chapter 1: comfort

Peyton was a good roommate.

Getting adjusted to sharing a room with somebody is never a simple task, but after Peyton walked into their dorm on the second day of the semester with a long string of gold fairy lights to string around the entire room, her presence was much more bearable. She was a deeply kind soul, a socialite who reveled in being around good spirits and helping her fellow person out.

And sometimes she looked as if she had stepped right out of the 1980's. She had a vintage style of clothing, often complementing her platinum blonde hair with striped midriff shirts and rolled up jeans where her pale ankles peeked out. Her fashion sense was certainly the epitome of what most people strived for in the modern trend of recycling styles from the past.

She tied her hair into a high ponytail with her cream-colored scrunchie, her rose gold glasses slowly falling down her nose until she used her finger to push them back up to her dark eyebrows that mismatched the lightness of her hair. She was studying a story that she had been assigned to analyze.

"Mr. Dawson really gives us interesting stories," her soft voice drifted as she turned a page, her eyes scanning the words. Her eyes were hidden by the reflection in her glasses of the soft fairy lights lined along the ceiling trim.

"Yea," said her roommate, being brought back from her pensive state. She found it hard to focus on reading the story that she and Peyton had both been assigned, as they were doing the same majors and therefore had the same classes. She tucked a piece of her curly brown hair behind her ear. It fell back to her shoulder again, momentarily alarming her from how it stopped so abruptly. She was still getting used to how short she had cut it. The beginning of October had, for some reason, prompted her for a change. Maybe it was the cooling weather, or maybe she felt that if she revolutionized herself, she would feel somewhat calmer. A haircut was certainly such a revolutionary thing.

"This one might be sort of hard to analyze, though. Because five whole pages? Over a two-page long short story? I don't really know what we will be able to do with that," Peyton ranted almost only to herself given that her roommate was silent. The lack of response caused her to turn her head. "August?"

August blinked and turned her head towards her. "Sorry. Yea, I agree with you," she half-heartedly spoke.

"Are you okay?" Peyton inquired, taking her glasses off and turning her body to face August. It wasn't the first time she had to dig into her roommate's mind to see what was going on inside of it.

With a heavy sigh, August sat up from her pillow, rubbing her eyes before flickering them open again, pools of dark blue tinted with exhaustion. "Yes, I am okay. I am just really tired. I stayed up too late last night studying." It was true, but she didn't really understand how being tired would make her feel this sort of restless, stuck feeling.

Peyton eyed her suspiciously. "You better not be that tired tomorrow night. You, Emilia, and I are still going to that party."

August groaned, annoyed at the fact that Peyton brought it up again. "Listen, Pey, I know—"

"Don't even try to argue with me," Peyton interrupted. "This is not up for debate. You are going to the fuckin' party with me. Stop being some cliché boring girl." She turned away, gripping her book. "Jesus, you remind me of some chick off of a typical teenage movie." She relaxed, leaning her back against the head frame of her bed and crossing her legs.

August smirked, always loving when Peyton used curse words, with it being very out of her pristine character. "What a potty mouth."

She glared at her. "Yea, well this potty mouth is about to spit some serious flames at you."

"Try me, fool," August played, standing up from her bed and going over to her desk to write something down in her planner. "You always fail at roasting me."

"Maybe you should be the one trying things. Your haircut is the most exciting thing I've seen you do since I've met you," the blonde mumbled, pouting her lips in a careless way while reading her book.

"Hey!" August turned around to face her. "Mind you, I went to that party that one time."

"One time. And we are already over two months into the semester. Don't you think that's a little...lame?" She put emphasis on the word "lame," knowing it would spite the smart-mouthed August. She usually wasn't one for banter, but her roommate always made it remarkably interesting.

"Call me lame one more time and I might just have to shove this three-ringed binder up your annoying ass." She held up her binder for World Lit with a menacing face.

"You'll have to pull out my butt plug first." Peyton smirked.

