Ambrosia

Chapter Three

Imagine complete blackness. A rare occurrence, found in perhaps a distant deep cave in a remote Himalayan valley or deep in the Amazon rainforest. Your eyes strain to see something, anything, however insignificant, just to reassure yourself that you are in fact still able to see. Blindness is my worst fear.

Then comes the drowning. You can't breathe, no matter how hard your lungs strain and burn for a sweet gasp of air. Your chest is constricted and trapped and you can't get out. Voices then start in their lunatic manner.

But tonight, one stands out. Gabriel's voice drifts into my nightmare in its clear turquoise wisps. I can't quite make out what it is saying but it hurts less to focus on his husky, gravelly tones, soothing me gently.

I wake up drenched in sweat but not screaming for the first time in 2 months. Progress, even if it's small. I clamber out of my positively sweat soaked steaming bed in disgust and scramble to the bathroom, glancing at the ornate hall clock on the way. 4am, two hours more sleep than last night. Fantastic progress, Ambrosia, five hours of sleep! Practically hibernation for me.

I throw off my cotton nightie and step into the shower. The hot water beats the tension from my neck. I wash thoroughly and clamber out into a fluffy towel.

In the mirror, a sorry sight looks back at me. A long, tangled mess of blonde hair hangs thick over my shoulders and down to my waist, framing a face filled with overly large grey eyes, complete with my signature bags of course. A turned up nose leads to my lips that are nothing special, very boldly red if nothing else. They are turned down in a serious grimace at the moment.

A bony neck leads to an almost flat chest, overly long arms and gangly long legs. Sighing, I drag a comb through my tatted hair and begin to blow dry it. And I attempt to silence the cycle of thoughts that have been spinning in my head since last night.

What had I done? How was that even possible? You can't just hear someone's thoughts, physically that is impossible. Is this the next level of my crazy freak voice disease, some sort of a mind reading? Or just me hallucinating on lack of sleep?

That aside, what was Gabriel saying, thinking, whatever. He's my best friend for Petes sake, he can't just decide to love me whenever he feels like it. And he has the most hot assed freaking goddess of a girlfriend in our entire school, even if she is Satan's spawn. Every boy and most of the girls in Breenwood high are practically in love with her, from her perfectly wavy, glossy blonde locks to her tanned, curvaceous body. And to think we used to be best friends back in the day.

It was all dear Papa Theodores' idea that I would become friends with Jefferson Brookes' daughter, back when we were in elementary school. How convenient that his biggest client had a daughter in his daughter's class. At every business function, every thanksgiving and every party we were forced together for 10 years. And the crazy thing was, we loved it. There were a big gang of us "rich kids" at these functions back in the day, and Madeline was the ruler, with me her partner in crime.

We would pull pranks, do dares and attempt to sabotage the party, all while galvanising our friendship with weekly slumber parties. The thing was, we got each other back then. Both our parents drunken fools, with Theo and Jefferson out to secure some deals and Katerina out flaunting all she had, while Madeline's mother, Julia, was using these parties to facilitate her many affairs.

It was when we were both 15 that it all went wrong. Madeline was changing, I could tell. It had been happening for a while. It wasn't just physically, although boy did puberty hit her hard, leaving her with a figure even Kylie Jenner would kill for, but it was her personality. She always loved to be in the spotlight, to be the main focus, loved and adored, but her change in looks seemed to magnify it even further.