Chapter Thirty-One
The way I saw my surroundings depended on what type of mood I was in. Sometimes a ceiling was just a painted bit of wall above my head with a white lampshade. On occasion it was more than that. It was a pale blue square of sky with a white moon at its centre, gleaming down upon me. Sometimes the night sky was simply as it was. Dark and starry. Other times, like tonight, it looked like a vast sheet of black fabric had been draped above the rooftops, hammered in here and there with glinting silver flat headed screws. Stars really were marvellous. All indentical little twinkles alone out there and burning up. They might have looked close to one another from where I stood, but up there they were miles and miles and miles apart. So far apart and isolated.
Just like me, I thought. Surrounded by people but alone.
I swung my head back into my bedroom. I'd had it dangling out of my window so that I could see the sky above but it was just too cold for that now and much too windy. I glanced in the mirror to inspect the state of my hair. It was wet and snarled from the harsh weather and I couldn't help but think of how long it had grown. The weather was too rainy. The window had been opened too wide. The room was too cold. And my hair, my hair was too long.
I left my room in search of the bathroom. It took around ten minutes to find the scissors hidden behind the roll of bandages in the back of the cabinet.
"Someone's here to see you!" Ian's voice boomed from downstairs. It was followed by the slam of the front door and quiet chatter.
Distantly I knew I didn't like his voice. Didn't like anything about it. I couldn't quite think of why my opinion on the man was so important at this moment in time, however, so I replied with something I deemed relatively friendly. "Thank you, Ian! Tell them I'm in the bathroom."
By the time Skylar had appeared in the bathroom doorway I'd already snipped a few inches worth of hair from the side of my head. If it hadn't been for the rain that had drenched my head, then the descent of the hair clumps might have been pretty. Perhaps they'd have floated to the floor like chocolate feathers. Instead the damp, slightly waved endings to my hair, having been weighed heavy with water, plummeted to the tiles like oddly shaped stones.
"Flora," Her voice was uncertain. "What are you doing, exactly?"
I smiled and waved the scissors in lieu of hello. "What does it look like? I'm cutting my hair."
She grimaced. "By yourself? Is... that supposed to be evenly cut? A straight line?"
I shrugged. "'S a work in progress."
"Right," Skylar sat on the toilet seat next to me and watched. "How are you doing? Your mum said you were acting- off with her."
"What? My mum's not home yet. She said earlier she'd be back for dinner when she left me aaalll alone with Ian." I sang.
Skylar had her worried mother hen look on. I wished I could tell her I was fine and she had nothing to worry about, that I was better now, but she began talking again before I got the chance.
"What time do you think it is? And Jesus, look at your hair or at least your reflection when you're cutting it or you'll make an even bigger mess."
I stretched round the back of my head, chopping blindly at a spot I hoped was in the centre. Damp waves fell down the backs of my legs, some finding their way into one of my mega large slippers. They might have been my mother's come to think of it. I shook it out. "Almost dinner time?"
"No, it's almost the middle of the night."
"Oh," I laughed. "That would explain the stars."
Before I could protest she'd snatched the scissors out of my grasp. "Your mum called me here because you were acting weird. You were acting too... nice. She was hoping I could get you back to normal."
I stared at her for a long moment in disbelief. There was a rage building up inside of my chest, trying to bubble its way to the surface, but it was difficult to explain its distance. My feelings on the things she was telling me were somehow trapped behind a wall of glass. I could see them, I knew what they were and why they were there, but I couldn't feel them. It was as if they belonged to somebody else. That somebody else was finding the entire matter ridiculous and infuriating and completely lacking any justice.
"She wanted me to act nice. Be nice to Ian, she said. Treat him like family. Rudeness is unkind. Nice is normal, Skylar. Did you ask her to define normal? Normal isn't me. But now," I tapped the side of the sink to where the pills I'd taken lay. "Now I'm normal. I'm the daughter she wanted. I can touch! Hug me," I demanded. "Give me some love."
