeks.
"Here, let me." The girl took one of the towels, wet it under the faucet, and stood expectantly for Mary to turn.
Mary turned shyly and stood with her arms hanging loosely at her sides as invitation. The blonde smiled softly, kindly, at her as she dabbed at her cheeks with the towel. It wasn't a pitiful or tragic smile, but rather an empathetic smile -- as if she had been in her shoes before. Mary dismissed the thought almost immediately. A girl this gorgeous couldn't have suffered through an onslaught of verbal abuse and bullying like she did, could she?
"You know my name," Mary spoke up after a moment of silence as she realized the blonde had called her by her name before.
Sloane paused and blinked at her. "Of course I know your name."
A whirlwind of thoughts plagued Mary's mind when those words left her lips. What did she mean by that? Oh god, had she been paying attention to her plight in volleyball class today, too? Or maybe she had witnessed the confrontation in the locker room -- of course she had, or else she wouldn't have known why she was so upset. She knitted her eyebrows together, watching the blonde carefully as she dabbed at her other cheek. Maybe she was just as conspicuous as she feared she was.
"You're Mary Reynolds. You're top of the class in drama class. And that poem you wrote for English last year -- the one about the flowers in the snow? That hit me hard. You have real talent."
Mary was flabbergasted. She could swear that she had never seen this girl ever in her life, but that didn't mean much of anything when she was always staring at the floor when she walked through the hallways. It was possible they shared a few classes, but she felt as though she would have remembered a girl this beautiful.
She managed an embarrassed smile. "I'm sorry. I-I don't know your name."
"Oh, I wouldn't expect you to." She chuckled and waved her off. Mary frowned as she realized the sad aspect of her words, but the blonde didn't seem to notice. "My name is Sloane Riley."
"Sloane Riley. That sounds like it could be the name of a movie star."
The blonde, Sloane, gave the girl what she thought was a tragic smile, but before she could analyze it any further, she stepped back and tossed the used paper towel into a trash bin.
"There you go."
Mary leaned close to the mirror and saw the her cheeks and eyes were clear of streaked mascara. They were just red and slightly puffy now. She turned to thank the kind girl when she noticed her bag and some of her books which didn't fit in her bag on the floor next to the sink where Sloane was washing her hands before. Sloane followed her gaze and grinned, nodding.
"I almost forgot about that."
"You brought my stuff. T-Thank you. I didn't want to go back in th- Wait..." She paused as she grabbed her bag. "You're in my gym class?"
Sloane walked over to another trash bin where her own bag sat and picked it up. It was a thin drawstring knapsack with the school logo -- a knight's armor-- on it. She slung it over her shoulder and reached into it, pulling out a hot-pink tube of mascara.
"Want to reapply?"
Mary shook her head and smiled grimly. "I don't want it to run again if I happen to bump into Bethany and her crew again."
Sloane shoved the mascara back into her bag and slung the other string over her shoulder. She walked over the one of the mirrored and scrunched her hair. "I wouldn't worry about them. I have a feeling they won't be bothering you for the rest of the week."
Mary chuckled to herself. "I'd say they met their quota on cruel comments, but Bethany always has the ability to surprise."
Sloane grinned back at her through the mirror then paused with her hands in her hair as she appeared suddenly think of something. She bit the inside of her cheek, looking unsurely at Mary, and then turned to her. She leaned back against the sink.
"If I may ask: why do you listen to those girls and take their insults to heart? Is it because they look the way they do, or because they're popular?"
Mary hesitated as a frown made its way onto her face. "I guess...I guess it's because they look the way they do."
If those girls knew anything, it was how to be pretty. They had enviable skinny figures, long hair, and the confidence of runway models. Mary imagined that they had to the stereotypical sour attitudes of runway models, too. Maybe she was just too thin-skinned. Sure, those girls meant to be nasty in their approach, but maybe they did have a few valid points...right?
"And me? Do I look like those girls?"
Slowly, she nodded.
"Then listen to me when I say this: you don't want to be like those girls. They're not pretty. They might be if they were kind to the people around them, but they're not. They're rotten inside and they use make-up and hair dye to mask it." Mary was taken aback by the fervor with which Sloane spoke. It was almost as if she was giving a pep talk to someone she had known her entire life. "You're beautiful, Mary Reynolds. Sure, you don't look like many of the girls here, but why would you want to be like someone else when you can be yourself? Unique. Kind. Gorgeous in your own right."
Mary averted her gaze to the floor. "That's easy for you to say."
"No, actually. It's not. I hate being me. But you?" She dropped her hands to her sides. "I think you're awesome. This school is full of misery, fakeness, and drama -- you are one of the very few people who don't take any part in it. You're real, Mary."
She didn't know how to reply to such a speech. She hung onto her every word with secret longing and tried her very best to allow the unsolicited kind words to sink into her skin, but they sunk slowly and had little effect on the blemishes already left by the bullies' mean words. There was something awe-inspiring about this mysterious girl giving her such words of encouragement when she knew nothing about her.
"It's just... It's hard to defend myself to them. It's not like I have friends to back me up like Bethany does."
Sloane bit her lip and took a moment to consider something to herself. "I'm having a gathering this Friday night -- you know, with the rest of those real people I mentioned. You're welcome to join. Here," She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "That's the address."
Mary gingerly took the piece of paper from her and unfolded it. She frowned apprehensively, "I don't know-"
"You're a star, Mary." She walked to the doorway, then turned back to her with a subtle smile and a twinkle in her eyes. "Come to the gathering. Let me prove it to you."
Sloane left the bathroom after that and the door swung shut behind her. Mary stood dumbfounded in the middle of the tiled floor and stared at the piece of paper with the peculiar address and directions. If she looked up at the dingy bathroom mirror, she wouldn't have been able to see it, but she was glowing just a little bit brighter than before.