"That's utterly disgusting. Please refrain from speaking to me for the rest of the night. Or the rest of my life, you undeserving twat waffle." August placed her magenta binder down on her desk, scattered papers jumping around the air that came with its plop.

Peyton giggled. "You're just mad that I'm taking you out of your comfort zone."

Sighing, August plopped down again on her white floral duvet, her fingers picking at a particular red flower that had a couple loose strings hanging from it. "You act as if I'm some hermit crab."

"I mean, you get pretty pinch-y sometimes." Peyton mischievously eyed her roommate from behind her thick book. "Like a crab."

"Only when provoked," August countered, shooting her roommate an eye roll before turning over and picking up her phone. She had some sort of strange homesick feeling that she hadn't felt since her first week at college. Unlocking her phone and going straight to her text messages, she chewed on her lip as she saw it was already 11:58 P.M. Deciding it could possibly quell this out-of-place feeling she felt in the bottom of her stomach, even if she didn't get a response until morning, she texted her father.

Hey. Miss you and Daisy

We miss you too, Auggie. Is everything alright?

Yes, just bombarded with school and crap lol

I'm sure you're keeping up with your grades! :)

Of course

That's my girl!

Haha, goodnight. Tell Daisy I said goodnight

Will do, goodnight hun x.

A small smile stretched across her lips as she thought of her 6-year old sister who she knew was already asleep under her Sleeping Beauty blankets, her wild brown hair that her father always forgot to brush laying crazily across her pink pillows. August knew she always slept on her right side, away from the door, with her thumb in her mouth. She had slept like that since she was a newborn baby in her crib.

Sighing a sigh of somewhat relief, August bent her knees up and dipped her toes underneath her blankets, pulling the duvet up to her neck so her whole body was covered. Doing this made her feel like how she felt when she was at home—safe.

It almost brought tears to her eyes just thinking about how lucky she was. After her mother had passed away while giving birth to Daisy six and a half years ago, it was just August and her dad and Daisy. For the first year or two, especially having to take care of a small baby, things were difficult. There was no time to deal with grief, as a newborn baby needed constant attention.

August had first doubted her dad's capabilities of raising two kids by himself, but he always tried his hardest. He always made sure she had a school lunch every day; he always rushed home as soon as the clock struck 5 so he could make a homemade dinner. Some nights, of course, he would allow the girls to relish in some takeout food or pizza, much more often than their mom ever would. But he was always good. He always tried. And that was what made August love her dad—the fact that he tried. Her mother's death was certainly a horrible thing for her 12-year-old self to endure, but it somehow tied the three of them together into one small but close-knit family who depended on each other and supported each other.

August shifted underneath her duvet, her eyes fluttering closed as her soft brown curls fell over her face. Her eyes moved under her eyelids as she continued thinking about her family, even as sleep began to take over her.

She thought back to a time when she had found her dad sitting on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. It was around half a year after her mother's death. He was crying, she remembered. It was the first time she had ever seen her father cry, and she didn't even have to ask him why. The sadness of his wife's passing had healed, but the missing her part had not. And on top of that, he had been so stressed with taking care of his family that he had never had time to sit down and think about his wife and how she was really gone.

Twelve-year-old August had never had to comfort somebody before. She was always the child, therefore the one who was comforted. But it came to her naturally. She threw her small arms around her dad's neck and hugged him with a pressure that squeezed his broken parts back together into one piece. She didn't know how she did it, but she did.

From then on, she always had that "talent." She was a natural-born comforter. To her family, her friends, and the couple of people she had been in relationships with during her high school years.

And then, at that very moment, as the darkness of sleep washed over her tired body, and she hugged the covers closer to her, she longed for someone to give comfort to. And somewhere, deep down inside her drowsy state, she felt there was someone out there who needed comforting. She didn't know who, or why, or where they were, but it seemed as though a force was coming to her, a force so broken that it would take up every last bit of energy in her to heal that force.

Grunting slightly, she sleepily thought to herself that she needed to buy a dreamcatcher so she wouldn't dream up such wild ideas in her sleep.

But dreamcatchers would be of no help to the girl.