Downright Misfits (Downright Delinquents 2.0)

Chapter One

I hear her heavy footsteps descend the stairs. I try for a few minutes to get my key into the lock, but it feels as if my hands are in slow-mode. The door opens and light spills over me. I wince, shielding my hand over my eyes.

"For Christ's sake," a voice mutters. "Harold! I've found her. She's wasted, again."

My bag slips from my shoulder, landing with a thud on the ground. The contents flood out of it. Condoms, cigarette packets, a lighter, and a bag with three caps inside. My foster mother purses her lips down at it.

"Harold!" she shrieks once more and my foster father appears, looking weary. I have no idea what the time it is, somewhere between two-to-three a.m.

Eileen pinches her fingers against my face and I try to look at her, but my eyes are rolling into the back of my head. She inhales sharply.

"Harold! Look at her pupils."

She shouts. Cries. More shouting.

The staircase is vibrating, moving side to side. I stare numbly ahead, watching the colours of the walls bleed into each other.

Harold, the kinder and more considerate one of the two, exhales, his fingers tapping against his stomach, which is so round his t-shirt doesn't fit over it.

"No point talking to her now, she's not here," he says. Not here. That is his favourite term to use for me. "I'll put her to bed."

It's a challenge to climb the stairs, but we eventually make it to my room. My clothes litter across my floor and my bed is unmade. Eileen hates mess. She probably drank an entire bottle of wine after seeing it.

I collapse, sinking into the mattress in a muddle of tangled limbs and knotted hair.

Harold sits heavily beside me. "We can't do this anymore, kid."

I close my eyes, burying my face into the pillow.

"We have tried and tried with you..." he breaks off.

He has more to say, but he doesn't. He struggles to his feet and after a few moments, leaves the room, blanketing me in darkness.

***

It takes me over half-an-hour to peel myself from my mattress. It feels like my body has been run over and reversed across. My stomach churns. I use the walls to guide me into the bathroom.

After being sick more times than I care to admit, I shower and dress, growing more nauseous with each passing moment. What happened last night? Dancing. Kissing strangers. Swallowing pills. Losing half my clothes. Smoking too many cigarettes—A standard Friday night.

When I get downstairs, Eileen is placing cups of tea onto the table. Harold is speaking with a woman. She has a mess of curls bundled on the top of her head, a blazer tightly stretched over her torso and half-moon spectacles planted on her nose. My heart drops into my stomach at the sight of her. I've seen her before. A few times now.

"Addison," Harold starts, noticing me appear, interrupting the woman mid-sentence.

The woman turns to me and I shrink under her gaze. Eileen stares at me. Her face holds anger, sadness, disappointment.

The silence stretches around the room like a weighted blanket, covering us and cutting off the air supply. I flick my eyes between them all.

"What's going on?"

"Take a seat," Harold gestures.

Stiffly, I do as I'm told. Eileen busies herself to make me a cup of tea, which she knows I won't drink.