Evergreen Everleigh - The Wattys 2020

Chapter Thirteen - Come Fly With Me

A/N: Welcome back everyone - this chapter is where we start seeing some development with one of my favorite characters, Sweet Pea! I hope you enjoy! Jen x

TW: This chapter makes mention of self-harm related activities, but does not directly show any self-harm. Nonetheless, reader discretion is always advised! X

Chapter Thirteen

Come Fly with Me

Before all this mess, I did normal people things. I went to school and even had friends.

Well, a friend. Singular. Her name was Anabelle, with one 'n' and two 'l's. She had red hair like fire and almost yellow, vibrant cat-like eyes.

 I managed to successfully avoid thinking of Anabelle until Sweet Pea asked me to be her friend. She asked like we were four and met when our hands touched as we both reached for the same spade in the sandbox. Friendships hadn't been that easy in life for a long time, but Sweet Pea never seemed to have gotten that particular memo of growing up. I told her I would be her friend because it seemed like a yes or no thing. There were options when Sweet Pea asked. With Anabelle, however, it had been an I-never-had-a-choice kind of thing.

Anabelle and I didn't bond over a love of sandcastles. Instead, we agreed on one thing – the only thing that mattered. We both felt that the world was better off when we weren't in it. So together, we tried to take up as little space in the world as possible. It was the 'together' part of our friendship that made all that living bearable. For a while, at least.

I think all of this in a mere moment when I see myself in the mirror for the first time in the two weeks since I left the hospital. The bathroom ceiling is adorned with brightly coloured ribbons that hang down so far that they touch the tip of my head as I consider the mirror.

Red, blue, green, yellow and all the shades in-between on dyed threads that look like watercolour rainbows. There are black speckled dots on the corners of the mirror and droplets of water cling to the lower half from when I washed my hands.

I raise a palm to my swollen cheeks. One, then another, to my pale skin. The skin seems to puff out between my fingers, white dough, bubbling under pressure. I glance downwards, all the way from the blue pooling of thin skin under my eyes to my collarbones. My stomach does not sink, as I had expected. Instead of an echo forms inside of me that radiates through all my bones, causing me to vibrate and shake. My vision blurs so much that I can't see my thighs and I am grateful.

Suddenly, because I had unlocked the mental cage where she rested, Anabelle floods, unbidden into this moment of weakness. If she was here, she would press a hand to the silver locket around her neck and smile like sunshine to me and only me. That smile would be enough to get me through the day. I would hold my matching locket and be okay again like I was never broken in the first place. They were engraved with songbirds, our favourite animals. But now, I am alone, my mother took my locket away and I have to cope like Everleigh would. The separate Everleigh, not the girl whose fate was conjoined with Anabelle's.

I crouch low with my head in my heads, pulling on my straw-like hair that is still knotted and chaotic. I squeeze my skull, wanting to enact pain. This realisation, that what I seek is pain, is a flame in my mind that is drenched in fuel. Before I know it, I am on my hands and knees, opening every cupboard I see, pulling out the contents onto the floor and manically rifling through them. After a few short minutes I come up short, so I rest back on my knees and press my nails to my ear lobes and squeeze my piercing until it bleeds a little. I should have known better than to think that a house focused on recovery would give me what I needed to feel okay in this moment.