She batted away my outstretched arms, face as pale as parchment. She looked like she'd seen a ghost. Her voice shook so much that she may as well have just realised she was one herself. "You've always said how against medication you were, Flo. Why are you doing this?"
It was between one moment and the next that I'd doubled over and vomited. Skylar rubbed my back as the remnants of the cereal I'd had early that morning came back with a vengeance. "Second time today. Has to be a record. I haven't been sick in yonks."
"Yonks? You know what, never mind. What do you mean the second time? How long ago did you take these?"
"A very long time ago," I nodded with what I hoped was a solemn look. It was hard to take this seriously. What a joke. My mother wanted me back to normal, normal meaning freak, and yet she'd spent years urging me to give the medication a try. To see if it would work. Make me normal. What was normal? Another social construct it seemed. "And then," I remembered taking more. It hadn't been working fast enough. "Not so long ago."
"How many of these have you taken? Can you remember?" She demanded, shaking the bottle at me as if accusing me of a great crime. Its contents rattled like a maraca. I refrained with great difficulty from smiling. Oh, how I loved music.
"Read the bottle if you're so concerned. I followed the instructions, I'm not mad. 20 or 25 milligrams in severe cases every four hours. I'm the most severe. I'm the severest. Have you ever noticed how severest sounds like Severus? Throwback to Severus Snape." I giggled. "Remember when we cried reading Harry Potter and compared books to see whose pages were more warped?"
She made a strangled sort of noise in her throat. "Don't you need to ease yourself into that stuff?" She looked at the bottle in complete ignorance to my trip down memory lane and read aloud the name I couldn't pronounce. "Chlordiazepoxide. I'm almost positive my dad had to take this for his anxiety at one point. He called it Librium. Made him drool like a dog. He had to get a new prescription, he could barely handle five milligrams."
"Hey, me and papa Ross are on the same meds!" I exclaimed happily, yanking the scissors back out of her unsuspecting hands. "We've got more in common than I thought. Tell him to hit me up some time. Maybe we can start a club together to find others like us when my mum lets me leave the prison that is my humble abode. The From Freaks To Friends Society. FFTFS for short."
She opened her mouth, shut it, and then promptly excused herself with the promise she'd be right back. I heard her voice filter through the door that was left ajar as she made a phone call. I knew she was trying to speak quietly but with nothing else to listen to save for the snipping of blades, her half of the conversation may as well have been a shout.
"-yeah, get Parker on the phone for me please." Pause. "Who else would it be about? Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to let him use me as the messenger - at least not until her mum really trusted I wouldn't do it - but this is- this is bad." Another lengthy pause. As the mystery caller talked, Skylar must have attempted to lean against the door. When it creaked open she hurriedly moved away before clicking it shut. The next part of the conversation was in barely audible mumbles. "-medication. I know..." More mumblings. "-unforced and now she's hacking her hair off." I couldn't be sure, but I was almost positive she made a comment about Britney Spears before deciding it time to re-enter.
"Hey," She had the tone she used to speak to children as if trying to convince them of her friendliness: high pitched and fake. "So I made a call. Parker's coming over."
"Parker's not allowed over. You shouldn't have called Axel." I hesitated, looking at myself in the mirror as I pushed some of the hair from the back of my head over to my forehead. Some of it struggled to reach what with it all being different lengths. Oh well. "Should I get bangs?"
"Axel?" Her face reflected in the glass was slowly burning beet red. So it seemed I wasn't the only one thinking it to be extraordinarily hot. What a relief that it wasn't a side effect of the medication. I couldn't imagine sweating like a pig every day for the foreseeable future. "Wh-why would you automatically say Axel? There's nothing-"
"Matthew is incapable of a long and serious talk without being distracted by the word poop or seeing a squirrel. No offence, but Hayden doesn't like you much. He doesn't particularly like me, and by extension you are me, so that's a no. Topher hardly ever uses his phone for anything other than a hook up. Axel is Parker's best friend and when he isn't in the influential company of Matthew, he zones into Mr Serious Business. Had to be Axel." I snipped more hair. "No bangs, I'm going for shoulder length. Mainly because half of it is already there and too short for anything else. Ooh! Or maybe I could have it all different lengths for fun?"
