The night had mostly been uneventful for Stacie. Her mother had been getting ready to go out on a date as part of her job as an escort, and Stacie knew, just like all of her siblings knew, that she wasn't likely to be back before the sun rose in the morning. Though, if one of them did something that made it necessary for her to come back, she would not be happy and all of them would feel her anger, unless they could prove that they had nothing to do with whatever required her attention.
So, Dale had her help with their younger sisters on getting them ready for bed. She'd gotten her nightgown on, but had trouble getting to sleep. She tossed and turned while she lay in her bed. At least until she needed to go to the bathroom. Even on the trip to the bathroom she didn't feel the slightest bit tired.
Stacie yawned as she washed her hands in the bathroom. She knew Beth was going to be out late, so she couldn't understand why she'd drunk so much water earlier. She typically only did that when she was nervous about something and tonight Beth being out late was the only thing out of the ordinary. Part of the water drinking was something to keep her hands busy. She didn't like getting up in the middle of the night just for this, but her only other option was to wet the bed and that was even worse. Especially with her already having trouble getting to sleep.
As Stacie turned off the lights in the bathroom, she heard Beth and her friends returning. Stacie suddenly found herself afraid of being seen. Why that was, she couldn't explain it. It just felt like she had been doing something that would get her in trouble, even though she'd just been up to use the bathroom.
Then, even though she knew eavesdropping was rude and Beth would probably get on Stacie's case if she found out she was doing this. At worst she would be furious, but Stacie walked over to the door to her own room with her plush tiger, Marquis, and sat on the floor, listening to what she could easily hear Beth and her friends talking about anyway.
At first she was amused at how Charlie was being singled out, first by not wanting to sleep in just her underwear, which Stacie could wholeheartedly understand. Though, she thought it was weird that they mentioned an 'expedition,' though they didn't elaborate on what it was about.
Then when they moved on to about Charlie wearing a push-up bra or pads, Stacie had to force herself to not laugh. Not only would it give her away, but then Beth and her friends might get wise to what she's doing. She almost lost the battle when they moved on to the kind of underwear Charlie preferred wearing.
However, when they mentioned 'magic' and then later the word 'unicorn,' she quickly lost all amusement about what they had been talking about. She decided that she'd heard enough and couldn't let them not know she'd been listening. She knew it was a bad idea, but at the same time, if she didn't, then she knew she wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it.
So, she walked over to Beth's door and knocked. She wanted to have given it a firm knock, but she couldn't do more than a quiet knock. It wasn't Beth, but one of her friends, Hannah who answered; which surprised her a little.
"Stacie?" Beth asked from sitting beside her bed. "What're you doing here?"
"I heard what you were talking about…" Stacie replied quietly, not sure how else to put what she wanted to say.
"I see," Beth replied, looking at her friends. "Why don't you come in. I take it you were having trouble sleeping?"
"Yeah," Stacie said, entering Beth's room and walking over to Beth's bed, while looking at Beth's friends as she passed them by.
"So, what questions do you have?" Beth asked as Stacie climbed on her bed and sat against the headboard.
"What do you mean by magic? And I heard something about a unicorn crystal and unicorn's forest?" Stacie said.
"We might as well fill her in completely," Charlie said, surprising Stacie.
She'd assumed Beth's friends would be opposed to telling her anything. Just like the older siblings of the few friends she did have. While here was on of her older sister's friends suggesting that they be open with her. Did she actually fall asleep in her bed and only dreamed about coming out to the bathroom and hearing her older sister's friends talking about magic and unicorns?
"Why should we?" Hannah asked, sounding more like what Stacie had expected.
"Because if we don't she'll probably tail us and eventually find the entrance to Petals' forest," Charlie replied. "I mean, you guys tailed me for long enough during my freshman year at school, so I wouldn't be surprised if Stacie would be like that as well."
"Her school doesn't let out at the same time as ours," Amelia replied.
"And yet she'll probably find a way. Even if it's on a weekend when we had already planned on traveling there," Charlie said.
Stacie couldn't help but smirk at that statement. She probably could do that too.
"So, you think we should tell her, huh?" Beth mused. "Should we ask Ralph, Wes, and Tim? I mean, they're part of this as well."
"If they have a problem with it, I'll deal with it," Charlie said.
"Why now?" Amelia asked.
"I'm getting tired of not having anyone we can talk about with Petals, her forest, other worlds, and even our magic," Charlie said. "Sometimes when I've gone to bed I've thought about telling my parents about all of this, but I did promise you guys to keep it secret, but now Stacie found out on her own because we were careless."
