A/N - This ch. is dedicated to my AWESOME, new editor! Thx to everyone who offered to help!
Skye’s POV
Sorry for party rocking!
A loud disruption of blaring music burst through the house, the bass pounding in our heads. The pain shot through me like I had been shocked, but only a wince showed on my face thanks to the emotionless barrier of a mask I wore.
“I’m sorry Skye. I can ask them to turn it off…. Or down!?” Demi said immediately, noticing my discomfort.
I shook my head as I let the ghost of a grateful smile grace my features, before I nodded for Demi to head inside. She took one more look at Gary, and a wave of surprise washed through me as she took a second to glare at Gary before sliding past him. Before she reached the sliding doors, she turned back around, raising her fist for me to pound.
"It's a fist full of love!" She said, shrugging her shoulders. I stood there in shock as I repeated the phrase over in my mind.
It's a fist full of love!
It's a fist full of love!
It's a fist full of love!
It echoed in my mind as I tried to shy away from Demi. She was scaring the shit out of me with that one phrase. I felt the world spinning and the grass looming dangerously towards me, closing in. I felt my breathing cut short, and I gasped weakly for air as I tried to escape Demi's grasp as she caught me.
The last thing I heard was Katie asking why I reacted so negatively towards Gary. She explained what I always used to tell them, I thought that Gary was the only family who ever truly loved me. She didn't know past that. I saw Demi's worried face and Selena's concentrated look trained onto me, as I started seeing black spots eat my vision and I blacked out.
*Flashback*
I felt a warm, thick liquid oozing down the side of my face. My eye wouldn’t open, my vision blurred and my heart was beating more crimson pain to my forehead where, gashed into my face, was the rock that I had found so proudly in my back yard when I was two. I had held on to it, and hadn’t let go until I saw Maria. It was for her and she had realized that. As she picked me up, I saw a longing in her eyes, for the innocence of my age that had found the rock that had now been bashed straight into my skull again.
The streaked rock, splattered in crimson over the rainbow that shone on it before, dropped to the ground with a thud. I raised my head, a snapping pain in my neck as my chapped lips quivered in fear as I tried to form a sound.
Gary looked down on me… he was 15, almost 16, and I was only 7. His eyes were glistened over, and all I could see in his eyes was love, love for what he was doing.
“I… I love you” he said as he crunched up in pain, as if loving me was a sin. I looked down as salt slipped out of my eyes, if he believed I was a sin, then that’s what I was. “Why didn’t you STOP HER!” he screamed raising his voice, his fist clutching up his t-shirt at his chest as if trying to rip the pain right out of his heart. “SHE WAS MY SISTER!”
He fell on the ground, his knees smashing onto the wooden floor, now painted in the mixture of our blood. His hand crashed down next to his knee, holding him up.
My neck fell back, the blood flowing into my eyes as I lost my vision. I crumpled to the floor, and all I could think about was Gary’s pain as I reached over weakly and set my hand gently on his, like I was an annoying pest of a bug. He whacked at my hand and I heard the crack and the fall back snap of my wrist as I let a smile creep onto my face for the first time, happy that I had finally seen that maybe I wasn’t the only one hurting because of Maria’s death…
“It’s a fist full of love” Gary cried out in pain. Gary has finally accepted, and as long as he’s joining my pain, I can stand this form of love in exchange of forgiveness for being alive.
When I woke up, I blinked forcefully once, and when my vision gained back clarity, I saw Gary starring into my eyes, or just my left eye. As I looked around, I caught my reflection in the window. I saw the green of Maria and Gary’s eyes invading mine, like blood flowing through my eye and not my vein, for once I saw my real family, the only blood that ever loved me.
*End of Flashback*
I woke up in a hospital bed and, as my senses were left to process my surroundings, my mind went into an aftershock overdrive. One that Demi could NOT find out about.
Nothing will ever be the same, yet nothing will ever change.
I was brought up to be the perfect little child, someone who had a guaranteed future and celebrities lining up to make my acquaintance when I was four in order to be a part of this future. People held my hand, wiped my tears, pampered me, and showed me signs of love. But it was all forced. All for a reason that was NOT that they loved me.
Gary on the other hand, he loved me... He would talk back to me when no one else dared. He would bully me, because no one else had a reason to. He would tell me he did it because he loved me, while I knew everyone else did what they did because of what I could do for them in the future. He made me believe that the years of endless pain, torture, emotional un-stableness, and discomfort I experienced, was a way in which he showed me he loved me. He said that he was the only person who would actually tell me the truth and treat me like I deserved, and that meant that he loved me... the real me.
