Bad Enough for You (Currently Editing)

I Looked Like a Low-Class Hooker

If you direct your attention to the right, you'll find the cover (this will most likely change by the time it's actually posted) and the title for the prequel to this story. I'm still working out the kinks, but it will be written in Georgia's POV and will take place during her senior year of high school. It'll mostly revolve around the apartments and characters like Angeline, Bradley, etc. This probably won't be posted until sometime this summer...Anyways, enjoy this chapter love. No Eli, but we're going to dig deeper into the story beyond the romance.

32.] I Looked Like a Low-Class Hooker

I had always loved the days when I came home from school to find Georgia leaning against the island in the kitchen, a bowl of fruit on the table before her and her cell phone in her hand. Her hair would be tied up away from her face no matter how many hours she had spent that morning trying to tame her curls. She would still be wearing the day’s makeup, black smudges of eyeliner beneath her eyes. Georgia would never be sitting, but with her back to the door, shoulders pulled forward as she let the day’s weight pull her down.

Those days were few and far between. It wasn’t very often that I found Georgia there. Most days I’d come running through the door, hoping to hear stories of what high school was like only to find the kitchen empty, Georgia nowhere to be found. By the middle of my eighth grade year, I was used to this, knowing that if Georgia wasn’t off rehearsing for the school musical, she was most likely with her boyfriend. At least that’s where I assumed she was.

Now that I knew the truth behind all of it, I was constantly questioning Georgia’s whereabouts at the few important times of my life. She never seemed to be home, always doing whatever it was that she claimed the drama club to be up to or “studying” with one of her friends. Thinking back on those moments when I came running through the door, excited to tell her about my day, I realized that Georgia was most likely never where she said she was.

The hardest thing about all of this was that I didn’t even know if I could trust Georgia anymore. The more I thought about the past, how the pieces that had never made sense before were suddenly clicking due to my own experiences at the apartments, I came to the conclusion that Georgia really had managed to fool us all. I couldn’t just assume she was at the apartments, either. Her true whereabouts all of those years was up in the air, a mystery that I would most likely never solve.

I didn’t want to think of my older sister as a liar. I most certainly didn’t want to think of her as someone who would purposely keep me in the dark. Part of me wondered if the only reason she had given me the key to the apartment, the key to changing my life, was because she felt bad for all of those times I had covered for her, watching as she climbed down the tree in the backyard, eyes meeting mine through the glass of the library windows.

I thought I knew my sister better than anyone. All of those moments that we had shared out on the cliff began to feel like a fading dream. I could remember them, but the details and even the feelings were all beginning to fade. I could no longer reach out and pull them back. It was like the tacos that had been kicked off of the cliff that day with Eli. Once they fell, there was no bringing them back.

This feeling of betrayal had been sitting in the pit of my stomach for quite some time. I owed Georgia a lot for what she had done for me thus far. She had given me an opportunity to explore things that I would have never thought to do on my own. She had given me the strength to stand up to our father, to try and fight for what I thought was right.

There was a flaw in all of this, though. With all of the time that I had been spending away from home, I had begun to blur the line between good and bad. I no longer could recall what the right decision would be. I wasn’t taking the time to consider my options, to actually think about the future. Instead, I had given myself this great power to tell people what I felt and what I intended to do. I didn’t think of consequences and I most certainly didn’t think of what my end goal of this summer was.