Making You See

Chapter Two - Get Over It

Her apartment was cold and damp. It was suppose to be temporary, while she searched for a new place. A getaway from her mum and step dad. The getaway she never really wanted, until her mother remarried to an abusive man. She would have happily still been living with her mum, on her own, in her cozy, nicely decorated, two storey house. Instead she's stuck in a dump. Somewhere no one wants to hang out in, not even the person who owns it.

The wallpaper, which she was clearly forbidden to change or replace, was peeling off of the walls, curling round itself. The wall underneath was as grubby a pile of dirty dishes that had been sitting there for months and months on end. She hated it. But it was the best thing she could afford, after unwillingly completely cutting herself off from her parents.

She was sat on the sofa wrapped in a spare blanket, so that she didn't have to touch the actual material. She wasn't being snobby. If you could see it, you would understand her actions. It was disgusting, not fit for someone to live in. What choice did she have?

Lucy's stubborn side took over when it came to her housing. She refused to go to a housing society. She always believed in working for your shelter, not begging or getting it for doing nothing.

She began to scroll through local job advertisements on the phone her mum bought her for her seventeenth Birthday. It was one of the last things she bought her and she wasn't in any hurry to replace it, even though it was almost a year old. She didn't have the spare money, or any money for that matter, there was no way she could replace it.

Just as she clicked on a job she liked the sound of, working in Newlook, her phone screen flashed with an incoming call from her best friend, Victoria. When she answered it, the only thing she could hear were unstoppable sobs coming from her friend's side of the phone call.

"Do you want to come over?" She asked, not expecting an answer, Victoria was crying and when she cried, there was no stopping her unless she was annoyed or distracted.

The phone beeped as the line went dead. Lucy returned to job hunting. The job she'd found looked perfect. Perfect hours, perfect pay, around something she loved, staff discount. What could be wrong about it?

She scrolled further down. 'Must have experience.' She let out an exasperated sigh and tossed her phone on the chair beside her. How could one get experience if no one would hire her and give her the experience. This job loop thing was impossible to get into.

A calm knock on the broke her trail of thoughts. She jumped up to answer it, guessing it was a very upset Victoria.

She shuffled into the cold apartment, shivering due to the extreme temperature change. Victoria hadn't said a single word. She just kept biting the sleeve of her jacket. Lucy nodded at the sofa for her to sit on and she didn't move an inch. She just kept nibbling away at the sleeve like a mouse and cheese. She was acting weird, something was very wrong.

Assuming it was the dirty sofa that prevented Victoria from sitting down, Lucy spread the blanket she had been wrapped in across the whole of the two seater sofa, covering up the grim it naturally had. Again, she didn't move. Lucy walked over a threw her arms around her best friend, pulling her into a hug. Reluctantly, Victoria hugged her back, sobbing into her shoulder.

"What's wrong?"

"Lucy, do you remember Jon?" She asked, trying to hold her tears back in.

Lucy shook her head, confused, she was crying because of some guy she'd never spoken about before.

"You must! He was crazy about you Luce," she explained, shocked at her lack of memory.

She shrugged, "I don't know what you're talking about."