Chapter One: The Return to Lakewood

•••

"You look beautiful."

Blair looked over her shoulder from where she was sitting at the vanity in her room to where her mother Emily was standing in the doorway.

"I can't believe I agreed to go to this thing." Blair admitted, nervously running the brush through her brunette hair for what felt like the hundredth time.

Walking further into her daughters room, Emily looked around and blew out a sigh at seeing her teenage daughter had barely unpacked anything from their move the week before.

"One of your classmates died-" She started to say, but was quickly cut off when Blair pointed out, "I was never friends with Nina, honestly I never even liked her… plus, we just moved back to Lakewood and today was my first day back at school."

"Okay." Emily breathed, smoothing the dark blue comforter out on the bed before she sat down and questioned, "Why did you agree to go then?"

"Because Emma invited me and apparently I still have a problem saying no to her when she gives me that face with those hopeful eyes." Blair sighed, shaking her head as she dropped her hairbrush to the vanity with a thud and turned on the bench seat to face her mom.

"That's good though!" Emily exclaimed, offering up a smile as she spoke, "We're back home and you're reconnecting with your old friends, I'm sure soon it will feel like we never even moved away for a year."

"It's not that simple."

"It is, you just have a tendency to make things difficult."

"No, mom… you just don't get it." Blair complained, her eyebrows furrowing with her words. "Everything fell apart near the end of eighth grade anyways, by the time we moved away Emma got inducted into the popular crowd and Audrey threw out everything in her closet that wasn't a few shades lighter than black and I…" Her voice trailed off and with a weak shrug she continued, "I was still the girl with braces and thick framed glasses two sizes too big for my face."

Holding back a laugh her mom pointed out, "You picked those glasses out yourself, honey."

"Yes, because I thought they'd make me look older and distinguished. It wasn't until everyone made fun of me at school that I realized I just looked like an idiot." Blair countered, unable to hold back a chuckle of her own.

Looking down to the dark hardwood flooring, she shook her head and clarified, "The point is… when we moved away from Lakewood, I'd already lost my two best friends and it just really sucks coming back and seeing that hasn't changed. I don't even think Emma and Audrey talk anymore."

"It's tough, I know… but people grow apart, they grow up and meet new people. It's a part of life." Emily said as she stood up and walked over to her daughter's open closet and surveyed the jackets hanging up before picking out a light green sweater jacket and walking back over to hand it to Blair. "But look at it this way, you've changed too!"

"Yeah, finally got my braces off and got contacts-"

"I mean on the inside." Emily argued, "We've been through a lot this past year and you're not the same person you were in eighth grade either. You'll find some new friends and I bet really soon Lakewood is going to start feeling like home again."

Blair opened her mouth to argue her mother's logic on the situation, after all –it had been a long time since her mom had to navigate high school, but before she got the chance they heard a car horn blaring from the street and at the same time her phone lit up with a text.

"It's Emma." Blair said, as she looked up from her phone screen, "She and her boyfriend Will, are here to pick me up."

Standing up she pulled on the soft jacket her mom had given her and admitted, "I know I told you this was a memorial thing for Nina, but full disclosure… it's a party."

"Ooh, I never would have guessed." Her mom teased, arching a brow as she asked, "Is this supposed to be the part where I tell you that you're not allowed to go, maybe even go outside and shoo your ride away?"

"Yes!" Blair exclaimed, cracking a smile and a laugh before she repeated her earlier sentiment, "I can't believe I agreed to go."

"Go on, get out of here." Emily laughed, nodding towards the bedroom door. She watched as Blair picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder before she called out, "Be safe."

•••

"How did you manage to move back into the same house you used to live in?" Emma questioned, as she looked to where Blair was sitting beside her on the couch in the living room of the Maddox lake house on Wren lake, where Nina's memorial was being held.

"We still owned it." Blair explained, nervously twisting the mood ring she always wore on her thumb as she spoke. "My parents just leased it out when we moved to Georgia." Her dark brown eyes darted between Emma and her boyfriend Will Belmont, before she side eyed Brooke Maddox who was sitting on the other side of her.
Feeling like the spotlight was still shining heavily on her and she needed to fill up the empty space, Blair added, "They were planning on selling it, but good thing they never got around to it since my mom and I moved back."

Emma gave her a smile and nod, but Brooke pushed, "It's just you and your mom?"

