Author's Note: I wanted to have something up for you guys so here's part 1 of chapter 16. There maybe some issues with tenses because it can get really confusing when you're doing flashbacks and present tense and goodness... It can be a nightmare.
Anywho here's what to look out for
Key:
*** -Either beginning or end of Flashback (I used to normally put a few spaces between flashbacks, but wattpad has changed their spacing options so it does not work. Poopy right?)
____ - A next scene has started or ended
Anywho's read! Enjoy and consider following if you're enjoying the story so far. Bye guys!
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In a little over thirteen hours I have been engaged, pregnant, and a lesbian. The media does that. When I woke up this morning all that was on television were pictures of Duncan Svensson-Nils and his mystery woman- me. Somehow pictures were taken of us yesterday at the MMP music store. I had not seen any paparazzi while we were there, but that is the thing with them, you never really see them coming most times.
There were all kinds of pictures, too. They captured moments I did not even know we had. There was one of Duncan poking my cheek. I cannot remember Duncan touching or his fingers even getting near my face yesterday and yet, there it is - picture proof. Unless it has been altered somehow, but I doubt it.
This morning all Alice could do is watch all of the gossip videos about her brother and his mystery new girlfriend, who she of course knew was me. As if it were not hard enough to convince her that we were not together, this is only making it worse. How do you explain to someone that you are not dating a person who you were caught holding hands with and had a cheek caressing moment with?
***
"So, you guys still not a couple?" Alice had asked.
"Alice," Duncan had started, rolling his eyes. I had been quiet all morning ever since the discovery of the pictures. I almost felt like a small child who had been caught taking something that was not theirs. "Please, you know better than to believe all that crap."
"I don't know," she had sung. "It looks pretty believable to me."
"It's not even like that," Duncan argued.
Alice humed and considered what her brother had told her, then she shook her head with a mischievous smirk on her lips. "Well," she started, tapping her index finger to her chin mockingly. "Explain the hair." Oh yes, the said 'sex hair'. The mess that had been at the top of Duncan's head yesterday. The hair I had tried to fix but was too short to reach.
"Alice," Duncan had started, and this only started another reel of arguments, until finally I tried to escape out of the house, but soon found that the door was locked from the inside, and I did not have the key.
I groaned and stormed back into the kitchen, toward Duncan. I yanked the assortment of keys out of his back pocket, causing him to jump in surprise. He was so engrossed in his argument with his sister that he had not even realized that I was so close to him.
I rolled my eyes and without a word I stormed back out the kitchen and towards the exit.
"Where are you going?" Duncan's voice had carried on in my direction.
I considered not responding to him, but reluctantly caved in. "I am leaving."
"You're leaving?" I had heard the smirk in his voice.
I pivoted in his direction glaring at his smirking face. "Yes."
It seemed like my glare only widened his smirk. "And how are you going to do that?" he had inquired.
I had no response to give him, and my hesitation made him aware of that. I did not have to worry about coming up with a response though, because before I knew it Alice had skipped into the room and said one for me.
"I'll drive you, Attie." She purposely bumped into Duncan on her dance toward me. She grabbed the keys out of my hand, unlocked the door, then threw it, aiming for Duncan's face. He obviously caught it before it hit him, because everyone has better coordination than I do. "You do need some girl time." She sung absentmindedly while looping her arm around mine. She shook her head before saying, "It must be terrible having to deal with my brother everyday. Poor you." And before Duncan could make a snarky comment we were out the door and heading toward Alice's car.
_____
"Goodness," a voice suddenly slices through the air. My head turns in the direction of the voice. I watch as the person exits the church, their head looking left and right at their surroundings. Our eyes lock, and a flash of recognition passes through his eyes. "The last time I was at a church I was being dragged in by my ear by mother." He breathed a laugh. The man stepped toward me, and I had to block my eyes from the sun in order to watch his movements. "Mind if I sit?"
I start to chew the skin on my bottom lip, a nervous habit I have. I turn away from the sun encrusted face and stare back ahead of me. "It is a free country," I reply. I hear the sound of a sharp intake of breath from beside me, and I quickly add an, "In theory," to my statement.
