Darren sneaks another glance at the pile of cell phones in the middle of the table. Her fingers are itching to grab her phone as it keeps quacking and vibrating on and off amongst the other devices with their own ringtones and text tones going off. She moves her hand forward a millimeter before putting it under her leg to control herself. She will not cave.

Blithe pokes Darren’s face, asking Darren if she hears what she’s saying. Darren replies with an of course, but it’s clear as crystal that she didn’t even hear Blithe say that. Blithe laughs at Darren. “You’re so pathetic. Just take the phone and pay for our meals, Dare. We don’t mind.”

Now Darren hears her. She scowls. “I will not give in. I will not pay for dinner. I will not take my phone,” she tells Blithe, but she says it more for herself. Her small pay won’t be able to handle paying for this table of eleven, even if it’s just a small diner.

When the food arrives, everyone sits in a comfortable silence, only talking here and there between bites, as they eat. Even the cell phones have all managed to stop receiving any texts and calls. Darren dips another fry in her strawberry milkshake when–

Buzz… Quack, quack, buzz… quack, quack, buzz…

Darren eyes her phone as she puts the fry in her mouth, and she gulps it down. Casper snickers to the right of her. “Aren’t you going to get that, Dare? It could be your claw machine buddy.” He wiggles his eyebrows up and down as Darren gulps back some of her built up saliva.

“Yeah, it might be important,” Joe adds. Darren ignores the both of them and continues to eat her fries, dipping them in her drink. Not soon after, Zoella’s phone goes off. Zoella taps her quivering fingers on the table, staring longingly at her phone.

“Your phone is ringing, Zoe,” Marcus tells her as if it isn’t obvious enough. “You might want to get that.” Niomi nudges his side, scolding her boyfriend for teasing Zoe.

The waitress comes by a few minutes later when everyone is just about down eating and sets the check down politely before walking off. Casper folds his hands on the table and smiles mischievously at the group. “Well, I think it’s between Darren and Zoella right now. So who’s it going to be, ladies?”

Darren sinks back in her seat, eyes on her phone, pouting. Zoella has her hands on the edge of table, eyes shut. Both try to resist the temptation. Jack, on the other side of the table, leans over to his left to ‘whisper’ to Finn. “Darren is toast.” Darren huffs. He clearly isn’t trying to be subtle about this.

Conversations carry on. Bets are made, but anyone has yet to grab their phone. Darren tries to distract herself from the ducks by talking to Blithe about random stuff, but most of her focus stays on her phone. Zoella is actually worse, hyperventilating slightly in her spot. Another minute passes, and a new ringtone is added to the pile.

La-la, la-la… la-la, la-la… Elmo’s world…

A hand shoots at the pile of cell phone, grabbing the Elmo theme song and pulling it to their ear. “Hi, you’ve reached Ella,” Ella talks into the phone. A few of the boys tease her and tell her she has to pay for dinner, but she waves them off, focusing solely on the phone call. “Uh-huh… Alright… Thank you so much! Bye!”

Ella grabs her purse and pulls one of her cards out of her wallet, putting it on top of the check for the waitress to collect. Even though she lost the game and has to pay for dinner, she still wears a bright smile on her face.

“What was that all about? Why are you smiling?” Casper asks her, semi rudely. Darren and Joe, who sit on either side of him, both nudge Casper at the same time.

“That was my real estate agent,” Ella tells him. “I got the deal on the house I was looking at and will be meeting with him tomorrow to sign some paperwork.”

Darren reaches for her phone sneakily as a bunch of questions are thrown to Ella about why she’s moving when she has a nice apartment that she lives in already, what was wrong with that apartment, what is the house like, and other questions relevant to that. Once the phone is in front of her, Darren pushes the home button and slides open the first message she sees. Overall, there are 11 messages.

From Haaarrrrryyy:
5 more days.

We leave for my hometown tomorrow

I don’t think I can do this

I’ve never been so scared to go home in my life

What will my mum do?

What am I going to do?

I can’t sleep

She’s going to hate me.

You aren’t responding to my messages. You probably hate me.

I hate me.

