I sat on my bed and stared at the wooden boards of the roof. A small window on the peaked ceiling casted a square of light on my chest and I felt the warmth of the sun through the thin fabric of my shirt.

I had spent a couple of hours sketching and painting things from the camping trip when I got home; images that I couldn't seem to get out of my head. First, I had used watercolours to paint a raw picture of a lake with canoes in the distance. Then I drew the campfire, the glowing embers leaping and twirling in a fiery dance. I had drawn the silhouette of boy and a girl leaning against each other, but it wasn't until I had shaded her flaming red hair and his thin stature that I realised what I was doing. I put put away my pencils after that.

Now I was lying on my bed, contemplating whether or not I should take the nap I knew I would later regret. I ended up deciding against it. Tomorrow was the last day of school before Summer break and soon I'd be getting all the sleep I wanted.

I was wrong about that.

I heard the front door open and I sat up as the footsteps of my mother echoed through the house. I got up off of my bed and walked downstairs, almost nervously. I made my way to the kitchen and saw my mum placing a couple of grocery bags on the counter.

"Hey mum." I said and she turned around abruptly with a small yelp.

"Jesus Christ, Lara. You scared the shit out of me." She held her hand to her chest. "What are you doing here?"

"Uh I came back from camp today. Didn't you see my note?" I asked, sitting down at the table.

"Oh yeah, right. That note." she said, brushing her blonde hair behind her ears. "Thought you'd be gone longer, I guess."

"Hoped I'd be gone longer, you mean." I say.

"Don't give me that tone, Lara." she sighed and rubbed the inner-corners of her eyes. "Look, I've had a long day and I don't want to deal with your crap right now, okay?"

"Gee, I'm sorry. You know, after being away for a week I thought you'd be happier to see me."

"I am happy Lara. I'm just tired, okay?"

I placed my bandaged arm on the table and she looked at it, as if offended. "You're gonna have to take me to the hospital, ma."

"Bloody hell. Do you know how much this is going to cost? I can't afford to pay for this shit!" she exclaimed, turning her back on me to place items in the fridge.

"Yeah I'm fine, mum. Thanks for asking!" I replied. "Oh and I don't have any money, so I think you have to pay."

She turned to look at me with an eyebrow raised. "You didn't use the list I gave you?"

"The list of guys I should fuck? Of course I didn't!" I replied. "But I did get fifty dollars, which is more than you deserve." I passed her a fifty dollar note that Patrick had given me. I kept the another twenty hidden in my back pocket.

She sighed in frustration and combed her manicured fingers through her hair. "I try and do this one good thing for you, and you act all ungrateful about it. I don't understand why you're making this so difficult!"

"You think you're doing me a good thing? Mum, trying to make me have sex with guys for money is not a good thing! Just because you're trapped in this business doesn't mean you have to drag me into it as well. I already have a bad enough reputation and I don't want to make the rumours truer than they already are. Please, just understand. I don't want to do this."

"Oh, so this is about reputation now? I didn't think you were so shallow."

I groaned in frustration. "No, this isn't about my reputation! I have friends, you know? And I really like them. Being a prostitute is not something you do to keep or make friends, mum. Especially when they're of the male species. Please, just lay off me."

She sighed for the millionth time and gave me a tired look. "Look, Lara. Let's just talk about this later. You're obviously tired from camp and not in the right mindset to think rationally about things. Here, take this cash and pay one of our neighbours to take you to the hospital. I'm fucking exhausted and I honestly just need you gone right now."

I glared at her as she passed me back the note I had given her. I took it and turned my back, leaving the house without word.

- - -

"Again, thank you so much for taking me, Mr Denbrough. I know you're probably busy with work." I said to Bill's dad as we drive away from the hospital. My arm was now in bandages after getting eighteen stitches. Eighteen.

"No problem, Lara. I'm glad you're all fixed up." he replied. I saw him glance at me briefly in the rear-view mirror. I was sitting in the back seat with Bill who had been awfully quiet this whole time. I didn't know how to talk to him.

"So, Bill.." I started, and he turned to look at me with a blank expression. "You excited for Summer?"