"Yep."

"What happened to your dad?" She continued to pry.

"Oh, uh…" She breathed, "The divorce papers said irreconcilable differences… but really the problem was named Monica; a bleached blonde, all legs and no brain secretary who worked for his law firm."

"Wow…" Will breathed, with his gaze dropping to the floor in front of the coffee table he was sitting on.

"Sorry." Blair quickly spilled an apology with a look of disbelief on her face, "Sometimes I just don't know when to shut up."

"I'm sorry." Emma sympathized, she knew firsthand how it felt to go from having both parents to just one. Still able to read her old friend after more than a year apart, she could easily see how nervous Blair was and in attempt to move the conversation away from her and her troubled home life, Emma took a drink of the punch in her cup and asked, "So, Brooke… where's your dad?"

With an emotionless sigh, the teenager looked down to the contents in her own cup and chose to refer to her father on a first name basis, "Quinn has a lady friend in town. I get to throw a party and he gets laid. It's the circle of life."

"Parental sex. TMI." Will complained, still fidgeting and nervously tapping his feet on the floor.

"Calm down." Brooke instructed, before she pointed out, "You can't hold still, you're like a purse dog. What is wrong with you?"

Realizing just how noticeable his nervous behavior was, he admitted, "I'm sorry. Coach is riding my ass. We're supposed to have a scout from Duke at tomorrow's game-"

"The scout will be blown away tomorrow." Emma assured him as she leaned forward and took his hand in her own, pulling him over to the couch with her. "So for tonight, just relax!"

"Well…" He breathed in a low voice, moving his face closer to hers, "Make me."

"I'd say get a room, but I don't want the cleanup." Brooke's face scrunched as she spoke.

Blair held back a laugh at her comment, before holding up her now empty cup and saying, "I'm going to get a refill."
Mainly it was just an excuse to get away from them. She felt like she hardly knew Emma anymore and having her right beside her on the couch, making out with her boyfriend just made the entire situation ever more uncomfortable.

As Blair stood next to the table that was loaded down with bottles of alcohol, a large bowl of pink punch and what looked to be an entire store isle worth of snack foods. She'd just plucked one of the peanut butter cookies up from a plate when she noticed the entire room had fell into a silence. So much so, that for a moment she'd have sworn even the volume of the music had dropped a couple notches.

When she turned around she saw that all eyes were on Audrey Jensen who'd just arrived to the party with Noah Foster.

Audrey swallowed hard and looked around to everyone who was staring at her –more like gawking as if she were some act in a freak show. Knowing all of the unwanted attention was a result of the video that had gone viral –a video of her in a parking lot, in her car, making out with another girl, she took a few more steps further into the room.

Pulling in a deep breath she announced, "Yeah! I'm the one who kissed a girl." With that she breezed past where Blair was standing at the snack table and plucked a half-empty bottle of tequila up on her way out of the doors leading to the back yard and pool.

"Uh, you know, the star of the viral video. Hey, look, she's kissing a girl, right?" Noah yelled out before he could stop himself. Everyone stared at him with confused expressions and he let out a nervous, wavering laugh.
He had no idea what had possessed him to say anything at that point, this was probably the reason no one ever invited him to parties.

"Uh, we'll be outside." He mumbled, lowering his head as he scurried towards the same doors Audrey had left out of, silently wishing he hadn't agreed to go to the party in the first place. It was already turning out to be a disaster.

He looked up just in time to keep from running into Blair who was still standing at the snack table.

"Sorry." They both said at the same time, though she had no idea why she was apologizing since she'd been the one standing still.

"It's okay." She added with a smile, as she tried to step to the side to let him past her. She could only imagine he must have been dying a little inside with every passing second he stood in the room. But her attempt to help was foiled when he tried to step to the side at the same time and they only managed to still be standing in each other's way.

With a small laugh, she tried to move to the other side, but again they'd both made the move at the same time and remained in each other's way.

"I'm, uh…" He stammered, shaking his head as his voice wavered with his seemingly ever present nervous laughter. Running a hand through his short hair he added, "I'm just trying to get out of here."

"I know." Blair nodded, smiling at how he seemed even more nervous to be at the party than she was, "And I've been trying to get out of your way."

With that she stepped closer to the table and Noah was finally able to escape all of the eyes that were still on him, as he fled to the backyard.