"Oh, yeah. Of course. I knew all of that. Anyway, about Parker. He's chancing climbing through your bedroom window. I've opened it for him."
Something strange seized my stomach. Something cold and bad and- scared. "He can't come here," And there were horrible things trying to scratch their way to the surface and demand my attention from underneath this hazy reality the pills had lathered like paint over the truth. "Nonononono," I didn't know whether I was shaking myself to reinforce my point or whether tremors had taken over my body. "He can't. The phone- the- Ian. He said bad things and he can't see me. I'm dirty and a mess and-"
"What phone? Flora, calm down. You're okay. You'll be fine."
"The phone, the confession, the-" I knew my breathing was erratic, that I had to slow it down before I began feeling light headed, but I couldn't fight my way through the blurred edges of my memory to where Parker lay. To where he whispered in my ear how to breathe on the hospital floor and everything came into place and where he said he loved me and I didn't say it back. "He's Alexander. He's-" I was just about to snatch a handful of the tablets from the sink when the door swung open.
I knew what Parker would have been seeing: a mess. I was sitting on the floor, most probably still stinking of sick, my hair haphazardly cut with scissors still in one of my hands and pills millimetres from the other. The moment was suspended in time. Me staring at Parker, Parker staring straight back with a dawning look of horror and realisation. After what felt like an eternity, he broke it by turning to look at my best friend.
"What," He said in a hissed whisper. "In God's name is going on?"
Skylar gave him a hurried run-down of how she was called here by my mother after my acting weird and overly friendly to both she and Ian. According to Skylar, my mother had informed her of my giving a hug to both Ian and her before skipping off toward my room after a dinner that I do not recall refusing to consume. I also don't recall being offered it. She'd called Skylar in the hopes she could help diagnose the problem before a doctor had to be called seeing as I talked to her more than I did my mother these days, and when Skylar walked in she'd found me as I was, blabbering about a phone. Little did my mother know that all she'd had to do to find out what was going on was walk into the bathroom and see the mess that was my life. I was thankful she hadn't bothered.
"Hugged Ian?" He was barely concealing his rage and Skylar shifted her gaze nervously between he and the door as if waiting for my mother to materialise before them. I didn't doubt her capability. Come to think of it, it was the longest bit of peace I'd had in a while without her intervening. It wouldn't be a surprise if she suddenly sprang into the room demanding more family time.
"Ian," I said shakily, chopping off another split end with hands jerking like they were attached to strings being controlled by a puppeteer. "Doctor Greene, Alexander. So many personas, but what is his real name? Who is he really?"
"Why do you hate Ian?" Skylar frowned at Parker and I felt momentarily guilty for my secrecy, but Parker was now staring at me, not listening. He came down next to me, tried to enclose my shaking hands with his - or take away the scissors, perhaps, I wasn't so sure - but I shrank away. My head banged into the bottom of the sink bowl and I saw stars. Stars really did seem to be everywhere tonight. An infinite sky of infinite stars and within it a planet called Earth which revolved around lives full of an infinite amount of touches. And none of those touches were mine.
"Flora, honey," Not quite Skylar's talking-to-children voice, but close to. He was channeling the concern from the hospital voice. Distantly I was aware of my heart aching to hold onto him, my lifeline. "I don't think the pills have agreed with you very well. Ian is Ian just as he always has been. Who is Alexander? Remember how you didn't want to take the medication before? I think that was for the best-"
"For the best? I couldn't touch anybody, Parker. That's no way to live." Tears had made my cheeks sticky and it looked like Parker was reaching to dry them away. I shuffled farther away from him, farther away from the pair of them and their fake concern. They wouldn't be looking at me like that once they knew the truth. "Th-this is a cure. This is me fixed. But you can't be here. You're not allowed and you- you can't be here because I can't be fixed if you are."