I don’t know what to do

Darren doesn’t know how to respond to Harry. They’ve never really talked about Harry’s family, but she somehow recalls something Harry had said in their very first conversation: ‘I can literally say I haven’t talked to a lot to even my closest friends and family for the past few years.’ Darren pieces together that Harry hasn’t been quite close to his family for quite some time and silently wishes she had paid more attention to Casper when he tried to lecture her on how One Direction is a band of “extraordinary ordinary, normal people who are just more well-known than the average person.”

To Haaarrrrryyy:
I don’t hate you; I wasn’t allowed to touch my phone otherwise I’d have to pay for dinner for 11 people and I wasn’t gonna let myself do that. Calm your shit.

From Haaarrrrryyy:
DON’T TELL ME TO CALM MY SHIT.

Darren widens her eyes at his text. She hates when people use all caps because it makes her feel like they’re yelling at her. She hates when people yell at her. It makes her feel weak. Harry seems to be freaking out though. This is understandable, so she rolls her eyes and starts to type back.

To Haaarrrrryyy:
Stop being such an arse, Harold. Breathe. This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you talk about through text, so I’ll call you when I get home.

She places her phone down on the table in front of her, only looking at it once more when Harry sends her and ‘okay.’ Then, she finally decides to get back into the conversation about Ella moving. Niomi is gushing over something apparently really cute and everyone else seems to be congratulating her or something, but Darren has no idea what anyone is talking about. Ella is holding Jack’s hand on top of the table between them, and he is smiling at her in adoration, but she’s biting her lip and looking down at her lap.

“Wait, what?” Darren asks when she’s heard enough of the conversation to confuse her more.

Niomi instantly updates her on what Darren missed when she wasn’t listening. “Jack and Ella are finally moving in together!”

Darren’s heart sinks slightly. She looks at Jack who looks back at her. “You– you’re… moving out?” Jack nods at her with a grim expression. Suddenly, it’s all white noise. For some reason, Darren just feels like rolling up into a ball and sitting in a secluded corner. Just sitting. Everyone else stops their celebratory talk and looks to Darren. They ask her for several minutes if she’s fine, but she just sits there, staring off into the void. It isn’t until Blithe pinches he thigh that she snaps out of her daze. “Oh, um… I’m fine.” She decides to play it safe, flashing Jack and Ella a smile and saying, “I’m really happy for you two.” The words sound so forced, but no one makes comment.

The car ride home is silent. Jack drops off Ella to her place, the one she is moving out of, first. Darren only looks for a second as Jack plants a kiss on his girlfriend’s lips as she is giggling. When Jack gets back in the car, Darren bows her head down and angrily fidgets with her fingers. Pretty soon, Finn has parked the car in the garage, and Darren is fast to get out, slamming the car door shut, and going inside.

She slips off her shoes and picks them up when she gets to the stairs. Jack enters the house just as Darren starts her ascent. “Darren!” he yells, but she doesn’t stop. Jack runs up the stairs after her, taking them on by twos. “Darren, stop!” He pulls her hand and turns her around. Darren is mad. She isn’t fuming, but she’s definitely mad. The only thing is, she doesn’t know why, so when Jack asks, “Why are you mad at me?” she doesn’t know what to say. “Is it because I’m moving in with Ella?”

She lets out an unsure breath. “I- no. I don’t know.” Darren looks down at her brother, trying to figure out why she’s mad at him. If anything is for sure, it is that she could never be mad that he’s moving in with Ella. Ella is one of the best things in Jack’s life, and she’s a really sweet girl. And yet, the thought of Jack moving in with her angers her on the outside because on the inside she wants to fall to the floor and break down.

“Darren, I’m not leaving, you know,” Jack tells her. Darren gives him a questioning look. “I mean, I am leaving, but I’m not leaving you completely. I could never leave your life, and you know that.”

Perhaps, this is what Darren is mad about. It isn’t that Jack is moving in with Ella; it’s that he is leaving her. As much as Darren hates to admit it, she needs people in her life. Her brothers are just two of the most important ones. The thought of one of them, Jack in this case, leaving her crushes her a little.

