Victoria Aspen's life just turned inside out.
She has been forced to move into the house she used to spend every summer in. It's been so long since she was welcomed back into the family and this time... they didn't really have a choice.
But thi...
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Everything gets a little duller as time goes on.
I think it's our eyes, or maybe our hearts, but as you get older the colours begin to fade. There are no longer rich blues or deep reds, only chalky cheeks, not rosy ones, and droopy eyes and swooping skies.
Sometimes there are periods in your life when the people around you just stop laughing. Or perhaps you stop hearing them. But it feels like everyone is making a huge effort to tip toe around you, when all you want to do is scream and break down walls and hug your own mother and feel comfortable in your own skin.
My Aunt May said I was depressed after my mother died. But I had no slit wrists, no suicidal thoughts, no rain clouds above my head. I went outside and smiled and said I'm good thank you, how are you?
I didn't need to do those things when everything got so dull that it just felt like someone shot a dose of morphine into the sky and watched it fall and coat everything.
So of course you feel bad for the girl with red stripes on her wrist and permanent mascara tracks. But do you even notice the one who would choose a desert over a crowd, just because you don't have to be so quiet when you scream?
I thought that everything was going to be alright, but you need to know that it's not always black and white, right and wrong. I was right in a way.
It's the Thursday following the fight between three morons and things are different. Very different. It's like they've changed and swapped around but stayed exactly the same all at once.
Katherine walks with me now, but she seldom makes conversation anymore. Like I said, the laughter has stopped. She's not happy and bubbly and prepared to talk my ear off about her newest shoes anymore. She says that she's forgiven me, but there's always that pause, that hitch in breath that screams that she had to think about it, of course not.
Alex doesn't glare at me anymore. And he doesn't avoid my gaze like I expected him to. Of course, his ego wouldn't allow him to apologise to me directly, but I see it in the small things he does. When he passes me the jam for my toast, how he waits not-so-patiently to drive me to school no matter how many times he threatens to leave.
Dylan doesn't talk to me, doesn't look at me, doesn't even utter my name. I'm unsure how I feel about that. I mean, I know he ended up being a jerk, but there's still a part of me that likes to pretend that he really is that nice guy I thought he was.
And I could live without the rich purples and emerald greens, but it feels like I can't breathe without that particular shade of aquamarine around. He's disappeared out of my life.
Mason hasn't come to school since Monday, and the curtains are always closed in his room. I overheard someone say that he was faking a case of mono, but I still find it hard to sit in my room and hang curtains and decorate my headboard without him standing by, criticizing my undeniably crappy work.
