𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆
'It starts and ends with you and me.'
When a young girl finds herself stuck in a movie, she quickly learns that the only way out is to make it to the ending. But when an ill-fated character worms his way into her life, she fears...
AFTER following Neil and his father to their home, marking it on the map she kept in her glove compartment, Milly went to her own.
She marched to the top draw of her desk, snatching out the list. Everything had been crossed out but number ten. The incomplete daunting line.
But with a new hope coursing through her veins, Milly sat in the chair at her desk, sliding out a pen from her stationary cup.
Then she finished the sentence.
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A deep breath fled her lips.
She dropped the pen and paper back down, marching across the room to her closet. Then opening its doors, she grabbed a duffel bag from inside.
She unzipped it on her double bed, filling it with the contents of her top draw first: her typewriter entries, her list, her map. And from her bedside table, she took the remaining white glove, weighing it in her hands before letting it go. She placed the rest of her allowance in there too and piled clothes on top of it all.
Milly barely made an effort to fold the many skirts and blouses she chose. Her only concern was speed. She couldn't get caught.
Her parents were already home. She greeted them with kisses and faux-pleasantries like she had many a time before.
That's how she knew she couldn't leave out the front door.
So she took to her bedroom window instead, opening it and tossing out her duffel bag onto the sloping roof. Then she climbed down onto it the same way she watched Neil do so once before. Her right leg first, then her left.
Once she was down, she tossed her duffel bag onto the lawn next before climbing down the trellis as carefully as she could.
Neil made it look so easy.
But once her feet touched the ground, she reached for the strap of her duffel bag, swinging it over her shoulder.
Then she looked up at that window, seeing it from a whole new angle.
Through its gaping crack she could just about see the pink ceiling, knowing this was the last time she'd ever get to truly take it in.
Whether she went to sleep tonight and woke up in the morning to her blue bedroom or a Chevy in the middle of nowhere, she didn't care. Because either way Neil Perry would be by her side.
When she got to the arched garden gate, she didn't have to open it from the bottom. So she pushed down on the latch, slipping out to the front of the house.
Then she raced to her car, her flats not making so much as a sound.
She didn't need her map, leaving it in the bag she threw into the back seat. She knew remembered the way.
So stepping her foot down on the gas, she drove with purpose right to the Perry's residence.
But once she got there, she didn't leave her car for a while. She had to wait for every single light to turn off.
