Ryder

twenty two

If there was one thing life had taught me in the long run, it was that life itself wasn't always sunshine and rainbows.

There may be a few nice moments where strange, mysterious boys with ocean blue eyes would knock into your life, overwhelm you with roses and sunflowers and cute little kittens, but those were just that. Moments. Tiny paper butterflies, torn and then folded. They blew away eventually.

And they took all the happiness with them.

Because then came the bad moments, which weren't really many since all it usually took was one bad circumstance to yank me away from my own safe bubble of happiness.

I'd been rather accustomed to it ever since I was young. I wouldn't say that I remember much about my early childhood--the time when my mother and father were still together and hadn't yet divorced. I didn't remember much from that time because I didn't think anything back then had been worth remembering.

I do however remember moments (good and bad, both) from after my parents divorced and after my dad left our home to go search for a new, better life without my mom and me in it. He'd left me with my mother and that was the first ever bad moment my childhood self could've remembered.

My mom didn't like certain things about me. She didn't like that from an early age, I tended to use both of my hands to write, could write with my left hand just as much as I could write with my right hand, color sheets of papers my uncles brought me on rare occasions with both hands because that was easier. Easier didn't mean normal, though. My mom didn't think half of the things I did were normal. She didn't like that I spent so much time watching that one channel on our old tv where they broadcasted live orchestras from all around the world. She didn't like that I still kept my dad's given violin in my cupboard and played it every time she was out of the house.

My mom disliked a lot of things about me, and whenever she reminded me about them, I placed those memories under the list of all 'bad moments' that had hurt enough to make me remember. One and two and three until I was just as sure as her that I disliked all those things about myself too.

Then came my stepfather Andy with his two kids, Alyssa and Matthew (who was just a baby back then), and that--if not a big one--had still been a good change for me. Andy treated me like his own daughter. Andy never told me that he didn't like certain things about me. Andy was always just...there for me. And even then if my mother pointed out one thing or two that she wanted me to fix about myself, I only just nodded and did it because life was easier now that I had a stepsister, a big sister, with whom I could share anything with.

And then one day Alyssa came home for dinner and she had her new boyfriend with her. That's when I met Michael for the first time. And what followed him were a series of bad moments.

I tried not to think about them. Just like I tried not to think about the time I'd been wasted at a high school party, late at night, and stumbled into a back alley when I'd just been about to throw up only to find my cousin, Fraser, laying dead at the far end. Murdered.

Just like I tried not to think of that time I'd stupidly and willingly embraced danger with open arms and had ended up in a dark, underground cellar for days, had been held captive by those men in white coats who'd asked me things, forced me to tell them things, my name my name my name, with no way out.

Ryder had saved me. His blue eyes had held mine amidst the all consuming darkness around me. He'd held me, I couldn't remember much from there but I remembered that too well, and he'd gotten me out of there. That had been a good moment at least.

But like I said, they never lasted.

Because when I came back to my dorm after the short late night trip with Ryder, smiling and feeling so incredibly happy--actually happy in what felt like ages--the very first thing I noticed was the wilting, almost dead rose on Brooke's side table.