Skin Deep (Featured - Completed)

Chapter Eighteen--Cheap Perfume

Oh, how I wish I had made different choices, John. I love you, sweetie, and I'm sorry that you got stuck with such a horrible mom. I know that I snapped at you, didn't take care of you, abused you. Now, I've finally let myself come down enough to write this before I go right back up. Don't let yourself do it, Johnny. You were such a beautiful and talented child, before we realized your disease. Nonetheless, I wish I could change things. But I can't.

Love,

Malia Montgomery

The information is hard to swallow all at once. I stare at the soiled and crumpled piece of paper resting in my lap, unable to cause any damage and yet destroying all at once. What am I supposed to do with this? This obviously means that my mom died. It's sickening to know that the only reason she came down from her drugs was to write this for me. Plus, how she said she thought I was worth something before she discovered my disease.

I never really knew my mom as a person. She was a distant figure who would collapse next to me on the floor at four in the morning. She was the one who cursed into the phone at six. She was the one who would often trip over me in broad daylight, too busy snorting cocaine and smoking cigarettes to bother. I still remember it now. Her nails were bright red, clutching the bulky phone with the chord stapled to the floor. Screaming and screaming about me, my mind, her own self, trying to convince someone that we were fine.

Oh, were we ever the opposite of fine.

~~~

I'm not even surprised when I wake up in Josephine's hospital room. This flashback was coming soon and fast. Faintly, I remember stumbling blindly through the hospital's corridors to get here, painfully aware that I was trapped in a flashback this time. I wonder how long it will take me to finally stop living in the past.

What startles me the most is when I see Josephine's bright, green eyes staring directly at me. Illuminated by a hint of moonlight, she looks like a ghost from a horror movie. She's sitting straight up in her bed, the starchy gown stretched across her bony shoulders, and staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes. A stupid beanie that Jenna bought her is covering her surgical scars, but it doesn't hide the battered bruises around her eyes and stitches creeping across her right temple.

For a second, I'm convinced that she has died and she really is a ghost, still possessing her body for the last second. Complete fear and horror is rising up my throat when she finally mouths the word, "Wait."

I close my eyes and take deep breaths for ten seconds before slowly opening them. I'm not sure if I'm really trapped in a living nightmare and this is the last straw. If someone wants to kill me on the inside, just show me Josephine like this.

"I have good news." She signs this, her arms stiff, awkward pauses between each word. The fist in my gut slowly wrenches around and I'm still not sure if she is alive.

"John, what's your problem?" She finally relaxes a little and my shoulders slump. She's Josephine.

"Jo, I thought you were dead..." I run for the bed and bury my face in her shoulder, still shaken from Malia's letter and then that scare with her.

She signs against my arm , "Honey, you can't get rid of me that easily." And I laugh, a bitter and malicious one.

"Jo, Jen might have Anlogo." I look up at her with tears staining my face and I can literally see the blood drain. "I mean, I'm just assuming. There was an issue with her in the restaurant. She threw up, passed out, the works."

She yanks my arm until I finally climb up next to her. "No. You're joking. What? Tell me what happened."

"We were eating dinner with your mom and she just started throwing up. Before that, she was getting stressed so easily...sweating and shaking all the time. After that, she passed out--" Having Josephine next to me and awake is helping, but there's only so many things I can take within a short time. "But she's not mute! She physically talked to me earlier today!"