Beautiful Scars (A Jack Barakat Fanfic)

3). The "Joys" of school

Stretching, I looked at my appearance in the mirror, my hair was a mess and somehow I had managed to spill what I assume is ketchup my Greenday shirt but I still looked amazing as hell I mean who wouldn't want a piece of me, except maybe everyone.

Fixing my appearance, I heard a muffled noise from the girl's bathroom, on most occasions I would have ignored the noise but I couldn't ignore the distinctive sound of someone crying. Right now I had two courses of action, I could just ignore whoever was crying, or I could find out who it was. I much as my common sense told me that the person didn't want to be known, I still chose the latter because my curiosity got the better.

Standing behind the door, I listened to the person washing up. I couldn't help but feel like a stalker but the desire to know was too great. For what seemed like a painfully long time, I finally heard the door swing open. Waiting until I knew the person would be walking down the hall. I crept out, making use of my sweet ninja skills. Quietly I stuck my head around the corner only to be greeted with the sight of a very familiar black backpack covered in a floral pattern. There was no mistake of who the person was, I could spot that black hair and bag from miles away.

~Nora's POV~

We all have irrational fears, mine just happens to be phone calls. There was nothing worse than that monotone beeping noise my phone created when my mom called. Now in all my years, my mom had never called my cell phone in the middle of school time, in fact, she didn't really even care enough to text me. So when I heard the awful noise coming from my hoodie pocket, I knew something was up. Not really caring about skipping maths, I sneaked away into the girl's toilets that nobody uses, praying that Rian could survive our Math class by himself. Taking a deep breath, I sat on the counter next to the damaged soap dispenser before hitting the answer button. "Hello?" I say, trying to make out the static noise coming from the other end of the phone call.

"Nora honey, do you remember your uncle Ian? Well, he passed away" She spoke with a fake and overly sweet tone. I couldn't help but feel bad, my mom has a lot of siblings, seven to be exact, but I knew that the death would affect her more than she let off.

"Oh," I say out loud before taking a deep breath, I had only met my Uncle Ian once. I felt bad that his death didn't really affect me, he was just another person but his life still mattered. I felt like I should be crying but I couldn't. I didn't even know him; he was just another face at the family reunion but still, he was a guy who had died, so shouldn't I be sad?

"Anyway, your father and I are going to stay with his family for the month. We're leaving as soon as possible.  I know we just got back from visiting Ruby but you should be fine," She continued. There was the point of the call, not to break the news of my uncle dying, it was to tell me that once again they were going away.

My parents aren't bad people. My dad and mom, both coming from poor families worked most of my childhood, to make sure we didn't have to grow up like them. They were constantly going away whether it was for work or for family, leaving me and Ben at home. I knew they were doing it for the best interest of us but I couldn't help but feel my stomach drop as she talked about going away again. Saying goodbye, I clicked the end call button before staring at the cracked tile floors. Some days I wonder if my parents even wanted to have me and Ben, they were always going away, leaving us behind. I knew they loved me but there was a sickly distance forming between my family. I was trying hard to be an alright daughter but sometimes it feels like they aren't good parents, which is stupid, I'm stupid, I shouldn't be angry at the people who gave me this life.

Staring down at the lock-screen of my phone, I looked at a younger picture of Jack, Rian, Alex, and myself from a couple of years ago. I had kept this picture as my lock-screen forever, much to their distaste, Jack had even made a remark on how awful the fashion sense was in the photo but I still didn't change it. The photo reminded me of happier times, I was still happy but the feeling didn't feel as real as in that moment.

We were all sitting underneath an oak tree in my backyard, talking about god knows what. Jack had just made some kind of joke about our old teacher and we were laughing nonstop when my mom decided to take a picture with the new camera she had just bought.

Before I knew it I was crying, hot sticky tears rolling down my cheeks and onto my phone screen. I felt dumb for crying, I had no reason to cry, but that just made it worse. I couldn't stop sobbing, I tried rubbing away the tears with my sleeves but it didn't help. I'm a wreck, black messy hair, snot and tears running down my face. A complete and utter useless wreck, I had skipped maths just to cry in some disaster zone of a bathroom.

It took me ages to clean up; I had spent at least ten minutes in front of the mirror practising smiling, putting on a fake mask so no one would know I had been crying. I just needed the mask to hold for a little longer so I could skip the last few periods of school, I wasn't planning on sticking around in case I had another stupid outbreak of tears. Pushing open the toilet door, I wandered out making sure nobody was in the hallway. The bell hadn't rung to signal lunch yet, so I should manage to get by without meeting any people.

In all my years of high-school, I knew that the best way to get out of school is to pretend you know what you're doing. That's how I walked straight passed my principle and into the car park. Sitting in my beat up car, I sent Jack a text saying I wasn't feeling well and was going home. That being a total lie, there was no way in hell I was going home to my parents and I wasn't feeling sick. Instead, I was planning on going back to the Hitchhikers ditch and forget about everything for awhile.