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••:My Own Mess:••
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"I got it!" I shout back to my mother before closing the door, sighing and yanking my hood on before heading off and down the driveway towards John B's.
Im already under enough stress and then my mom decides to spring my sisters birthday on me.
Of course her six year old self has to have some ridiculous request and make our already tight enough budget have to stretch even more. I don't even have have enough to get lunch at school let alone a cake with my little pony theme. And I certainly don't have enough to pay off the debt I got myself into.
I didn't mean for it to get so big.. I hadn't realized how much I bought until it was too late. Unfortunately the person I owe isn't one to give me more time.. or anyone for that matter.
One week was generous enough for him, I know better than to try and ask for more.
Seven hundred dollars.. where in the hell do I come up with that? I can't even wrap my head around the fact that I bought that much.. not all of it went to me.
I made some profit off of it to help my mom with the bills. The rest of it.....even I can admit I've been a little reckless lately.
I slip around the corner and take a trail that leads through the small forest. Feeling much too out in the open.
He hasn't forgotten, he won't. Not until he gets his money will he leave me alone and even then I'm not sure I'm safe. I wouldn't put it past him to come up with some malicious reason to harass me. I can't run from him and that I wouldn't even try to do, he'd find me.
I still have one day to come up with seven hundred dollars and some how enough to get my about to be six year old sister a birthday cake.
It breaks my heart that we can't give her the pool party she wanted. JJ suggested we have it at the beach but I'm not sure that's the best place to bring a bunch of five and six year olds, especially not on the cut..
Plus, she didn't want a beach party, she wanted a pool party.
I check over my shoulder almost every minute as I walk. It's just something I do now, feeling paranoid and on edge all the time. He gave me a week. That ended yesterday. I'm practically asking for it walking all alone to John B's..even staying in the same state is risky enough. I'm only hoping that maybe he's too busy being a kook to remember..
He's rich enough, he doesn't need the thousand I owe him. But I'm not that stupid and I know.. he'll come after it, after me..
"What's with that face?" JJ asks, plopping down beside me, blowing the smoke from the puff he just took of the joint between his fingers. I shake my head, pushing the ticking worry down as I pull the joint from him and to my lips. Letting the smokey drug invade my lungs and coat my nerves.
I shrug, handing it back to him. "Haleys birthday" I tell him. "Bills, nothing new" I add and he nods, taking another puff. JJ has always been my best friend. He's how I ended up with the pogues in the first place.
We'd always known each other, just like I'd known all of them aside from Sarah. I knew who she was from parties and the fact that she was the 'Kook Princess' but I didn't know her. I knew Kie since she went to school with the boys on the cut. I'd known Pope, JJ and John B since kindergarten but we never hung out. I kept to my small group which consisted of Ella, Tiffany, Rachel and Maggie.
Ella and Tiffany Gold were twins and my best friends since the second grade. Ella had long blonde hair, whereas Tiffany had medium length brown hair. They weren't identical but looked similar. We were friends up until sophomore year when it all happened....Leaving me with Maggie and Rachel who weren't as nice as the surface made it seem.
I thought we were friends. I really did. We had been since fourth grade when they joined our group after Rachel and Ella met in art class. It was always more Ella, Tiffany and I who were closer and Maggie and Rachel but as far as I knew we were all friends.
Things changed.. I thought we'd all be grieving and be there for each other but I was wrong. I tried to keep hanging out with them, I needed them but they excluded me. They treated me like it was my fault and I already felt like it was. So I stopped trying. Drugs and smoking pot made up for my lack of friends. I was hurting and it made the pain lessen. It coated it like rubber and locked it away for awhile, at least until it wore off. After that I had to go back to finding something worth breathing for.
I could never shake it. Tell myself it wasn't my fault. I was driving.. I hadn't been drinking that night like the rest of them. I was the sober one who would drive us all back safely. It was late, probably around one in the morning. We were all laughing hysterically at some video Tiffany was playing loudly in the back seat. Ella was in the passenger side and I was behind the wheel. We had gone to a back to school party that Ian Cooke had thrown. A kook that Ella had a massive crush on. They were both drunk but I wasn't. I wasn't, the amount of people I had to tell that to still haunts me. I wasn't drunk.