"Flora-" He was looking like a puppy dog with that hurt and sad look enlarging his big brown eyes. But he didn't understand. How could either of them understand? I was filthy and I needed time alone for a while. I could only block it out again like I had before if they stopped looking at me as if I was broken.
With a pang, I realised that any time I looked at Parker I would be reminded of Ian. One of the two had to go, but either way things worked out, it meant losing Parker. Parker couldn't know how dirty I was. How ruined. He'd hate me if he knew everything and I wasn't strong enough to handle his rejection. But if I couldn't show him the recording, how could I show anybody without his knowing? And I couldn't let everybody know how disgusting I was. Yet if I didn't show anybody, Ian would be here to stay, and if Ian was here to stay I had to suppress everything - a feat that I couldn't accomplish with Parker looking at me like a broken piece of china plate. I had to have it buried away and hidden. It was the only solution, but I knew, even now, that Parker would never let the matter settle if I suddenly just accepted everything. There was no way out.
"Flora!" Shouted the two people most dear to me in a unison of alarm as I buried my head into my curled up knees to openly sob. The two people who, out of this screwed up universe's entirety, somehow continued to tolerate me even when they didn't know my deepest, darkest secret. Who continued to love me now, but never would again because I was selfish. I didn't want to live with Ian. I couldn't. Wouldn't.
The phone skidded toward them over the tiles. I regretted my decision almost instantaneously, wishing now more than ever that I had secretly been Magneto from X-Men all along and could pull the metallic device straight back into my palm. It was unforgivably selfish. Not only was I going to hurt the two most caring people I'd had the luck to meet, but I was tearing a best friend from one and a girlfriend from the other.
I almost laughed at that last thought. We hadn't even established whether we were going out yet, no matter if I'd accidentally screamed he was my boyfriend when Jason was brutally attacking every human he came into contact with on Ian's old lawn, or that Parker had in fact declared his feelings to me. We were still nothing in terms of labels. At least that would make it easier for him to abruptly cease talking to me ever again once he realised how I'd exploited myself at only ten years old. The same couldn't be said for Skylar. Skylar would have a much more awkward departure from my life for she'd have no idea how to tell me how repulsed she was or how she wanted to leave our friendship to crash and burn. This would hurt them and it was all my fault because I wanted Ian out of my house.
Parker was the first to pick it up. He didn't need to look for clarification as to what he was supposed to do as the recording was still on screen simply waiting to be played. I'd listened to it seven times over already. In person I'd spaced out for the second half of Ian's speech, vivid flashbacks overpowering his words. What he'd said had gone into much more depth than was necessary, an excruciating amount of detail as if he were reminiscent of the event. The thought disgusted me, the entire thing disgusted me, but I couldn't stop playing it. The truth. He'd killed my dad. The man hadn't left me behind, but died.
"You have to skip past the first hour and a h-half," I choked. "It started recording by accident when I'd been eating cereal. Lucky, I guess."
With each play the words had become more and more meaningless. Now, as I listened, I barely felt a thing other than regret at the loss of my friends as Ian's voice filtered through the tinny speaker with my hysterical hyperventilating acting as a pleasant backing.
It felt like a life time had slipped away from us by the time the recording had ended, and then another as I waited for one of them to say something, anything. The only sound, however, was my uncontrollable sniffling as I futilely attempted to suppress another quickly rising panic attack. Either it was time to take the pills again that made me so woozy I forgot things and didn't care about anything, or I'd surpassed fear and reached a new realm of crazy that even my meds couldn't quite reach. A new level of crazy. Excellent.
"Okay," I forced a watery smile but couldn't meet either pair of undoubtedly judgmental eyes, rising to a stand on trembling legs and dusting invisible dust from my legs. "Show's over, folks. Back home you go and for good this time. Neither of you need to come back here and associate yourself with the freak any longer. Cat's out of the bag for real this time." I walked to the closed bathroom door behind them making sure not to accidentally brush either on my way past - more for their benefit than mine for as of now there was no doubt in my mind I was a leper from this moment on. When nobody moved, I forced myself to look up.