Jack gives Darren’s hand a squeeze and a smile. “I’ll always be here for you. If you ever need anything, I’m just a phone call away. I’m not leaving you.”

Darren visibly relaxes at his words and drops the tension in her shoulders. “Okay,” she says softly, knowing that Jack is giving her his word. Jack pulls her into a brotherly hug, making her laugh with something he says. Darren pushes back in her laughter. “So I get your room, right?”

~

Harry holds his phone still to his ear. He has sweaty palms and a cold sweat is forming on his forehead. He bounces his leg up and down from his seated position on the toilet seat lid. His breathing is heavy, and he looks like he’s about to have an anxiety attack.

“Harold, breathe slowly,” Darren tells him through the receiver, demonstrating how he should be breathing through her own breaths. Harry starts to try and slow down his breathing, and after a few minutes of shaky inhaling and exhaling, he sounds slightly closer to normal.

“I’m scared, Darren,” he admits. He rubs the palm of his free hand on his jeans.

Darren almost laugh but doesn’t. Instead, she sighs to hide it. “You shouldn’t be scared of your mum, Harry.”

Harry frowns. “Well, I am. I don’t know what she’s going to say when she sees me after all this time. I shut her out, Darren. I shut my own mum out. I’m a terrible son…”

“Why did you shut her out?” Darren asks, curious to really know what has happened. She could read old article or stalk fan pages, but she’s prefer not to. After a minute or so of silence, Darren speaks again. “You can trust me, you know?”

Hearing her voice so soft and cautious makes Harry shiver. He can’t seem to configure how such a strong and pessimistic personality such as Darren can be so soft and sincere. “I know. I just…”

“Just what? You should keep in mind of that promise, Harold. Another day can be today.”

Harry’s stomach flips just thinking about his past with his mother, and why he shut her and everyone else out. He has changed in the past few months from that person with high walls, but how has all this passed time affected her? That’s what he’s scared of. He’s scared that his cold shoulder has made his mother resent him. He’s afraid that he’s affected her badly for what he did by not going to his own mother when he got in that bad, sorrowful place he had been in.

“Wait, Leanna? Who’s Leanna?” Darren asks.

Harry scrunches his eyebrows. “I never said anything about Leanna.”

“Uh, yeah you did. You just said her name. Who is she?”

Harry wipes a hand down his face in agony. He doesn’t want to talk about her, but he knows he can’t avoid it forever. “She’s my- she was my girlfriend.” Harry pauses for a second before continuing. “She’s dead.”

“Oh… What happened to her?”

Harry lets out a frustrated sigh. This would be the first time he has ever talked to anyone about Leanna since he death. At first, there had been the denial, but when it finally sunk in, that’s when it hit him. He refused to talk to anyone about it, and when people asked, he would walk away. Harry is one of the few people, beside Leanna’s family to know what happened. Not even the boys know what happened to Leanna. What happened was a secret Harry decided to keep to himself, and he’s on edge, contemplating finally telling someone – Darren – about it.

He can barely even remember what actually happened himself. All he remembers is rushing to the hospital and pacing in the waiting room for a few hours. Then, a doctor came out to talk to him and her family, but the words were fuzzy because his insides were screaming at him. He couldn’t believe what had happened to her. It was unimaginable. No one saw it coming, and no one knew why. Why her? Why him? Why would anyone do such a thing?

“It was homicide.”

Notes

Who wishes that their sibling relationship was like Jack, Finn, and Darren's?
What will Harry's mum's reaction be when she sees him?
How was Leanna murdered?

Okay, I lied. Harry isn't quite back in his hometown, but the phone conversation he is having with Darren is during the drive there because he's really nervous. And I hope you all remembered Leanna, because she hasn't really been this important and I forgot to ask in when she got brought up in Chapter 30 I think it was. Anyway, please leave some feedback, and vote if you haven't already! Thank for sticking with me and this story :)

Also, my new story (it's coauthored) comes out on Saturday! So I will be posting a chapter on here about that as well as new chapter so you don't get disappointed when it's just self advertising. But I really hope you all read it, especially if you're sick of mainstream stuff because my new fanfic is something I can guarantee you've never read before. More information to come!

~A