I see him nod in my peripheral somewhat agreeing with my words, before he sits next to me, close enough for me to feel his warmth grabbing toward my cold form. We sit still and silent for what feels like hours before he actually moves. I see through the side of my right eye, him shuffle around with something in the pocket of his dress pants. He pulls out something and offers it to me.
"Cigarette?"
I think about it for a moment. The last time I touched a cigarette was at Huxley. My crazy roommate always found a way to sneak drugs into our room. I mean it could be done if you payed the right people to turn a blind eye, but no one could do it as well as Temp Montenegro. The woman was the queen of smuggled goods.
I smile wryly at the memory of my only sort of friend at the center. "Sure," I reply grabbing the white box out of his hand. I take one out of the fresh box before handing it back to him.
He repeats my actions and places it between his lips, then shoves the box back into his pant pocket. His hand comes back with a light blue lighter, and he flicks it a few times before the spark of the fire shoots out from the lighters teeth.
He offers me the light, but this time I refuse his offer.
"No thanks," I reply softly, yet wearily.
He nods. "Good choice." I watch his movements closely. He brings the light close to the end of the cigarette between his lips but before the fire could even lick at it's end he let it die.
I release a gust of breath that I did not know that I was holding, and relax.
"So many times I wanted to light this thing..." He takes the cigarette from between his lips and stares at it in wonder. He holds it loosely, observing it from different angles before it flies out from between his thumb and index finger and to the ground. "But it's not my time," he grunts as he reaches out towards the fallen cigarette in front of him, that landed very close to a puddle.
He sits up straight when the stick is back in his possession and says "Cheers," clinking the end of his to mine. He puts it back between his lips and starts to smoke the unlit fag and I do the same.
"I'm surprised you haven't broke the seal." I almost smile at his words, not because of what he is referring to, but his choice of words. I had not realized how easy it was to not miss him at Huxley. The few times that I thought about him I was never able to remembered his mannerisms, and that was what made him so charming.
"My beat has not dropped yet," I say as indifferent as I can.
"Really?" The surprise lit up his voice.
I ignore it and calmly nod my response.
"Wow," he exhales and turns his body in my direction. "I would have thought it did the moment you get caught." I nod quietly, not playing into his game. He continues. "I mean I know if I got caught for trying to kill someone all beats would have dropped." My right hand flicks the cigarette a gesture a smoker would do to flick the ash away.
I know he knows that my silence was a que for him to change the subject, that I did not want to speak about it, but he went on anyway.
"Hey, why'd they take you to Huckleberry anyway, isn't that that super corrupt celebrity rehabilitation center?"
I exhale trying to keep myself calm in order to stop the impending music from starting. "Huxley," my voice corrects him, shakily.
"Right, yeah Huxley. Why'd you go there?"
My plan of rooted silence was crushed by my surge of irritation. I inhale deeply and I finally meet his eyes. "Why did you not go to the trial?" I snap back before I can stop myself. His face stays unwavered. He did it. He pushed me, he got me playing his game now. I breath in deeply my feeble attempt of controlling any of composure I had left. "They thought I was crazy." I answer his question, my last attempt of refusing his game.
He barks a laugh. "Yeah, you're crazy alright, but not for the reasons they think you were."
We stare each other down, daring the other. I refuse to play any more into his game, so I stayed silent, waiting for him to speak first. His face becomes shadowed from the clouds blocking out the sun.
"I've missed you," he finally declares.
I immediately turn away staring back ahead of me at the open field of grass that lay after the slab of concrete of the parking lot. I knew the words were bound to be said by one of us, and I had promised myself that I would not be the one to say it first.
"We're allowed visitors at Huxley's," I inform him nonchalantly.
For four years I had not one visitor in that mental hospital. The first few weeks I was sure that my parents (maybe more my father than my mother) would come tears streaming down their faces refusing to let me stay in there for another second.
I thought that after a month, when it all had simmered down maybe Jordan would come see me, and apologize. Tell me how sorry he was, how he was going to fix it all, tell everyone the truth. He never did.
The last person I expected to come see me after half a year, my half birthday, was Leslie. After he stopped being angry with me of course, after he accepted my decision of taking the fall for it all. I thought that he would come in, call me an idiot, and slip me a package of cookie dough drops. He did not.