•••

"I didn't think you'd be here." Audrey admitted, once she found Blair sitting at the edge of the pool.

"Yeah." Blair smiled, "Emma invited me, I tried to make up some excuses… but the girl can still tell when I'm lying."

"That's because you were never a very good liar." Audrey remembered a low laugh on her lips as she sat down beside her.

The pair sat in silence for several minutes before Audrey finally looked over at her and admitted, "I had no idea you were moving back to Lakewood." Pausing for a moment she blew out a breath as she continued, "I guess I just thought you'd have texted me or at least messaged me online."

Staring down to the water lapping against the sides of the pool from the people in the water splashing and playing around, Blair pulled in a breath and shrugged, "We hadn't talked in a like a year Audrey."

"Yeah, but-"

"And you were the one who stopped talking to me before I moved away." Blair pointed out, "After what happened I tried to talk to talk to you, but-"

"Can we not talk about that right now?" Audrey pleaded.

With a nod, Blair looked back to everyone in the pool and Audrey pulled a video camera out of her bag and started filming everyone getting drunk and having fun around them.

It was close to ten minutes later when Emma found them. Kicking off her shoes she sat down by them and hung her legs into the pool as she smiled at the two girls she'd grown up being best friends with.

"Getting anything good?" Emma questioned, nodding to the video camera.

"Yeah, actually, I am. It's like an STD cautionary tale." Audrey joked, and the trio laughed together. All of them really starting to realize how much they'd missed hanging out together.

"So…" Emma's brows raised as she questioned Audrey about the video that had been posted online, "This girl, are you guys, like, a thing?"

"No…" Audrey started to say, as she looked between them.

"No?" Blair questioned with disbelief in her tone and an expression to match.

Audrey looked between them and couldn't help but smile, not only because she really liked Rachel Murray, but because she could recall so many times growing up when Emma and Blair would be pressing her for information about something and giving her those exact faces.

"We met on this film-geek website." She started to explain. "Um, Rachel made these awesome videos about the zombie apocalypse using Legos."

Emma laughed and Blair smiled, "That's awesome."

"Yeah, she's wicked smart and funny… but she hates the way she looks." Audrey said, her smile falling some at the end of her sentence. To her, Rachel was beautiful in every single way, it just hurt to know that she couldn't see herself in the same light.

"Sounds like all of us in eighth grade." Emma commented, earning a response from Audrey, "Yeah. Yeah, but then you got pretty."

Emma looked down to the pool unsure how to respond and Audrey mentally kicked herself for how her words had come out.
Backtracking, she stammered, "Okay, look, I don't mean that like I like you or anything."

Emma side eyed her and Audrey knew she was just making it worse and she sighed, "I'm not a lesbian."

Looking over to Blair, she restated with more conviction, "I'm not a lesbian."

"I never said you were." Blair nodded, pausing for a moment before adding, "For the record though, I wouldn't care if you were."

"I'm not." She argued.

"It's okay, I get it." Emma spoke up, kicking her legs lazily in the water as she said, "I mean, you're bi-curious. If I was alone in a car with Scarlett Johansson…" Her voice trailed off and she held her arms out to the sides letting them use their imaginations to fill in the blanks.

"Right!" Blair agreed as they all laughed and the unmistakable feeling of nostalgia started to set in for all of them.
Growing up, they'd been as close as friends could be, vowed hundreds of times that they'd be best friends forever. But then everything had changed towards the end of the eighth grade, with them each changing and trying to find themselves, slowly the trio had grown apart.

"I missed you guys." Audrey finally admitted, stealing the words right from her former friends' thoughts. "I miss this."

"Me too." Blair agreed.

"Same." Emma nodded, looking around as she added, "It's weird, right? This kind of feels like old times –just talking and laughing. Just like we used to."

"True, but it certainly never happened at Brooke Maddox's lake house."

Audrey and Emma both looked at Blair and nodded along in agreement with her words. With a smile on her face, Blair looked down to the water in the pool as she wondered if maybe her mom was right about moving back to Lakewood. Maybe she really could reconnect with the people who used to mean everything to her, maybe the small town could really start to feel like home again.

•••

It was nearly an hour later when Blair found her way over to the tables set up with food and drinks on the back patio of the house, where she found Noah rummaging through one of the metal buckets filled with ice cubes and bottled drinks.

"Hey." She greeted with a smile.

