Little Sister

The Hellfire Club

The morning started off like most school mornings, students coming from left and right cars and busses pulling into the parking lot. Highschoolers were gathering up in groups to chat with one another, middle schoolers were rushing into school, elementary kids being walked to school hand in hand with their parents, one pair standing out the most.

"What are we gonna do when schools out?" The little girl asked. Her little hand remained wrapped around Max's fingers.

"I don't know. What do you wanna do?" Max asked, she looked down at Bailey, watching her short red hair bounce as she skipped at her side.

"Can we go to the park?"

"Don't you think it's a little chilly out for that?" She raised her brows at the child.

"It's not any colder in the trailer, I think I'll live." Max scoffed and rolled her eyes.

They lived in a new place now. It was located in a trailer park full of druggies and weirdos and just flat out grumpy people who hated their lives. The two of them were squeezed into a small trailer with Max's mom and step-dad. After Billy died, so much money went to his funeral, after that there were crazy amounts of expenses going towards all of Max's surgeries and stitches, what didn't help was that her step-dad quit his job, he now lives out his days getting drunk or going out to strip clubs while his wife works two jobs.

"I'll see you later alright?" Max said.

"Yeah." The little girl said. She hugged Max then turned walking off inside the school. Max watched the little girl, her smile slowly fading. As happy as the little one was, there were still so many things wrong in Max's universe.

She inhaled deeply then slipped her headphones on, switching on her music. She had been listening a lot lately, she's been dealing with blacking out way more but the music has been helping. Bailey came up with the idea a few weeks ago while Max was in the middle of a breakdown, it helped calm her. Ever since she's tried to listen as much as possible, in hopes it could help prevent another one, but after what she had done a few nights ago, she was losing hope.

As she came close to the entrance of the school she was startled by someone calling her name. She pulled her headphones off and turned to see Ms. Kelley, her school counselor. Max wasn't willingly seeing the lady, but after she went off on two guys in the school courtyard at the beginning of the year, the principle thought it'd be best to get Max some kind of help. But so far, Max hasn't opened up enough for her to get the real help that she needed.

"Where were you yesterday?" Ms. Kelley asked approaching the teen.

"Oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot it was Thursday." She pushed, it was clear she was ready to leave this conversation behind already.

"I'd like to see you today. Come straight after lunch okay?" Max flashed her brows at the lady and turned, slipping her headphones back on.

She could care less about going, she didn't feel like the conversations her and Ms. Kelley had were really going anywhere, especially since she was continuing to get worse. Sure, she's opened up to her about certain things, but there are things she doesn't feel safe sharing, and there are some things that she can't tell at all, not wanting to put the innocent woman at risk.

After stuffing her things in her locker she made her way to the gym with the rest of the students, majority seems rather excited about the event, but Max couldn't see what was so cheering about watching a bunch of popular kids scream and yell into a microphone on the gym floor while the band blasted their music in the backround, nothing about it was exciting. She wanted to go ahead and skip but she knew that if she were caught walking in the halls again she'd reach her third strike and end up with detention which she couldn't do again, she had to take care of Bailey, detention was only taking away from that.