Skylar's face was tearstained and stunned. Parker's was unreadable. Unreadable Parker was my least favourite Parker. At least when he was angry I knew what I was to do, how I was to feel. Unreadable him gave away nothing. There wasn't a thing he gave away to gage how he felt other than the slight clench of his jaw, but that could have meant anything. It could have meant he had chewed down hard on a piece of gum for all I was aware - of course, I had no idea whether he actually had any in his mouth in the first place.
"I'm so sor-" Skylar began, eyes shining, but I cut her off.
"Don't. Please leave."
"I want to hug you," She continued anyway, and I wasn't sure if I was able to hide my shock. "But I'm not going to do it. Especially when you're on those drugs. I'll hug you when you're yourself so I know you want it. I'm here for you Flora, whenever and wherever you need it. You know that, right?"
"Hug me?" I echoed. "This isn't funny. Is this a joke to you?"
"What-"
"I know you're both disgusted! I'm vile! Filthy! A freak! There's no scraping off the dirt, alright? I know it and you know it so go ahead and tell me how you really feel because I hate people lying to me, I hate it. Tell me how you can't stand to be near me! How every time you look at me you look at the ten year old that gave herself to a man old enough to be her father in a freaking shower!"
Parker moved as quick as lightening and flashed like it, too. No quicker was he standing by the door before he was materialising in front of the mirror, smashing his fist through it with such a force that it sent a waterfall of winking shards splattered in red to the floor next to my pile of fallen hair. Then he was standing in front of me, breathing hard through his flaring nostrils. He was angry, really angry, and I deserved it. I deserved his fury for keeping something so important from him and allowing him to become attached to damaged goods.
My eyes began welling up again without my consent. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm sorry-"
His large arms wound around me as tight as a vice. Not as if I was a delicate thing that had been damaged and broken beyond repair, but as if he had all of my lost pieces and was forcing them back together again, fixing me. He was crushing me into his white shirt that didn't smell particularly fresh but had that underlying minty scent along with what was undeniably Parker, and I was sobbing into his shoulder wishing it would never end. And then there was another set of arms, a far more hesitant pair, smaller but just as strong as Parker's.
A group hug with Skylar and Parker was never something I had ever envisaged happening, especially after such an exposure of ugly truth, but it was, and somehow there was nothing even slightly weird about it as we desperately clung to one another. I'd never had a more uncomfortable, suffocating and touchy hug, but it was somehow what I'd been needing to confirm they wouldn't leave me, that this wasn't the end. That by some miracle, they didn't share my opinion on what had happened to me all those years ago.
Skylar excused herself after a few minutes informing us she was going to go downstairs and explain the loud noises - god knew what lie she'd concoct to explain that - along with making sure both Ian and my mother were occupied downstairs in case they came up and caught Parker. I was still standing in Parker's arms as she left, my face in the crook of his neck as we swayed on the spot, glass crunching underneath our feet. There was a sort of grim beauty to it; the relief of sharing the burden that had crushed my shoulders downward for so long and having nobody run for the hills afterward.
"I'd never leave you," He was murmuring. "I told you I loved you, does that not mean anything to you? Because to me it means if you're upset, then I am, too. And if you're in pain, then so am I. It also means that when some sick bastard decides to- to disrespect you then I am going to annihilate him." He drew away, and his face was brick red, hands fisted in the back of my shirt shaking with unadulterated hatred. "I mean it, Flora. I'll do it. I'm going to pull him apart, limb from limb, skewer him and cook him over a low heat. It'll be slow and painful and still more than he deserves but-"
"Park," I leaned my forehead against his rapidly rising and falling chest. "Please."
