That hope died with the loud crack of gunfire. Lydia didn't even see Allison until she was dropping to her knees, clutching at handfuls of blood that seeped through the cracks of her fingers. Allison's eyes swept over the three of her friends in one desperate moment. When they briefly settled on Lydia, she screamed. Allison's legs gave out from underneath her. She hit the ground, and Scott and Lydia followed on either side of her.
Allison wasn't moving. She wasn't breathing. She was...
Lydia shrugged off her jacket and shoved it into Scott's hands. She wordlessly guided them to press down over all that blood.
She locked her hands together.
"And you are my new best friend."
Center of the chest. Two and a half inches. Thirty times, one hundred a minute. Chin up, two breaths. Nothing. Center of the chest. Two and a half inches. Thirty times, one hundred a minute. Chin up, two breaths..
Nothing.
Allison's big brown eyes were still wide open.
Someone standing behind her was saying Lydia's name, but she didn't hear it. She just kept saying Allison's name, over and over until there was only one thing she had left to try. She begged. She hunched over her friend's lifeless body, and she begged for her to get up until she couldn't speak through the tears. Nothing. Nothing.
Her hands framed Allison's face and Lydia pressed her forehead to her's. She wailed, and wailed, and every sob that tore through her body hollowed Lydia Martin out, and made room for something else.
The wails were cut alarmingly short with no warning, and the trembling of Lydia's shoulders subsided. She sat up slowly, her eyes blank and locked on Allison's, even as she steadily reached for the jacket that was bunched up and bloody on Allison's stomach. She didn't regard Allison with pain, and there was nothing on Lydia's face that indicated that she had just lost her best friend in the whole world. Whatever made Lydia the person that her friends knew, had taken the backseat to an entirely different part of her. She rose to her feet and turned away from Scott and Stiles. The jacket hung loosely in her hands, dripping with blood until Lydia began to pull it on, one sleeve after the other with an eerie calm. Reaching into her pocket, Lydia drew the pocket knife she had always kept on hand. She looked it over as if she had never seen it before, but she opened it with ease. The steel flashed bright in the moonlight, and a calm, quiet voice barely followed the sound of the knife flicking open.
"Pick her up. Follow me."
Without another word, Lydia put one foot in front of another. She knew where to go.