He was messed up and conceited. Every time he struck me, he said one phrase, and I would fall for it, almost enjoying the pain as it relieved me of my low self-esteem.
“It’s a fist full of love”
And never again would I be the same.
Someone entered the room. A nurse by the look of it, and she said one phrase that put my body in shutdown mode again.
“You’ve slept through the night… it’s now the 23rd of May. Would you like something to eat?”
All my senses went dulling again, my body curling automatically back into a little ball, and my lips refusing to answer the question as the monitors started beeping rapidly, and the nurse screamed for the doctors. She tried to hold me down, but the thought of anyone touching me on this day made me scream in agony as I shoved off the bed to get away from her touch.
I almost blacked out again, my body not wanting to feel the physical pain that the emotions of today brought. The nurse raised her hands up in a sign of defeat, realizing my discomfort. I managed to control my breathing and make my way back onto my bed. She smiled as she told the doctors that I was fine making her way out of my room.
I reached into my pocket, and pulled out the one thing that could help me today.
The blade was pulled across my skin under my shirt as the crimson red rose to the surface. It begged me to go deeper, but before I could, I felt myself falling back to sleep.
23rd of May… was the worst day of the whole year. It was the day that Gary’s sister killed herself, and he took it out on me. It was the day that my legal guardians became my real parents again; it was the day I lost my mother too. Not my real one, I lost Maria, Gary’s sister, and the only person who acted like a real parent to me. Gary has always blamed me for over working her by making her take care of me. Little does he know that I blame myself more.
I was there as she swallowed the pills. Just a three year old sitting, watching her mother swallow them one by one. The whole time she looked at me, told me she loved me. I still don’t know why she did it, but I didn’t know what she was doing. If only I knew what she was doing and why, I could have stopped it. If she did do it because of me, then it’s all my fault. I’ve never stopped blaming myself.
This was the first year since Gary touched me, that I haven’t tried to commit suicide already. Normally Jake is there, and Katie has just broken up with me around this time of the year, but this year is different. The only difference is Demi, and I don’t know if it’s good or bad.
Demi’s POV
“WHY DID YOU LEAVE HER!?” I screamed at the nurse
Sighing, she pulled out her clipboard “she needs rest… you can go in, tomorrow”
“Why tomorrow? She’s hurting today!”
“Miss, she’s a special case…”
“AND THAT’S WHY I NEED TO SEE HER!”
“Miss, clearly you don’t know the situation” she sighed again looking down at her clipboard… then she looked up and squinted over the top of her glasses, flipping her dirty blonde hair out of her face. “Miss Lovato?”
“Yes that’s me!” I said clearly annoyed… where had this person been living; under a rock? Like seriously no shit Sherlock!
She sighed again, and I caught the vibe that today wasn’t one of her best days. “I’m Alex, a nurse here. The thing is, that well she might not recognize me today, but she will tomorrow” she said looking through the window on the door.
“What do you mean?”
“Miss, she visits us every year on the 23rd of May, ever since she was seven. I’ve been her nurse ever since then. Actions have been taken, and no one knew, we don’t know how Gary escaped the police’s grasp, but he was arrested when she admitted he had knocked her unconscious last year. No one was informed, which is why I presume he was let back onto her property.” She looked away from the window with a small smile of lost hope “you know I thought that maybe this year would be the first that I wouldn’t see that beautiful heart in pain again.”
“E… Every, Every year?” I asked trying to process what she had just said.
“Every year since Gary found out she was there when Maria died on the 23rd of May…” said a voice behind me
I turned around to face Katie, who was just standing there with her face glued to the window, looking at the empty shell of her friend sitting on her bed. “I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to come here this year, I thought I could keep her safe. Normally she’s not with me, normally she is never awake for today. It must hurt a lot more, being conscious…”
I looked at the two of them, wondering what hell Skye endured with that smile plastered on her face.
They both looked at the door, and walked up to it, touching the glass that separated Skye from them.
As if with one practiced voice, they said together “Happy Birthday Skye”
A/N - sorry guys, this took a while, but that was because... I FOUND THE MOST AWESOME EDITOR EVER!
So you guys didn't get the votes and comments in time for this chapter, so i took a little longer... but here's a vote and comment number for a monday upload.
Votes - 530
Comments - 55
Also, some things have been going on in my life, more hw is gettting torn up by bullies, more people trying to make their way back into my life, and worst, a cousin who commited suicide yesterday. I know that it's meant to hurt, and i feel heartless for just hating her for only leaving me a note... what about her parents? everyone esle? All she told me was to not follow her... but what if i want to see her one last time?
What's even worse, my parents didn't want to tell me, so i had an ex best friend (that i'm in love with) feeling pity on me.
Just needed to let that out...