We were almost back to the cut..almost. I remember so vividly the happy feeling in my chest, the way it hugged my body as we laughed and laughed. Ella was going on and on about how Ian had kissed her and how they were going to hangout that weekend. Tiffany and I were practically shrieking with joy for her. She had had such a big crush on him for months.
I was a safe driver..I was watching the road and the cars around us. I wasn't not paying attention and focused on talking to them like one of the cops had tried to tell me I was. It all happened so fast. I remember checking my mirror to make sure no one there before changing lanes. By the time my eyes came back to the road we were already sliding across the road, the car had flipped and my ears were filled with the horrifying scraping of the side of the car against the pavement. I screamed, my hands instinctively trying to correct the wheel but it was no use. Lights flashed from every window, my seatbelt tightened around my body trying to save my life. I slammed my eyes shut, I remember my little sisters face was the first thing that blared behind my eyelids as I prayed for the car to stop. I was jolted forward, a sharp pain shooting through my head as my body smacked back against the seat, prevented from flying through the windshield because of my seatbelt..I was wearing my seatbelt.
We smacked into the center divider of the road, the only thing that stopped the car from sliding. My head was pounding, the smell of blood filled my nose as I hung almost upside down, completely frozen yet utterly terrified. It took me a while to process it, maybe a minute or so before I screamed for Ella and Tiffany. Unable to move but I tried my hardest to turn. Ella was the first one I noticed since she was in the passenger seat. She wasn't moving. I couldn't move but I reached for her, shouting at her but she didn't respond. It was dark and I couldn't see anything aside from the lights blaring in from the smashed and shattered windows. I couldn't reach her, but I tried. I tried.
It's all such a blur. A horrific blur. I only wish I could have forgotten all of it. It seemed like forever, I was screaming for them trying to move, but I couldn't. I couldn't get my seatbelt loose, we were hanging almost upside down. The paramedics had finally arrived after what seemed like ages. I remember nothing between them arriving and getting to the hospital. I was told I passed out in the ambulance. I don't remember waking up, only that there is a huge blank space in between hanging upside down in the car and all of a sudden being hooked up to wires and hearing beeping sound in the hospital bed. My mother was there, hysterical and in tears, trying her hardest to calm me down. But the second I regained consciousness of what was going on my only thought was Tiffany and Ella. My mother pleaded with me to calm down, crying about that I had a concussion and not wanting me to make it worse by moving but I didn't care, I needed to know they were okay. She kept dismissing my question, telling me she'd get the nurse and I needed to calm down but I could tell by the look on her face. My mother was a terrible liar, she couldn't hold eye contact when she was lying or look at you at all. I sobbed, begging her to tell me. I only remember how painful the hope was in my chest. The way it suffocated me, begging and pleading, terrorizing my every cell. "I'm sorry honey" her voice broke as she took my hands and I shook my head.
I was dead inside.
My mother refused to tell me the details then, about what exactly had killed them, only that the doctor confirmed they died instantly upon impact. The paramedics had reported that neither of them were wearing their seatbelts which made my soul sink. I always wore mine, I promised my mother I'd always wear it when I started driving but Ella and Tiffany never liked to wear them. As the driver, I should have made sure they were both wearing them, if I had. Maybe they wouldn't have died.
I got away with a nasty concussion, a busted lip, broken wrist and bruises almost everywhere, along with a few fractured ribs but they lost their lives.
I had to explain the situation, the night and everything up until the car stopped sliding over and over to the police. I was tested at the hospital for intoxication which of course came back that I was in fact not drinking. One of the cops that questioned me tried to say I wasn't paying attention to the road, as if I hadn't just lost my two best friends and felt guilty enough.
I remember their parents reassuring me that it wasn't my fault and they didn't blame me but nothing would change the way I felt. I was driving, it was my fault. Maybe I shouldn't have changed lanes. The police confirmed it was the other cars fault, witnesses reported that it was that other drivers fault. They cut in front of me when I went to change lanes, it wasn't my fault. I was told the same thing over and over but I couldn't grasp it. It wasn't wrong of me to change lanes but I shouldn't have. If I hadn't they wouldn't be dead. I killed them.
