Under The Skin

C h a p t e r E i g h t e e n

She looks like hell.

Dark circles under both her dull blue eyes, lips chapped to the point of near bleeding, and bruises on both her temple and jaw. Her blonde hair is matted, snarled and clearly greasy. She feels her chin begin to tremble and she looks away from the mirror before she starts to cry. No need to make this any worse than it needs to be.

Painfully and without a seconds haste, she strips herself of the clothes Nick put her in days before and leaves them in a pile on the floor. She takes deep breathes as she reaches a shaking arm out to turn on the shower and waits, arm out into the stream to test the temperature. A temped warm is what she settles on before biting her lip to cover the slight cry that leaves her when she steps into the slightly elevated shower. She closes the sliding plastic door behind her and hands on to lime stained plastic tiled walls.

She presses her hand over her mouth to muffle the building screams on her tongue. Even the room temperature water is causing her back to seize in pain and her legs to nearly give out under neath her. She clings to the built in support handle on the wall and lets the tears flow down her face as she lets the steady stream from the fountain head beat on her body. It takes a few minutes before shes able to tolerate it enough to make herself turn to face the stream. Her hair, nearly to her waist, clings to her body like a second skin as bits of dirt, branch and leaf slide out of it and onto the yellow tinged belly of the shower.

She manages to get a hand off the wall and runs her hand through her hair and scalp before flinching at an unnoticed bump on the side of her head. It must have happened when she fell, whichever time that was. She grabs some shampoo and conditioner, ones she instantly recognizes as being the source of the underlying spice in Nick's scent, and washes herself to her best ability. Which is tough because she can't move her arms over her head without pain and difficulty.

The whole ordeal feels like its taken a hundred years but in reality its more like fifteen minutes by the time she feels satisfied. Turning off the water, she slides the door open and grabs a nearby Looney Tunes towel and attempts to dry herself. She knows its not exactly the best job ever done but she's proud of the accomplishment all the same. She quickly grabs her clothes and slips them on as fast as she can but she's still fighting clattering teeth and shaky limbs.

Poppy leaves the bathroom and walks into the still darkened bedroom, heading for the bed again. She pulls on the throw blanket on the end of the bed, with a Native American wolf pattern of some kind on it and throws it over her shoulders, trying to warm herself. She rocks on the edge of the bed and tries to steady her breathing. Soon she hears Nick's steady deep breaths from the living room and matches it with his. She can feel her heart ache when she realizes how much she hates the distance between them at the moment.

Her wolf lets out a pitiful sort of whine in her mind and the ache moves down to her belly as well. Before she knows it, her feet are moving towards the door and her hand is on the door handle. He's asleep, she reasons and if anything she can just say she was just thirsty or heard a noise or some other lie. She'll say anything other than 'I was aching to look at you because you're my soul mate and I can't help it'. Yeah. Cause that would surely go over well.

She holds her breath as she turns the knob and only lets it out when the door opens without a creak, much to her surprise. She scans the room, not having seen the rest of the trailer since she arrived here. There are no pictures anywhere. No art. Just a few empty beer and soda cans, an ash tray with a few cigarette butts and a single figurine...of a porcelain clown. The decor is a mix and match of patterns but the colors are all dark browns and neutrals.

On the TV is playing a rerun of a show from the 60's. She knows that because she used to watch it with her mom during the time that she wasn't in school and Cassidy was a baby. Poppy used to ask to watch the show with hair like mommy's. And her mom knew exactly what that meant. Her mom always understood. Like Rae, in a way. They always just...understood her and let her be as she was.