I exhale a rough breath not wanting to rekindle all the emotions that I had buried a long time ago. The opening keys of that god awful Beethoven song starts to play softly in my head. "I missed you too," I say emotionless my eyes remaining straight ahead of me.
"I tried to visit you Jourdin," he starts.
He did? I shake my head. "I do not care, Leslie," I try to say confidently, but fail.
"You do."
"No, I do not."
"I know you do."
"You-"
"Look at your hands."
I did not have to. I know already that my hands are in a full-out brawl at my lap. I break them up and pick up the cigarette that was balancing on my knee. Before I can bring it up to my lips he snatched it out of my fingers and throws it over his shoulder, eliminating all distractions I have.
"I went to see you so many times, even got the courage once to ask for you, but each time something stopped me." The memory of sitting in the visitors lounge at Huxley the one and only time I had been there, flashed through my mind. I sat there for an hour before they realized that my visitor was not with me. It took them another thirty minutes to figure out that my visitor had left. It was humiliating, having everyone snicker at you whilst one of the workers announce loudly that my visitor had left without even seeing me.
"It wasn't until yesterday when is saw you at MMP that I realized why. It wasn't because I was still mad at you, or that I wanted you to "learn your lesson" or anything." He pauses and reaches over to my lap to pull my hands apart. I watch his eyes study my hands for a few beats. I can almost hear his thoughts, judging each gash and slice of open skin.
"I fell," I explain quickly. His eyes gently meet mine, and I see his are dressed in heavy doubt, but he lets it go with a nod.
"My last memory of you was us in your bedroom. Being as quiet as we can be to not alert your parents. I was basically living in your room at that point, remember?"
I nod, of course I remember. Leslie was the only person keeping me going at that point in my life. Depression was ongoing, anxiety was high, and happiness was nonexistent. He was living for both of us since at that point I was not doing much of it myself.
"It was the night where I heard you sing." That night.
I nod, knowing what came next. The text message, the drive, the confession, the promise, the almost kiss, the night, the morning, the arrest...
"The thing is, I wanted to preserve that night so much. I wanted to ignore all the other times I saw of you after that night, even the last time we spoke at the police station. I didn't want those moments, those pictures the headlines about your staged disappearance. I just couldn't see you as that girl who allowed herself to be manipulated by everyone around her. I always see you doing your best." He pauses to breathe and gather his thoughts, his cheeks becoming a tint of pink. "I wanted to see you at your best, on that stage playing the shit out of your violin, or watching a film and having you ruin it because you'd be explaining all the stupid historical backings of it, or even in your house in your room singing about a broken heart.
"I didn't want to hinder that last moment I had with you, because," he inhales a shaky breath. "I didn't know if I would ever see you again. That was what scared me the most. Me going in That Center, seeing you and you telling me that once you got out of there that you'd be transported to some jail in Guantanamo."
I could barely breath through the rough beating of my heart. The music had gotten much louder, rattling at my brain. All my limbs suddenly felt all heavy. I know this feeling, the feeling before I pass out.
"Attilia?" A new voice smashes through the loud music in my head. Duncan. I recognize the voice, and the foreign name feeling an ounce more calmer.
I turn towards his voice with much effort and I must have looked ghostly because concern immediately drapes itself over his face. He strides toward me, crouching down in front of me before enclosing me in his arms.
"It's alright, I'm here," he mumbles, his words tickling my neck. I try to regulate my breathing, taking deep slow breaths hoping that I do not pass out.
After a while I feel much calmer and he releases me. We face each other, and I see the subtle concern still set on his face.
"Hey," he breathes with a slight smile.
I search his face and find the same curiosity that is always there whenever he looks at me. "I'm fine," I tell him.
His smile widens. "Yes, you are," he says suggestively.
With a gasp I smack his chest. "Way to ruin the moment," I grumble.
He chuckles with his arms still around my waist. "I wasn't aware that there was a moment going on, Ms. Attilia."
"Well," I start moving out of his hold. "There was not, but..." He nods with his signature teasing smirk smeared all over his lips. I roll my eyes and smack him on the arm, right before the church doors open again spilling out all of the funeral guests.
______
The whole ride back to Duncan's I could not help but recall the look of the casket of the young mans' funeral that we had just attended. Honestly, I am not quite sure what his birth name is, come to think of it, I am not even sure I know what his friends call him either. But this did not stop me from feeling any remorse for the guy whose life ended much too soon.