Looking startled, he said, "Hey, uh… what can I get, ya?" As he motioned to the table.

"I think just a water. I drank more of that pink punch then I should have earlier." She admitted.

As he handed her a cold bottle of water he nodded, "The punch is where they get you at parties. You never know how much alcohol is in there."

Taking a drink of the water, she eyed him for a minute before asking, "Been to a lot of parties, huh?"

"A few." He managed to say, his voice reaching a higher pitch as he spilled the lie. Shaking his head at himself he let out the breath that he didn't even realize he'd been holding, as he owned up and said, "Actually no, not really. I don't get invited to any of the parties… which is probably why I'm standing here passing out drinks instead of out there." He said waving his arms a bit too eccentrically towards the large crowd gathered in the back yard as he mumbled, "You know, mingling and stuff that normal teenagers do… and I'm just going to stop talking now."

"It's not a big deal." Blair tried to assure him.

Seeing he'd managed to not chase her off, he extended a hand and said, "I'm Noah."

"Blair-" She began to say, but he cut her off as he admitted, "I know. I remember you."

"Huge dorky glasses and all?" There was a noticeable cringe behind her laugh.

"They weren't that bad." There was a smile on his lips as he spoke, and reached for his glass of the very same punch he'd warned her against drinking too much of.

"They were exactly that bad!" She argued, her straight brunette hair falling into her face as she shook her head.

"Hey, wasn't your picture in the paper last week?" She asked, turning the conversation around and making him feel uncomfortable.

For at least the tenth time that night, he could feel his very soul starting to wither and die inside of him.

"Uh, yes. Yeah, my mom did that." Noah explained, knowing there was no use in lying about it –no matter how much he wanted to go to the grave denying it. "Clearly without asking me first. I'm… well, I'm on the shortlist for an internship with Elon Musk."

"SpaceX, right?" Blair nodded, "You really think he's going to Mars?"

"Um…" He breathed, looking completely blown away that she knew what he was talking about, "Yeah, I really do… and I want to go with."

"Right, that would be so awesome!" She excitedly agreed with him.

"Wow, it's really cool that you know that." He said, smiling widely at her.

Blair nodded, a smile on her own lips as she explained, "Confession… I only know it because I looked it up after I read the piece on you in the paper. I was curious." Tilting her head to the side she added, "I'm probably the only person my age who actually reads the paper. Probably because my mom is the only one on our block who actually still gets the paper and doesn't just read the news online."

"Hey, it's important to support local business." He quickly said, before what she'd said slowly dawned on him and his eyes widened, "Wait… you looked into SpaceX… because of me?"

"Hey, Bradford." Kieran greeted Blair by her last name as he stepped between where she and Noah were standing to grab a bottle of beer from the ice bucket.

"Hey!" She greeted back with a genuine smile at the only person she could currently call a friend. Blair had met Kieran Wilcox when her family had moved to Atlanta a year ago and they'd been friendly with one another at school.

As fate would have it, they'd both ended up moving to Lakewood around the same time. He'd moved there to live with his dad after his mother and step-father were killed in a car accident.
With a concerned look, she asked, "How are you?"

"I'm good." He quickly answered, before glancing between her and Noah as he gave a small nod and said, "See you later?"

"See you later." She agreed, watching as he walked away.

Noah watched her a few seconds before he shrugged and pointed out, "You two seem pretty friendly…" He shrugged again in an attempt to play it off and pretend her answer wouldn't faze him one way or the other.

"He's sort of my only friend." Blair explained. Seeing the confusion in his expression grow, she added, "We went to school together in Atlanta."

"Oh!" He realized, "Wow, what are the odds you'd both end up here at the same time."

"Right." She laughed.

The patio fell silent, except from the music playing from the outdoor speakers, until he repeated his question from earlier, before they'd been interrupted, "So, you looked up SpaceX because of the article about me in the paper?"

Giving him a coy smile, she held up the now half empty bottle of water and said, "Thanks for the water." Before she turned and headed inside of the house where she'd seen Kieran disappear to a few moments prior.

•••

Sometime later, Blair was sitting inside with a group of people near the fire place as the temperatures outside had started to drop. All the furniture had been filled up and she had chosen to sit on the arm rest of the chair Kieran was sitting on, instead of sitting on the floor.