Rachel and Maggie blamed me. They had no shame about it either and made it very apparent that they thought it was my fault. I left school for a few weeks, even after recovering from the weeks I was off to heal from my concussion. I left again to escape the taunting and harassment from those who Maggie and Rachel had convinced that the accident was my fault. My first day back from my recovery I found murderer spray painted on my locker.
People followed me around, taunting me and shouting killer at me.
It wasn't everyone, just a few people who Maggie and Rachel knew but it was a small school and it got around fast.
The remorse and sympathy from the other people wasn't enough to counteract the harassment so I left.
But after a few weeks my mother made me return. Telling me the longer I hid, the harder it would be to go back and people would forget about it, move on and find something else to obsess over.
She was right, it had died down by the time I came back aside from a few people.
I was dead inside. Completely and utterly dead inside. I didn't die that night in the accident but I stopped living. My breathing didn't stop, my heart kept beating but I stopped living. The pain was so bad, so heavy and thick. I couldn't eat for weeks and lost weight. My mother had to practically drag me out of bed and force me to shower. I was prescribed pain medication for my injuries in which I abused for the small high it gave me. Anything to stop the pain. I couldn't breathe, or so that's how it felt. Occasionally I thought about running out in front of a car and letting it end there but I never did. I knew the pain their deathbed had caused me, I wouldn't let my family go through the same misery.
I saw a therapist who tried to send me to a mental hospital, since she deemed me suicidal and diagnosed me with severe depression. But my mother took my side and fought against it. She knew the only thing that could possibly make me worse was sending me there, so instead we settled on more medication. In which I abused as well.
I had smoked pot before but I started doing it more and more. My depression meds were highly dangerous when mixed with alcohol or cannabis but I didn't care. It gave me a sickening high that made me feel like absolute shit after it wore off but again, I did not care.
I got into other pills and drugs from people I went to school with. I had find something after the doctor took me off my pain meds and my therapist suggested I start taking a different medication for my depression being that the one I was on was highly addictive and dangerous. I had an absolute fit when she did that and ended up telling her to fuck off before storming out of her office and never going back. Sure take me off of the one thing that helps.
Months passed. All of the school activities did as well and I attended none of them. School had just started and Ella, Tiffany and I had so much planned but they were gone and I was alone.
I got placed next to JJ in biology for a new seat change later in the year. I had never realized what an annoying ass chatter box he was. The boy never stopped talking even after the teacher yelled at him to be quiet. He'd usually laugh or smart off back which would result in me laughing as well. I hadn't laughed or even smiled in months. He sucked at the work, not that he cared or even tried. I'd end up helping him with most of it even though I wasn't great with it either.
He'd come to class stoned half the time and usually offer me some crumbly ass looking weed brownies that his cousin had made and I was not one to say no to getting high.
Sharing the brownies in class soon led to us skipping class and smoking under the bleachers. He was fun. He had such an uplifting personality that just made you want to run with it and match it. Nothing seemed to bother him and he was always getting in to all sorts of fun trouble. The kind of trouble that excites you and makes your adrenaline rush through your veins. He made me feel alive again after feeling dead inside for months after my best friends had died. I felt a spark light somewhere deep inside me after it being so dark and cold for so long.
I never felt that sort of attraction for him like you have towards a crush. Don't get me wrong, he's very attractive I just never felt that for him and he'd say the same for me. We were purely friends but we did sleep together a few times. Not enough to say it was a lot but enough to have lost count.
I'm not even entirely sure how it started. The first time we were high out of our minds and it just happened. It felt good..not in the sex way but in the way it does to feel safe with somebody. We could have all the sex we wanted and not have that awkward hookup tension with someone you don't really know. I hadn't realized that sex could numb you the way getting high could. Not in the same way but it was there and it worked. It was a different form of self harm, one I can't explain but one I didn't have to chase or but myself in danger for.
I shouldn't have abused sex the way I did drugs or anything else I did to hurt myself but I did.
And JJ let me. He enjoyed it as much as I did. We felt safe and comfortable with each other. There was no having to find someone to hook up with it was just us and it was great. There was never any awkwardness or tension afterwards, we were always the same friends. It wasn't that ridiculous 'friends with benefits' shit although I'm sure that's what most would call it. We we're best friends, only we fucked here and there. We could have sex then go get a slushy afterwards and talk about some dumb shit like aliens. It was never weird.