He stopped, breathing still erratic. "Do you have any idea how hard this is for me? To restrain myself? To-to not go down and attack him right in front of your mother? God, there'd be no reversing her hatred for me after I did that but it'd be worth it just to hear the sickening crunch of his bone-"
"I just don't want to talk about him right now, alright? I just need- I just need to be distracted! I don't want to talk about him anymore. He's all I've been thinking about this entire hideous day and I. Can't. Stop. It's late, or early next morning, or- I don't even know what time it is and I've been thinking about how scared I am of him all damn day and I just don't want to do that anymore but there's no way to stop it and no distraction and you just keep on mentioning-"
His lips didn't meet mine, but slammed into them. In fact if I hadn't felt so numb it might have even been painful as I stumbled backward and into the wall. It didn't make sense to act like this but nothing about this situation made sense anyway. Especially the fact Parker somehow knew that this was the perfect distraction even immediately after disclosing what I had to him. To others of a similar situation to my own, this would be the exact opposite of what they'd desire, but Parker must have known the affect he had on me just as I was beginning to realise what I did to him. He made things better. He made me forget. He was my antidote and I, his. His face was flushed for a whole new reason and his fists were no longer shaking. We were each other's distractions and it didn't matter what anybody else said or did because we had each other, no matter what. His solid, warm body pressed against my own told me as much.
My hands traveled from his upper arms to the nape of his neck, trying to tug it downward, closer. He wasted no time in obliging, deepening our gasping kisses and hoisting me up so that my legs could wrap around his waist. He sat on the closed toilet seat and brought me down with him, hands following every curve of my body until they rested in my freshly chopped hair.
"It's so short," He breathed into my neck.
I felt my face flush even more than it already had. "I was upset. I- wanted to not look like myself. I know it's stupid-"
"It's not," He drew back to look at me, twirling the still-damp waves around his fingers. "I get it. I actually really like it. It suits you."
"Well it'll need fixed. I don't think a single strand shares the length of another."
"It'll need fixed," He agreed. "But so did your long hair. You didn't get it cut after you burnt all the ends off when you rolled into the fire when we went camping, did you? Anyway, I like this regardless. It's new. It's a change. From what I've learnt, change is good."
My eyes stung with the effort of holding back tears. More tears. This time, however, they were there for a positive reason. For the boy who had refused to leave me alone since the very first day I met him, and who I hoped would always continue to do so no matter what. I ran my hand down the sharp planes of his face with the intention of memorising every one. His low brow, high cheekbones, sharp nose, chiselled jaw line. He was mine, if I wanted him to be. If I wanted to fully trust again.
"Everything's going to change now, isn't it?"
"But we won't. You need to know that no matter what happens I'm always going to be here for you and so is Skylar. Believe it or not, so are the guys. And when your mum finds out? You know she'll be there for you left right and centre. You've got friends, Flora. Family, even though it may not seem like it right now. Don't ever think you're alone."
I gnawed on the dry skin of my lip. "I'm scared."
"And I'm here for you." Said Parker earnestly.
"I know."
"You know what I'm scared of?" His voice was husky as he leaned in, and for a brief moment I thought it was going to be a goosebump-rising, stomach fluttering remark of some sort, but, "The extremely sharp pair of scissors we've had wedged in between us for the past five minutes that are now currently impaling my groin. Remind me why you held onto them this entire time and decided to drop them on my most prized possession?"
And that's when I knew things between us really wouldn't change.
//yoyoyoooo so this update is late which I'm super sorry about but tbh at least it's not three weeks late like my other one (or 3 months bc lmao that's happened and I'm awful). I'm actually in the process of writing other stories which is why I feel the quality of this is sort of going downhill. Don't worry, it'll obvs be finished eventually. There won't actually be that many more chapters left to go guys omg:((( absolute maximum amount of chapters left, probs like ten. I have an epilogue planned and ugh part of me wants to fast forward to get to it but another part of me is sad because then it'll be over. BUT ANYWAYS. back to the point. If I was to write another story would you guys be interested? I'd finish FF before I started regularly updating another, but I'd maybe publish the first chapter and a blurb to see if you're interested?? let me know boys. And FYI, even tho this update is late I'll still be aiming for this Sunday to update.
this chapter is dedicated to @sciencegirl15 for your recent support and lovely messages. I'm so glad you're enjoying it means a lot❤️//