Just as Noah had found his way into the room, the conversation had turned from people sharing their anything but happy memories of Nina, to speculating the grisly details of her murder.

As a few people left the room, he managed to snag a seat on the couch and looked over to Blair as he threw his hand up in a small wave to her.

"I'm just saying… it's crazy how we were talking about slasher movies in language arts and then Nina got slashed." Riley Marra pointed out with a chill creeping down her spine.

"It sort of went the other way around." Blair argued, glancing around as everyone looked to her, it was the first time she'd spoke up since entering the room. "Nina was dead long before class today."

Taking a large drink from his recently refilled cup of punch, Noah nodded in agreement, "She's right, technically there is no direct correlation."

"Dude, she's scared. Let's not negate that." Jake Fitzgerald, spoke out. Before he leaned forward in his chair and rested a hand on Riley's shoulder.

Knowing that he was clearly hoping a little comforting from him was going to be his ticket into her pants, Riley shrugged him away and argued, "I'm not scared."

Throwing himself back into the plush cushions on the chair, Jake let out a frustrated groan.

"Maybe we should be scared." Kieran offered up.

"Stop it!" Blair laughed, playfully hitting his arm. He shot her a smile before adding, "I'm serious, come on. A bunch of drunk teenagers at a party by the lake where your homegrown killer died. It's like a natural slasher setting."

Noah looked between them before taking a few more drinks from his cup and claiming the speaker's floor when he argued with Kieran, "No, see, at a party like this, you're actually pretty safe from your typical Jason or Michael Myers type."

"Safe?" Someone from the group scoffed at him and Riley nodded, "There's the lake where Brandon James died… teenagers, hormones and beer."

"Safety in numbers." Blair pointed out, looking back to Noah as he nodded drank more of the punch from his cup and agreed, "Exactly. We're together and you know slasher dude isn't the terminator –shooting his way through thirty cops in a police precinct. No, he's a wolf… waiting for one of us to wander off alone."

"That's awfully sexist. Who says the slasher is male and not female?" Blair offered up for debate, and though her question earned a smile from Noah, his words were growing more slurred as the effects of the alcohol in the punch set in. "Ninety-nine percent of the time in a slasher movie, the killer is typically male."

"Maybe this isn't a typical situation." Blair reasoned, "Maybe this time the slandered slasher film rules don't apply."

"Fair enough." Noah slurred, trying to take another drink from his cup only to realize it was already empty.

"See." Kieran stated, "If the rules don't apply; maybe we should be scared."

"No…" Noah said, as the room started to look like he was viewing it from a funhouse mirror and his eyes could barely focus. "Survival in a party like this is simple… just don't wander off alone."

Nodding along with his own words, he felt dizzy and the cup fell from his hands as he laid down on the couch and managed to tell everyone, "Goodnight." Before he passed out.

•••

It was going on midnight when Blair was wandering around the yard trying to find someone to give her a ride home.

She found herself wishing she'd driven herself instead of letting Emma talk her into riding there with her and Will. For her old friend, the night had gone from bad to worse when she'd found out that Will had slept with Nina.

Kicking a glass bottle along with her in the grass, she figured her best bet would be to try and find Kieran to see if he'd drove there. Though she had no idea where to even begin to look for him, he'd mostly been staying out of sight to avoid Brooke who'd been hanging all over him like he was her newest conquest.
A feeling Blair could relate to, considering that Jake had been eyeing her like she was a piece of meat for the most of the night too. Which at first was laughable considering in middle school he'd have never given her the time of day.

"Guys, help!"

Blair came to a stop in the shadows underneath some tall trees near one of the buildings on the property and looked around when she heard a voice calling for help in the distance.

"Hello! Somebody help!"

Closing her eyes, she tried to focus on the direction the voice was coming from. She couldn't hear them very well, but at first she'd have sworn it sounded like Noah.

Her eyes snapped open when she heard nearby footsteps and she whirled around to see Kieran and Emma walking out of the small, plant filled shed she'd been near.

"Hey." She greeted, looking between them and wondering what they'd been doing in there alone.

"Did you hear someone yelling for help?" Emma questioned as she walked up to her.

"Probably a prank." Kieran tossed in his two-cents on the matter.

The trio started to head back towards the house and Blair was just about to ask for a ride home, when they heard water splashing from the lake.

"Is someone in the lake?" Emma asked, squinting in the darkness and trying to make sense of the shadows in the dark of night and the steam rising off the water.