I ran into John B in the hallway once of JJ's house after staying the night. That's how we met. He assumed I was just one of JJ's hookups but I informed him we were friends. I thought he'd think I was insane but instead he just seemed unfazed as if he wasn't judging at all and asked if I wanted any microwaveable waffles.
He, like the rest of the school..and everyone else in Obx knew about the accident. He was really the first person I had opened up to about it. I had talked to JJ about it briefly but I hated to even think of it. John B just had the ability to make me feel like it was okay to open up, to let someone know what was going on in my head. Still I kept it vague because I had just met him but it made everything just a little less heavy to talk to him.
I started hanging out with the both of them more and then they introduced me to Pope who started helping me with my math and that led to me sitting with them at lunch. Kie wasn't the friendliest to me at first. She was very skeptical and even made me uncomfortable enough to wear I stopped sitting with them and resumed sitting alone by the field at lunch under the same oak tree, Ella and Tiffany and I sat at.
I didn't blame her. I know she didn't mean to come across the way she did. She was only protective of her friends. They had been friends since they were in preschool and I just walked in on it. She hated that JJ and I slept together because she felt like I was using him but I wasn't. I truly loved him so so much. He was my best friend. The sex part was just something that had started and for the time being we both wanted it.
I cried to JJ that night, having felt like I was using him even deep down that was never a thought in my head. He just held me while I cried, the tears coming from every place of pain I had. He reassured me that he never felt that way about it and Kie was just kind of cold to everyone aside from the three of them.
A few weeks later, I was eating lunch alone again. And by eating lunch I mean picking at an apple I could barley force myself to chew.
I happened to look up and see Kie coming towards me which made me nervous. I never used to me like that. If someone said something rude to me I'd pop off right back at them, I didn't get shaken up easily by harassment or bullying but everything was different after the accident.
She came and stood in front of me, looking quite displeased before she rolled her eyes and sat down next to me.
She offered me a bag of chips she had and I hesitantly shared them with her while she apologized and explained why she had acted the way she did.
She was even sympathetic about the accident and told me how she had a class with both Ella and Tiffany and knew them since second grade.
I promised her I wasnt using JJ and explained to her how much I loved him and how he had made me feel the tiniest bit of alive again. We spent the rest of the lunch period talking and after that I started sitting with them again.
I became as close with the rest of them as I was JJ but he was still my best friend. He would always be since he was what made me feel like breathing wasn't work anymore. We stopped sleeping together after a while since we decided it probably wasn't the best thing to continue, it wasn't causing problems but we didn't want to risk that maybe later it might for some reason.
When John B introduced Sarah to us last year Kie had the same reaction to her as she did me and I would be lying if I said I didn't as well. Only I had a few of my own reasons..
Her older brother Rafe was a menace. He had never done anything specific to me or any of us but I had heard a fair share of stories from people. If I wasn't hearing some girl whining about how he fucked her then dumped her then it was something about drugs..usually drugs or that he beat someone up, or of course there were always the girls gawking over him..and that, I couldn't blame them for either. He wasn't a nice person, he was mean and cruel and did a lot of questionable things but he was nothing short of gorgeous.
At that point I hadn't purchased from him directly but I was getting a little too close with people..kooks he knew too well. I should have stopped there with it. If I had I wouldn't be in this mess..
Soon enough Kie and I got to know Sarah and she became one of us, one of the pogues and me and Kie's absolute best friend. I was with John B on having a crush on her at first but now she's just one of my best friends.
They started dating shortly after that. I wish she could go to school with us but her father insisted she stay at the kook academy.
"Screw bills, my strategy is to just not pay them" he tells me, passing me the joint again before flipping down, his head landing in my lap. "I'm sure that would fix everything" I tell him before taking another puff.
I wish I could tell him that 'bills' and Rosie's birthday wasn't the only thing stressing me out and the fact that I owe Sarah's brother seven hundred dollars is also a key player in my stress.
Seven hundred dollars..how in the hell am I supposed to come up with that? I still can't even believe it's that much. I know my drug issue had gotten a little out of hand but I didn't know it was that bad.. maybe I didn't use all of it for myself but..a lot of it.