"How about we talk about this in the morning, okay?" Beth said suddenly.
"Wanting to get out of this, huh?" Hannah remarked.
"No," Beth said yawning. "If we continue this much longer, I'll fall asleep during it."
"Sounds good," Amelia said. "Besides, we can get Tim's, Ralph's, and Wes' opinion on the matter more easily."
"That's a thought," Beth remarked as she got her blanket spread out on the floor next to her pillow. Then she turned to Stacie. "Care to sleep with us? Might be easier than going back to your own room."
Stacie smiled. She couldn't wait to tell her friends about this. She was allowed to join in her older sister's sleepover. Learning about magic and unicorns was almost better than this.
Stacie quickly made her way under Beth's blanket with her sister, and suddenly her eyes were starting to feel her eyes ready to go to sleep.
Charlie wasn't happy when she woke up. Primarily because everyone else was up and they were sometimes tripping over her, or sometimes stepping on her. Hannah tripping over Charlie at one point is what woke her up.
The worst part was the fact that she was having a great dream. It had started getting a little weird, but it wasn't weird enough for her to start disliking the dream. Though, it might have gotten really bad, like how some dreams do, but she didn't care. She liked the dream and wanted to stay in it for the time being, but when she woke up, she could tell she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, the movement of everyone else notwithstanding.
So, groaning she began to get up. Though, she kept the blanket wrapped around her as she sat where she had been sleeping, since she didn't have anything to put on at the moment, aside from her dress and she didn't really feel like going to that bother at the moment.
"Nice to see you join the living, Charlie," Amelia said, as she was putting on a shirt.
"Are you sure this is the living?" Charlie asked. "I thought this might be a dream world."
"You mean like Neverwhere?" Hannah asked.
"What?" Charlie had no idea what Hannah was talking about.
"Don't worry about it. Just a literary reference."
Charlie shook her head and just watched her friends move around.
"Not gonna get dressed, Charlie?" Beth asked. "Definitely would be interesting to see you in just your underwear at breakfast."
Charlie scowled at Beth. "It's not like I have anything to put on."
"Just borrow some of my clothes," Beth said. "Hannah and Amelia already are."
Charlie was stunned. "I thought they'd just brought a change of clothes over here earlier."
"Nah, we do this from time to time," Hannah said. "Makes it easier to have this planned out, so that we don't have to worry about if we forget to bring a change of clothes."
"The only problem is when the host is a lot bigger or smaller than you are," Amelia said.
"Okay," Charlie said, getting up. She might as well see what options there were.
"Here, I thought you'd like this," Beth said, tossing Charlie a shirt and pair of shorts.
Charlie looked at the shirt. It was a plain light green shirt and the shorts were an aqua blue. She shrugged and started putting them on. It wasn't the worst outfit she'd have worn, and wasn't that bad in her opinion. Though, she had a few outfits that she thought were terrible themselves, which she still wore on occasion.
"So, what's the plan for today?" Charlie asked once she had the clothes on.
"Well, first, we'll get all of you home so you can put your dresses away," Beth said. "Then we'll meet up to discuss the issue that entered this room last night."
"Will we discuss it on the phone or will we meet in person?" Charlie asked. "Or will we just communicate with our magic?"
"Not so loud!" Hannah hissed. "We didn't know Stacie was up last night, but now Beth's other siblings are definitely awake right now."
Charlie just shook her head. "Whatever," she said, thinking back to when she'd said that it might be a good idea to let Stacie in on the whole magic and magical world thing. She had to admit that she was a little surprised she said that herself. Though, it wasn't until that she'd mentioned about how she was tired of having to keep it a secret that she realized she did feel that way. Not so much with her younger sister, but she at least didn't like keeping it from her parents. Although, she did have to admit her parents would not let her go on an expedition for the world with the griffin canyon. Probably not even with them along.
Though, she didn't care if her friends agreed with her or not. She knew what she would need to do. Maybe when everything was said an done she would tell her parents about magic and everything, but not yet. As it is, she just realized that she might need to leave her friends during the expedition, regardless of how they said that they'd accompany her.
If nothing else, the was the dream she'd had that she still couldn't shake that involved Beth dying. While it didn't make her nauseas anymore, it still left her unsettled when she thought too much about it. Whatever it took, she was determined to keep it from happening. Whatever the cost.