As they all moved closer to the water's edge, they could see someone a ways out of the shore for a split second before they went under the surface and the water started to still.

"What the hell…" Blair breathed stepping closer to try and get a better look at what was going on.

Barely a second later Noah emerged from the dark depths gasping and sputtering, his arms flailing wildly at his sides trying to stay above the water and get a breath. It was too dark to see anything, but he knew something had grabbed him.

He frantically tried to swim towards the shore, but he was only swimming in place as something seemed to be holding him back and then before he could even catch his breath he was pulled back below the surface.

"Oh my god!" Emma yelled, and they all three took off running for the water. Emma came to a stop a short distance from the water's edge and Kieran started to take his shirt and jacket off in preparation for going into the lake.

Blair ran right past Emma and straight into the lake she'd heard horror stories about as a kid, fully clothed and ignoring Kieran's calls after her as he told her to wait. She swam as fast as she could towards where Noah was still violently struggling to keep his head above water and not drown.
She didn't even think about what she was doing, she couldn't. This was the very lake where Brandon James had died, some people thought the water was haunted. Other's swore he'd put a curse on the lake seconds before dying. As unlikely as that all seemed, growing up in Lakewood there had been a deep leeriness and fear instilled in her when it came to Wren Lake and if she stopped for a moment to think about how far out she'd swam, she'd probably have lost her nerve and turned back.

"Noah!" She called out as she swam up to him, trying to get his attention while he still flailed in a complete and utter state of panic, splashing water into her face as she tried to help him.

Sputtering on the lake water, she grabbed his arm and started to try and pull him away when she felt something brush up against her leg, something that felt far bigger than a fish and there was split moment of terror where she completely froze before she could have sworn she felt a hand around her ankle and then she was jerked below the water.

When she finally kicked free of whatever had gotten a hold of her and managed to get her head above water, she gasped loudly for air and kicked wildly to try and deter whatever had grabbed her from being able to get close enough to her to pull her back under.

"Calm down. Calm down." Kieran said, as reached the pair in the water and managed to get an arm around Noah to keep the struggling and terrified teenager afloat.

"I think he's caught on something." He said, looking to Blair who was staring back at him wide-eyed, now fully aware that someone or something big enough to drag a person underwater was out there with them and it was far too dark to see anything.

Nodding when his words finally sank in, she mustered up the strength, oxygen and courage to dive down into the water by Noah and blindly feeling around for anything –or anyone who might be holding him there. Finally her fingers brushed over something rough and cordlike, which seemed to be wrapped around his legs and ankles.

Once she managed to get it off him she swam back to the surface and the three swam to the small dock, where Kieran got Noah up the ladder and then motioned for Blair to go, before he finally got out of the water himself.

"Hey, come here!" Emma said as she grabbed onto Noah's arm and helped him onto the sand, before turning back to make sure the other two had made it onto dry land.

A handful of people left at the party started to emerge from behind the trees, at the front was a clearly proud Jake laughing as Noah still fought to catch his breath.

Grabbing up one of the blankets laying on the ground, Blair knelt down and draped it over him, "Just breathe, try to breathe." She instructed all while fighting for her own breath and looking out at the lake trying to see what had grabbed her.

"Yo, kiss him, Blair! Breath of life!" Jake loudly yelled, still holding onto his bottle of beer and laughing as if Noah hadn't almost drowned just minutes before.

"Jake, shut up!" Emma yelled as she grabbed another blanket up from the sand and draped it over Blair's shoulders and back. Then to Will's disdain, she also draped one around Kieran's shoulders and bare upper body.

"He could have died!" Blair yelled, finally able to catch her own breath enough that she could start to calm down.

"Hey, he was the first one to pass out. It's Wren Lake tradition." He defended his actions, and clearly didn't see what everyone was so upset over.

Looking up to Blair, Noah stuttered out, "What was that –that grabbed me?"

"I don't know." She answered, concern still heavy on her face and he didn't miss the glint of fear in her eyes.

"Nobody grabbed you, spaz. We just dropped you off." Jake said, rolling his eyes and breaking out into another fit of laughter.

Kneeling down beside them, Emma started to pull some tangled up fishing line from Noah's feet and she said, "You were stuck on fishing line."

