I keep imagining what my life might be like if I grew up in that big jungle house surrounded by witches. I wonder if I’d have ended up like Celeste. It makes getting up and going to school nearly intolerable.

Neal and Julian showed up at the school today looking like total creeps in their old ass car.

Neal rolled down his window to talk to me. Across the parking lot, Tilly disentangled herself from Erica and Simon and loped across the asphalt to meet us.

“Listen,” Neal said. “We’re trying to flush out these people and we need you two to stay safe, alright? Just stay in tonight.”

“What’s going on?” Tilly called.

“They want us to stay in tonight,” I said. “Apparently they’re trying to flush out these cultists.”

“How will you do it?” Tilly asked.

“That would be my job,” Celeste said from the back seat. That was the first I noticed her. She didn’t look particularly thrilled to be there.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

She shrugged a shoulder and put one bare foot on the back of Neal’s headrest. “Magic, I guess.”

I wish I was there watching Celeste do magic instead of at home typing this stupid blog post. I’m tired. I’m hungry. Apparently I’m dying. Tilly dropped me off after school, but then she had to go home to see her parents. Apparently they’ve been bugging her for spending too much time with me.

Staying in is unbearable. I’m going insane hahaha I’ve been pacing around all evening. I want to be out there with the Hawthornes and Celeste doing cool magic to figure out who’s in that damn cult. If Sheriff Marlow is involved I want to know about it. They’re out there trying to finally find them and I’m sitting around in my bedroom watching The X-Files. I’m not 12 I should be out there

Tilly just called me. They were having family game night and her dad got a phone call and he abruptly left. Her mom was pissed. Tilly told me this story totally cool and casually but then she started crying. It isn’t like definitive evidence or anything, you know? Just because he unexpectedly left the house doesn’t mean he was responding to whatever show Celeste and the Hawthornes were putting on. I mean he is a cop.

Still. I just would really prefer that we get some solid proof that my girlfriend’s (girlfriend? Idk we haven’t talked about it) dad isn’t involved with my best friend’s disappearance. Like that seems fair right