Lies (a Dan Smith/BΔSTILLE fanfic)

Chapter two

"I find you, Monica Harries, guilty of five cases of theft, I hereby sentence you to a fine of Three thousand pounds. Case dismissed." 

My world came crashing down around me at the sound of a judges gavel hitting the table, my heart broke at the sight of my mother sobbing into my father's chest from where they sat on the sidelines, my visions of a perfect future had been demolished by a lack of money and a lack of willpower, and all because of a few tins of food and a watch.

_

We got the bus home because, even though I had landed us an impossible amount of money to pay off, we felt too weak to walk. 

I stared out of the window, avoiding eye contact with mum and dad in the fear that they'd start shouting at me about it, but they knew better than that, they just sat quietly, accepting their fate. 

Accepting their daughter who they had given up everything for who had just single handedly ruined their lives. 

I chewed on the inside of my cheeks, my elbow resting beside the murky window of the bus, propping my chin up with my hand. 

I gazed around gormlessly. Not many people were on the shakey bus, which wasn't surprising really. Just an eldrly woman with a small dog sitting beside her handbag on the ground, a skinny and unhealthy looking boy who could be no older than fifteen, a small girl with blonde hair tied up into bunches high on her head with pink ribbons fastening the style and her tired looking mother of about thirty five who was slowly rocking her crying baby. 

A bald, heavily tattooed, beefy middle aged man came and sat next to me on the practically empty bus.

Usually I would have told him to clear off but I said nothing, mum and dad exchanged worried glances for half a second but then their expressions just vanished back to nothingness in no time. 

I dragged my nails across the ruined fluffy felt seat cover that had been soiled by cigarette ash and chewing gum that troubled teenagers had decided to discard from their mouths a long time ago. I tried to avoid the man's icy stare for as long as possible, and I held my breath in the hopes that it would make me shrink away from his towering body.

It was in times like these when loneliness engulfed me like an old friend despite the fact I had a nice enough family and friends who were usually their for me, but nothing ever felt right. I just needed a distraction from it all. 

Again, I looked around the bus and caught eyes with the skinny boy who I had thought looked unhealthy, it was only then that I realised we looked pretty similar weight-wise and I certainly did not look any better than him, with his messy mud coloured hair and dropping, sorrow filled eyes. 

So I attempted smiling at him, just to make things better, just to tell him that whatever was wrong, it was fine, I could relate to it all. 

The bus pulled up at the closest stop to out flat which, luckily, was only around the corner, we got up all together at the same time, like it was a routine or something. 

As I squeezed past the man he pinched my somewhat non-existent bum, I frowned at him but said nothing as I got off the bus grumpily. 

My pretend converse filled up with water as I stepped down from the bus and into a puddle. The water flooded through all of the holes in them and I groaned slightly, but my footwear was the last of my troubles. 

I looked at my parents as they followed me off the bus. 

"Watch the puddle." I said, the first words I had spoken to them since earlier in the day. The nodded politely like we were just strangers and I was a rare friendly one who pointed out the dog crap on the pavement to save the other people's shoes.

Unfortunately, they weren't as quiet as they had been earlier once we were in the safety of our crumbling home which wouldn't be ours in a few more months unless we suddenly became millionaires, and I highly doubted that we'd stay there if we had enough money to buy a house in a nicer area. 

The door slammed, my dad locked all of the seven locks on the door once we were inside, not because he didn't want us to get out, he just didn't want anyone to get in. 

It was another part of our structured, routine-revolved lives. 

"What were you thinking?" his voice filled the silent flat, bouncing off the cold floors and mold-covered walls. Both mum and I jumped a bit, we'd never seen him so angry. But he had a good reason to be. 

"How are you going to fix this, it was hard enough the last time and that was only twenty pounds! We had to live eating cuppa soup for over a month!" the last part was a slight exaggeration. Cuppa soup was too expensive, so we got the cheap smart price one from Asda, and we had pretend pot noodles, also from Asda, and baked beans on cardboard textured toast. But I didn't want to split hairs. 

"I could get a job-" my voice came out much more weak and feeble than I had hoped. 

"How many times have we tried getting jobs? How many times have we realised that it doesn't work?" he slammed his fist into the wall. "I know having kids isn't easy but no one said it was this hard." he turned back to face mum and me, his fist was in a bad way, his knuckles were going blue. 

Mum's face went pale as she noticed the droplets of crimson blood slowly forming on dad's hands. She pursed her lips and walked over to him. She heaved a sigh, like it was difficult to even breathe but she would put in the effort, just for her little, slightly broken family. 

"Well get by, we always do..." she said, forcing a smile as she walked into the kitchen section of our flat and dove in and out of the almost empty drawers as she searched for a first aid kit. 

I couldn't stay in the cold room, watching my mum patch up my dad's hands, I couldn't listen to the sounds of the empty drawers opening and closing whenever someone looked through them, I couldn't watch as my dad's face began to slowly crumble, I couldn't bear watching him cry. 

I took a deep breath, my chest feeling heavy, but I wassn't sure if it was because of all the dust that my lungs were slowly attracting or if it was the vast amount of pain inside that made me want to puke up my heart. Either way I needed to get out. 

I pushed myself away from everything, and walked down the short corridor decorated by old family photographs with slightly ruined metal frames, I struggled into my minimalistic room, decorated with the same pink paint and barbie wall stickers I had chosen when I was about nine when we had happened to run into a bit of money, that was probably the last time we had ever redecorated. 

The noise the door made when I shut it was a tired old creak, almost like the hinges were about to break, which they probably were. Part of me had been tempted to slam it, but there wasn't any point in it. Just a stupid, immature action to hurt my parents even more. 

So instead I just fell to the floor, and at first I did nothing, the initial shock of the hard wooden floor coming into contact with my knees was enough to stun me for a few seconds, then, the tears started to spill from my eyes onto my hand, providing the moisture that the dryness had required for quite some time. 

Everything had fallen down, the buildings I had tried so hard to build up in order to give myself a better future, every qualification, every good mark had been over shadowed by a criminal record. 

I stared at the ceiling and sobbed deeper into my hands. I didn't care if mum and dad could hear me, I knew they could. But they wouldn't mention it. They would never do that. 

I belonged in the land of thieves and ghosts, because I didn't feel alive anymore. I couldn't when I knew what I had done to everyone I loved. 

I couldn't feel alive when I could hear my parents slowly dying through the walls, crying and shouting and throwing things that we no longer deserved at the walls.