"It didn't feel like fishing line." He argued, still trying desperately to catch his breath while his heart raced wildly in his chest and it seemed like his every attempt to inhale was cut short by a coughing fit and spitting up lake water. "It felt like someone was pulling me down."

Blair didn't say anything, but she didn't believe the fishing line was what had caused Noah to nearly drown. She still could have sworn she felt a hand on her own ankle when she'd been pulled beneath the surface.

"Noah, Noah!" Audrey yelled, as she stumbled up on the crowd gathering around the scene on the sand. "Oh my god!" She gasped, it didn't take her long to connect the dots when she saw her soaking wet friend still gasping for breath, stripped down to his boxers.

"I'm okay." He choked out, "I'm okay."

Shrugging off the blanket that Emma had wrapped around her, Blair stood up and she and Audrey pulled him up to his feet.

"Your friends are great, Emma. Thank you for the invite." Audrey nearly spat out as she looked back to her old friend and the fuzzy feelings of nostalgia she'd been plagued with since their talk earlier had now long since faded.

"Come on." She said in a much softer tone, as she did her best to hold the blanket around her shaking friend and lead him towards where she'd parked, with Blair following close behind them. She couldn't stomach being at the party for another single second.

•••

"Thanks for the ride." Blair said with a smile, as she walked into her kitchen where Audrey was sitting on one of the tall chairs at the kitchen island. She'd changed into some dry clothes, but her hair was still wet.

"No problem." She quickly answered, before saying in a sincere tone and honesty in her eyes, "Thank you for saving Noah."

"It was more so Kieran than me." She admitted, getting two mugs out of the cabinet for hot chocolate. "I got out to where Noah was and then…" Her voice trailed off.

"Then… what?" Audrey asked, sliding off the seat and going to the drawer where the silverware used to be kept when they were growing up.

She wasn't a hundred percent that someone had pulled her under, and she didn't see anyone else emerge from the lake either. Maybe she'd been so panicked that she'd imagined it or possibly even got hooked on the same fishing line that Noah was tangled in. Ignoring the question and pointing towards a different drawer, she said, "Spoons are in there."

"Crazy how I can still remember how the kitchen used to be set up." Audrey said, shaking her head before looking back at her old friend and asking, "Is it weird being back?"

"Yeah, it's so weird. Our first day back we pulled up outside and there was this moment where it felt like I was home, you know? I lived in this house my entire life… but then we came inside and everything was different. It didn't even smell the same."

"Give it time." Audrey suggested, as she handed her friend a spoon, flashed her a smile and added, "Your mom will stock up on those lemongrass candles and the house will start smelling like it used to in no time."

"Ew! You know how much I hated those candles." She laughed, as she stirred the hot chocolate mixture into her cup of hot water.

Sitting back down in the seat she'd been at on the island, Audrey grabbed a small handful of the marshmallows from the open bag and dropped them into her cup, before looking back to Blair and saying, "For what it's worth, I'm glad your back. I really have missed you."

"I can still remember the summer after eighth grade –when my parents sat me down to tell me that my dad had an offer to make partner at a law firm in Atlanta and we were moving at the end of the month. They both had this look on their face like they were delivering the worst news, but honestly it was sort of a relief." Looking up, she locked eyes with Audrey and continued, "Somehow the idea of starting ninth grade in a new place where I didn't know anyone seemed easier to stomach than starting high school here. I mean, by the end of eighth grade, Emma was already shoved so far up Brooke and Nina's asses that she even bailed on our annual end of school year sleepover and you'd completely stopped talking to me after-"

"Don't say it." Audrey breathed, her eyes pining shut as she spoke. Wishing she could hop in a time machine and go back to right her wrongs.

"After we kissed." Blair stated, ignoring her pleas and finishing her train of thought.

"No, I kissed you. There is a difference." Audrey pointed out, blowing out a sigh and staring back down to the still full cup of hot chocolate.

"It's not a big deal." Blair argued, "It never was a big deal-"

"I'm not a lesbian!" Audrey quickly blurted out.

"I never said you were!" Blair said back, her own voice raised, "I never once said you were, but even if you were there is nothing wrong with it. Audrey you were my best friend, I literally couldn't have cared less if you liked girls, or boys or both. It didn't matter to me then and it doesn't matter now."

"It wasn't that simple inside of my own head… I was so confused and completely mortified. I didn't know how to act around you after that and I…" Her voice trailed off, "I just need to explain what happened, okay?"