The rest I sold for bills. I can't even remember all that I bought, weed..a lot of weed. Coke. Shit I don't even know half of it..pills I don't know the names of. I didn't care. Oxy, acid.. more.
The coke was what got so expensive, that and the weed is what I sold the most of. The other things were occasional but a lot of it was personal use..
I blame my therapist.. she shouldn't have taken me off my medication..maybe I was still using drugs while on it but still.
I sigh, digging my nails into my palms. Seeing the sun starting to set. I need to head back soon. I don't want to be walking in the dark with no one around, I shouldn't be anyways but especially right now. Not until I can pay him back. For now I have to hide from him and hiding from Rafe? Practically impossible.
I don't know what he'd do to me if I didn't pay him. I don't want to know. He might love Sarah but me being her friend wouldn't change his mind. He wants what he wants and he gets it. He always gets it.
"I should head back" I tell JJ as he stands before he pulls me up off the steps. I squeeze him in a hug before hugging John B as well.
Paranoid the whole walk home. My payment extension ends tonight. He doesn't know where I live..I think. But he'll find out if he wants to. I never should have started buying drugs from him. It was a terrible, dangerous idea but I didn't care I just wanted the drugs.
"Lily!" My youngest sister Haley shouts as I come through the door, closing the rickety screen door behind me before closing the front door and pulling the chair we keep in front of it under the handle. The lock broke on the handle and we haven't been able to afford to fix it yet. So the chair is there to keep it from opening. Although I doubt it would do much if someone really wanted in..
"Hey" I smile at her, looking down at the broken bag of crayon nubs she's coloring with. Crayons..that is one of the things on her birthday list. I'm such a fucking loser, having to stress over buying a box of fucking crayons.
If I hadn't just lost my job waitressing maybe I could afford it and maybe I could pay at least something back to Rafe but he wouldn't do payments he was generous enough to give me a week.
I certainly can't tell my mother what I've done. I'm not even sure how she hasn't found out I started doing drugs again. I can't spring this on her with all the stress she's under trying to pay the bills and Haley's birthday. "Aria!" I shout as I move down the hallway, throwing her door open, finding her laying on her bed with her duct taped headphones in and a moody fourteen year old girl look on her face.
Aria looks the most like our mom with green eyes and dark brown hair, whereas Haley and I have red hair and blue eyes. I'm not sure where we got it from but my mother assumes it's from her side since her mother has red hair and her older sister.
I'd like to believe our blue eyes come from somewhere on her side as well and not from our father..
He left when I was fourteen and has occasionally stopped by to harass us but it's been months and he hasn't showed up so maybe..just maybe he'll leave us alone now.
Growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father was torment on a child. Watching him beat our mother and have nothing to do made me feel helpless and terrified. I preferred when he took his anger out on me and hit me instead of her or Aria.
"What?" She grumbles, pulling her earphones from her ears. "Where's mom?"
"Work? Where else?" She says and I roll my eyes. I forgot she said she was going in today. She's usually off on Sundays. She's a nurse at the hospital and mostly works nights so we're usually on our own but she always sets something out for dinner..if we have anything.
"I made mac and cheese" she tells me and I nod. "Do you have any cash? Mom said the electricity bill is due in a few days and I'm broke" I explain, watching her sigh as she presses her lips together.
"No, but one of the girls at school is interested in my bike so if I can sell that then I'll have maybe fifty" she explains making my heart sink. I hate that we have to live like this. I hate it..
I only nod before standing. "Only sell it if you want to, don't feel like you have to I'll find another way to get the money" I tell her before heading off to my room.
Kicking myself for winning the argument with Aria about who got the room with the back door.. I wanted it so I could sneak outside and smoke easier without getting caught but now I wish I wouldn't have taken it and give Rafe easier access to get into my house if he decides to. He wouldn't bother Aria, she doesn't owe him money..
He won't come to my house..he won't. I think..
But he'll be after me..soon
Hey guys! What do you think?! I know it has some dark spots but please please trust the process! I think you'll really really like where it goes!
Thanks so much for reading! I'm so excited for this one! Comment, vote and share!❤️