"Yeah, I g-g-guess." he replied. "Our art assignment is d-due tomorrow, y-you know."

"Oh sh-" I stopped myself, taking a quick look at Zach Denbrough. "Oh sugar. We've barely even started."

"Yeah, I know. That's n-n-not our f-fault, though." he said and I nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, Patrick is a bit of a pain in the ass, isn't he?" I said.

"B-b-but you like that. You like him." Bill replied, looking away. My stomach lurched. Surely Bill wasn't... No, of course not. He'd been all over Beverly lately, barely paying any attention to me.

"I guess.. I don't know. Look, if you have any spare time when we get back, do you want to blow out this project? If we take some photos before it gets dark, I reckon I could get the artsy stuff done by the end of tonight."

"S-s-sounds good." he replied and we spend the rest of the car ride home in a slightly less awkward silence.

- - -

"Quick, take it now!" I yelled as the spider darted across Bill's desk. Bill held a large camera in his hands and triggered the flash clumsily. The bright light seemed to startle the spider even more and it jumped onto the hardwood floor and scuttled under the bed.

"Let's hope it's a good one." I said as Bill placed the polaroid on the table.

"I think it is." Bill replied and set the camera down before ducking his head under the bed. He looked around a couple of times, but shook his head and came back up. "I c-c-can't see it anyw-w-where. It's gone."

"Well I hope you're not afraid of spiders. It's probably going to turn up when you least expect it." I told him and took a seat on his bed. Instead of going back to my house when we had arrived back home, Bill invited me over to his to work on our project. After what felt like ages of coming up with no ideas for the assignment, Bill had spotted a large spider hanging on his curtains over his desk. We had taken numerous blurry photos of it before Bill realised we only had a single film left. Hopefully this one actually turned out alright.

"Isn't everyone afraid of sp-sp-spiders?" Bill asked with a slight smile. I chuckled.

"Not me, Big Bill. There are way scarier bugs. Take wasps, for example."

"Wuh-wuh-wasps aren't scary. Just stay out of th-their way and they w-won't hurt you."

I shook my head. "That's the same for spiders though. They're way more passive than wasps. How many people have been bitten by a spider before? The numbers are probably way less than the number of people who have been stung by a wasp."

"T-t-true." Bill replied. "I think the p-p-picture might be ready now."

I stood up and grabbed the polaroid, seeing that the picture had in fact fully developed. "Hey, this is actually really good!" I exclaim, showing Bill the photo. "It's still a little bit blurry, but the legs are all spread out which will be really easy to work with. What do you think?"

"Yeah, it's g-g-great." Bill says with a smile. "It b-b-better b-be worth it though, I wasted all of D-dad's film."

"I hope he isn't too mad. If he is, let me know and I'll pitch in to help you buy some more. I better get going now, though." I said and tucked the photo in the pocket of my jeans. "I'll need to start on it now if we want to get it done by tomorrow."

"Okay, see you later. G-good luck." Bill said and stood up and opened the door for me.

"I'll need it." I chuckled as I left the room, carefully closing the door behind me.

- - -

A wave of relief swept through me as I placed my paintbrush down. It was 11pm and it had taken me a solid three hours to complete the painting.

After pasting the polaroid down on a thick piece of paper, I had painted over it with a dark grey paint and had scraped it away with the back of a paintbrush while the paint was still wet. The image of the spider peaked through underneath. I wasn't satisfied with how it looked so I took out more colours of paint and ended up getting a bit carried away.

I was happy with the end result, but also extremely disturbed. I had gone over the spider's head with red paint and drew two thin, black eyes, and then I had painted what looked to be a mouth underneath it; a wide grin with bright red lips and sharp teeth. I didn't even know where I gotten the idea from. It was as if something else had put this image in my mind. There was a gap in my memory that I'd never experienced before and I struggled to remember the last half an hour I had been working on the project. I shook it off and went to sleep.

It wasn't until I awoke the next morning AND noticed the small paper boat above the image of the spider, that I knew wasn't there last night, I realised maybe my instincts were right.