Taking a drink from her glass, Blair nodded to let her know that she was listening.

"You remember that New Year's party at Riley's house that Emma dragged us along to that year?"

"Of course I do, I was terrified to go." Blair remembered. It was the first real party they'd been to. It was right after Emma had started to be accepted into the popular crowd and was still trying to hold onto her lifelong friendships with Blair and Audrey.

"So was I." Audrey agreed. "We'd been there for probably an hour or so and I'd wandered away from you and Emma, I ended up in the basement where some people were playing spin the bottle and they convinced me to join them. And I remember not wanting to play, but this was the first real party we'd been to and I wanted to fit in, so I joined the circle and when it was my time to spin the bottle it landed on another girl in the group."

Taking a break from the story, and a few more sips of her hot chocolate Audrey pulled in a deep breath and continued, "I thought 'no way is this happening', but then she leaned over and kissed me… I mean like really kissed me and it felt completely different then the time in seventh grade when I'd went to movies with Aaron Yardley and he kissed me during the ending credits, but it was like… a good different."

"You never told me that."

"I spent the next few weeks completely confused. I didn't know if I was gay or straight, if it was maybe just the way she'd kissed me or if there was something wrong with me." Audrey remembered, breaking eye contact as she spoke. "I was scared, Blair."

Taking another deep breath, she cleared her throat and added, "And then I came over to stay the night with you and not knowing who I was or who I liked was the scariest thing and for some reason apparently scarier than kissing my best friend. I don't know, I guess I thought maybe if I kissed another girl and felt the same way I felt at the party… then I'd know."

"Did it feel the same way?" Blair questioned.

"No." Audrey laughed, "It was like kissing my sister and then all I could do was stare at you in shock, I couldn't believe I'd just done that. And I thought you'd push me away or god, I don't know, even slap me or something. But no, instead you looked right at me and calmly told me that you loved me as a friend, but that you were into guys… and then you just picked up our empty cups and went to the kitchen for refills and I sat there dying inside. I couldn't even begin to find the words to explain to you what had happened; I don't think I could even explain it to myself at that point."

The room fell into silence again before Audrey continued, "You acted like nothing had happened and for the rest of the night I was terrified you were going to think I was into you and I thought I'd ruined everything. We'd already lost Emma and then I went and kissed you and all I could think was that after my mom came to pick me up from your house the next day, that you'd never want to see me again." The realization of how wrong she'd been fully sank in and she softly said, "Instead I pulled away from you until we didn't even talk anymore. I'm sorry, Blair."

"Audrey…" Blair breathed, "I notice things, you know? You were my best friend, we spent so much time together. The three of us would go see a movie and when we'd leave, Emma and I would be gushing about how hot the guy was and you'd keep steering the conversation back to how pretty the girls were. I always sort of suspected that you were into girls, but like I said it didn't bother me."

"Yeah, but I kissed you." Audrey pointed out.

With a smile and a laugh, Blair admitted, "That didn't freak me out. I'll tell you a secret, okay? Do you remember in sixth grade when a group of us went to the Fun Zone to play laser tag and games in the arcade and all?"

"Yeah, you completely kicked my ass at air hockey." She laughed.

"Yes! And Emma was obsessed with Danny and I had that ridiculous crush on Tyler? The day before we were going… Emma and I practiced kissing each other so that we'd be good at it just in case the guys we liked, liked us back."

Her mouth hung open in shock and Audrey asked, "Are you serious?"

"We were kids." Blair laughed, "we were all stupid kids and I don't think any of us knew who we were at that point." Looking to her friend she questioned, "Are you still confused?"

"No." Audrey answered with a smile, "I'm attracted to people because of who they are –gender doesn't matter."

Smiling back at her, Blair clanked her mug of hot chocolate against Audrey's and toasted, "Here's to knowing who we are and being much more put together than our middle school selves."

"And to learning who your real friends are." Audrey added, "I'll drink to that."

•••

A/N- Thank you for reading my first chapter. ^_^

This is going to be a Noah/OC story, and as much as I really did love his relationship with Riley on the show – I highly doubt I'll be including it in my story.
I plan to follow along with the series, but I'll be changing some things around and adding Blair's storylines in as I go.

I hope you all enjoyed it so far and that you'll take a couple moments to let me know what you thought. :)