Some people had still been crying at the cemetery, especially the young man's parents. His mother could barely stand and his father looked as though he were choking on all the emotions he was trying to contain inside of himself. It was apparent that this man was a man that had many suppressed emotions, and made sure that he stuck to that even on his only son's funeral.
I used to wonder how my parents felt when they found out that their daughter could possibly be a murderer. I used to wonder how they managed when all of a sudden they had to live without their doll child. How they went on to live in the same house without me as their means of distracting them from their contempt for each other. I never once wondered whether they believed it or not. It did not matter to me whether or not they believed that the child they bore and raised could do such a thing at the age of sixteen. What mattered to me was whether they would be there, either for me or against me. They did not even care enough to testify against or for me. My father eventually got on the stand to be a neutral witness, but it was a waste of time for both the defense and the prosecutor.
All that my parents did for me four years ago only proved to me that they were concerned in saving their reputations rather than making sure that I was not imprisoned for a crime that I had not committed. Somehow my father paid off everyone to keep shut about my arrest, the court case is sealed, and everyone in the world just thinks that the child prodigy Jourdin Tolbert-Bion is off to some exclusive music expedition in some faraway island. When really I was a few hours away from when I was last spotted at a mental/rehabilitation center for the celebrities who didn't want everyone to know about their destructive and crazy lifestyles and habits.
***
It was Wednesday which was mail days, where everyone at this god awful institution got packages and letters from the friends and family who knew that they were hiding away in a hospital to "better themselves". I hated these days in particular not because I never got anything in the mail, but it was the time of the week where I had to deal with whatever sneaky way my roommates pen pal decided to deliver her her weekly drugs. Yeah, somehow Tempest Montenegro mastered the art of smuggling drugs into a Huxely.
I heard it before I saw it, the sound of wrapping paper being crumpled and ripped. I flung the door open already in a mood after my one-on-one session with Vince; one of the rehabilitation counselors who was still sour about the merger between the Rehab Center and the metal facility (even though the construction of the mental hospital had been 'active' even before I had been admitted). He was very whiney and made sure he let everyone know that he had a problem with counseling 'the kookies'. (Somehow it was better for him to counsel those unfunctionables who could not cope without their daily fix of drugs and/or alcohol). It had been said that he believes that his patients (the addicts), could be treated but the cuckoo's (the mentals) will always be crazy. I do not pay much attention to anything Vince says, but he really got to me sometimes especially because he knew that I would not give him a response, nor report him.
The crunching of paper stopped when I had taken a few steps into the room. Tempest's head snapped towards the direction I came in with a sniff. "What are you doing here?" Her eyes were dark with anticipation.
I headed towards my bed, the one farthest away from the door, but closest to the bathroom. I sat on the farthest side of the bed, the one closest to the window and away from the frantic Temp.
"I thought you had a session," she had said sniffing again. After a few beats, the rustling paper started again a sign that she had accepted that I would not reply to her. The sound had stopped thirty-seven seconds later, after seven more seconds the sound of fabric ripping tore through the silence that had laid upon the distant construction sound going on somewhere in the large building. Curiosity got the best of me and I had to turn my head.
There I found Tempest Montenegro sitting on the ground with a pair of pink wedged heels and a bag containing other small plastic bags that contained all sorts of pills in them. She has done it again, I had thought. Somehow my roommate had gotten her drug provider to sneak in drugs into the center through a pair of shoes. Impressive.
"Cigarette?" Temp picked up the other pair of wedge. It looked like a normal shoe, but I'm sure it was much more.
I shook my head and turned back towards the shaded window. It was the first time I had given her any sort of response, but she was probably already too high off of her leftovers to have realized it.
________
End Slate
A new short story is up on my website if you all have not checked it out. And a new announcement will be up soon as well so look out for that.
Also for those of you who look at the cast I think I'm going to be changing Duncan's character. I'll leave some pics on the side for you guys to let me know which you think. Or if you have any suggestions. For Duncan he's just a cute quirky guy, not handsome just cute. So it's hard because there's szo many handsome celebs these days. Not that I'm complaining! KEEP 'EM COMING HOLLYWOOD!
Anywho's love you all MWAH!
-Water