Aubry's POV-
"Mam?" I heard from somewhere seemingly far off, but kept my eyes closed. Maybe if I ignore it, it'll go away. "Mam?" I heard again this time with someone touching me.
I jerked away the instant the person made contact with me and my eyes shot open widely. I groaned in pain and almost cried as I blinked my bleary eyes. There was a lady standing in front of me glaring. "What?!" I demanded loudly.
I was so tired, in horrendous pain, and cranky. Turns out, it's extremely hard to find somewhere to sleep when you have nowhere to go. It's even harder to allow yourself to go to sleep, you must stay on guard so no one can mess with you. Therefore, sleep doesn't come easy when you're homeless... Who knew?
"If you don't have a ticket for a bus, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. We can't have the homeless clogging up our seats for the paying customers," she said as she looked at me like I was gum on the bottom of her shoe. There were two other people there... two. Yep, I was surely taking up too many seats for all the hordes of customers... note, the sarcasm. "That's what shelters are for," she added finally as I got up from the chair that I was laying in.
She watched me like a hawk until I walked to the door leading outside. Before I walked out, I looked at the clock above the ticket booth. Fifteen 'til seven, it read. That's just under two hours before school starts. I needed to find somewhere to sort myself out and change clothes. Then off to school, I go. Though, that was the last thing on my mind. I had much more pressing matters to deal with in my doomed life. I had nowhere else to go though, so just kept trekking down the road.
School was quite a few miles away. I guess it was a good thing that the mean lady woke me up. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have had enough time to stop and clean up. That'd be a disaster... I was sure that I needed a touch up on my makeup and I was a proper mess.
I walked at least a couple of miles before I made it to a twenty-four-hour grocery store. Luckily, there was hardly anyone in the store because it was so early in the morning. No customers meant very little employees as well. This was already working out great for me.
I went straight to the bathroom and changed my clothes which was pure agony. I dressed in the first articles of clothing right on top. Thankfully, it was pretty much my standard attire. Comfortable black yoga leggings and a way too big, long, boxy, black sweater that hung past mid-thigh. I decided that the sports bra I already had on was a good enough under shirt. I didn't want anything squeezing my body more than necessary, and I knew that taking off that article of clothing was going to be too painful to even bear. I was in so much worse pain than I was the day before. I guess it is true what everyone says, the second day is always much worse. Was that actually a saying? Or was I just making stuff up in my very fuzzy head?
After I dressed, I looked in the mirror. For the most part my makeup stayed intact throughout the night. I just had to do a few touchups and reapply some lipstick to cover up my busted lips. As I changed my lipstick, I studied my lips... they were very cracked and swollen making it look like any one little touch and blood would start pouring out of the battered flesh. In fact, I had to be so gentle with the application on my lips so I didn't just smear blood all over my trying-to-be nude lip color.
My nose was also considerably swollen, crooked, and so incredibly sore. I couldn't even breathe out of one of my nostrils. I put on some highlighter and tried to contour it to make it look smaller and more normal. Once again, I didn't look great, but it was passable.
The strangle marks on my neck weren't covering up too well, so I braided my long hair to the side and let the long braid cascade over my shoulder. That covered it up decently enough, at least enough for people who just glance at me in passing wouldn't notice. I never got more than a quick glance or once over, so I wasn't too worried.
When I was finally done readying myself for school, I walked out of the restroom. I quickly and quietly made my way to the medicine isle, hoping not to draw any attention to myself. I poured all the contents of an Advil bottle into my hand and put them into my sweater pocket. After I had them all hidden in my pocket, I put the bottle back on the shelf and then walked out of the store quickly. I hoped to myself that no one saw me while simultaneously wishing I could figure out how to break into the pharmacy so I could get some actual good pain relievers. It hurt just to breathe.
I made it to school about thirty minutes later. It was eight in the morning, thirty minutes before classes started. When I entered the building, I found a water fountain instantly. I took four pills and prayed that they'd kick in quickly. I felt like death. Hell, I bet death actually felt better than I felt at that moment.
I quickly went by my locker and stuffed the bag in it to avoid drawing attention to myself by carrying around a big bag. Instead of going to the cafeteria or library like most people who got to school early did, I went to the gym where I knew a punching bag was. I'm almost positive I decided the night before that my best bet on staying alive was to join the fighting pool at The Underground.
Granted, it wasn't a great plan. I mean, in reality, I had no idea how to fight, but I had been hit around enough for most of my life that I can take some pretty gnarly hits and get back up. So really, I just had to learn how to hit. Hence, why I needed the punching bag to practice on.
When I opened the door to the gym, my ears were met with the sounds of grunting and hard breathing. I crept up silently and peeked around the corner to see what was going on. Of course, much to my dismay, Aiden was already there using the bag. Does that boy ever not punch something?
I was extremely annoyed. I needed practice! Aiden, obviously, at least according to his fight the night before, did not. Really though, it was probably for the best; the Advil was yet to kick in and I was still in a lot of pain.
I watched him for a minute, the dude was like a beast when he hit the bag. He was good, scary good. He paused his hitting for a moment and was talking to someone who was out of my line of sight. I was curious so I stuck my head a little further around the corner. That's when I saw him, the blonde guy who bought me a shot. My eyes went wide, and my mind immediately began to panic. I knew I knew him from somewhere! I should've known when I saw Aiden that one of his idiotic friends would be there too!
I quickly left the gym and made my way to the girls' restroom. "Shit," I breathed in and out heavily while pacing around dizzily. My head was swimming, and I truly just wanted to pass out so I didn't have to deal with this stuff. Unfortunately, this was my life and I had to deal with it.
I couldn't have anyone knowing who I was or that I hung out at The Underground! I especially couldn't have someone like Aiden and his friends knowing where I spend my time, they could use that against me! I was perfectly content with being invisible. My breathing was becoming too fast and my legs were too shaky to continue carrying me, so I locked myself in a stall and fell to the ground tiredly as soon as I closed the door.
After a while of panicking, my mind finally began being rational again. There was no way he could tell who I was, it was way too dark. Plus, I looked a bit different and less frumpy the night before. Also, if they tried to use The Underground against me then I could turn it around on them. They had much more to lose than I did by being associated with that place. I knew that a lot of their friends couldn't have known about it. If they did, then Aiden's little fangirls would be at each fight and soon enough the whole school would know about it and that would eventually get the whole place shut down. No matter how much the owner of The Underground paid the cops to ignore the place, they wouldn't be able to ignore a whole entire school worth of kids hanging out at an illegal warehouse club. It just wouldn't work.
With all of that in mind, I calmed down and exited the restroom. It was almost time for class, I spent almost a whole twenty minutes panicking over nothing. I needed to quit getting myself so worked up over things. I didn't need my mind creating problems that weren't even problems yet. I already had enough of those. I couldn't help it though, my whole life seemed to be working against me.
----
My day was going normally before lunch. Well, at least as normal of a day that a homeless and mangled seventeen-year-old girl could have. I hobbled into the cafeteria for lunch as my stomach moaned in hunger. Too bad I didn't have any money. Lunch would have been splendid, even just the nasty school food. I was starved.
I made my way to the corner of the cafeteria and sprawled my stuff out so that no one would sit with me. Not that anyone would anyways, but just in case I wanted to make it abundantly clear that I had no desire for company.
I was about twenty minutes into probably the most peaceful sleep that I had in weeks... until a shriek from across the room jolted me awake. I looked around frantically for what made the noise. Something had to wrong if someone was making that ungodly noise... right? My eyes flitted over to the "popular" table when another high pitch shriek came from that direction. I rolled my eyes when I realized who and what it was that woke me up. Bridget Walker was sitting on Aiden's lap as he was tickling her sensually. They soon began to make out. I had nothing in my stomach to throw up, but if I did... I probably would have. Did they really have to do that in front of the whole cafeteria?!
Aiden was becoming a big thorn in my side and he didn't even know who I was! His name hardly ever even crossed my mind before last night and then all the sudden it was like he was out to get me! Him and his friend caused me a panic attack that morning, him and his little fuckbuddy woke me up from what little sleep I could actually acquire, and don't even get me started on Crystal's BS against me because of him! The man was making my already difficult life even more difficult!
I rolled my eyes and thought about my own problems away from Aiden. If only I knew how to fight, then I could make at least close to enough to make up my debt. I honestly didn't know how much the people who fight made, Crystal was pretty vague in her answers. I knew it had to be quite a bit though, considering Jace's answer the night before and the injuries that everyone was risking in order to get said money.
Suddenly a wild thought popped into my head. I needed help being taught how to fight and Aiden could fight, maybe he could teach me! It would be a good idea if he went for it. He was good and I already had the taking hits part down, I just needed to learn to hit back. I just had to get him to listen to me. That was a problem though... I had never seen him even talk to a girl like me. Laugh at? Yeah sure, but never talk. There's a first time for everything, right?
In normal circumstances, I would have never even dreamed of doing what I decided to do, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We have already established that I was desperate. I picked up my backpack and with fake confidence marched directly up to Aiden. I stood in front of the dark headed boy while scrutinizing all his friends. I deliberately avoided looking towards the boy with the light blonde hair, just in case. Aiden pushed Bridget off his lap and looked me up and down, his face contorted into an amused look as if I was a joke to him. To be fair, I probably was a joke to all these people. That was beside the point at that moment, though. I had one mission, and that was to get Aiden to listen to me... Even if he was a giant jerk. He was a giant jerk who could help me.
"Can I talk to you? ... Alone." I breathed out quickly looking into Aiden's ocean blue eyes. His eyes only made him hotter and it made me sick. How could one guy get all the good genes?
He laughed an unamused laugh as he stared at me. "No," he answered immediately and wrapped his arm around a different girl's waist as if he was dismissing me.
That only succeeding in making me think he was an even bigger jerk and pissed me off. One thing to know about me is that I'm not very nice when I'm pissed off. Instead of walking away with my head down like I probably should have, I smiled sweetly at him and lowered myself into his lap catching him completely off guard. I put my lips really close to his ear and said, "meet me in computer lab two thirty-two in exactly ten minutes or I will go around and tell everyone where you were last night. We both know that if all the girls around school know about your extracurricular fighting activities then they'll go and watch and probably get the place shut down. So, ten minutes, computer lab two thirty-two, got it?" Without waiting for an answer, I got up, grabbed an apple from the tray in front of him, and made my way quickly out of the room towards the computer lab. I walked away with my head held high and without a single glance in his direction. There went my whole 'not drawing attention to myself' plan.