Cover by: kimberly_white101
When I look at my hand, I see seven fingers.
I blink down at it, slowly moving them, watching my fingers multiply and sway through my blurry eyes. I thought I had only been sitting here for a minute, but when I check the time on my phone, an entire hour has passed. Swivelling my gaze back to my hand once more, I see it is back to normal.
An arm wraps around my waist and I am pulled to my feet by someone I met earlier in the night. He smiles down at me, his hot breath splashing across my face, long hair falling over his eyes. I can smell the alcohol on him. I wrinkle my nose.
"Want to come with me to the after party?" he questions with a flirtatious smirk and a deep dimple in his left cheek.
I watch the blur of people passing by. "Aren't we at the after party?"
He considers this, nodding.
"The after, after party," he amends.
When my arm presses against his chest, I hardly feel it. It is as if I am watching someone take possession of my body.
"Hey, where are you off to?" he curls his fingers around my wrist, tugging me back. "The car is this way."
I shake my head. I want to tell him to get lost, but my tongue feels glued to the roof of my mouth. He's pulling me with him. My feet drag on the ground.
"Piss off, Roger," a voice snaps, yanking my free arm back.
I stumble into the person, and they steady me with two hard hands.
The guy sneers at her but doesn't protest. He sends me one last look before he joins his friends.
"You're an idiot," she snaps at me. "I'm taking you home."
I try to open my eyes to see who it is, but they don't seem to open. Or they are open, but everything is dark. The girl continues to swear at me and I feel myself being pushed into a car. There is loud hollering and my ears ring. A plastic cup is pushed into my palm and I greedily gulp the contents, my throat screaming for hydration. I spit it back out when I taste straight vodka.
I sag into the door, my heated forehead pressing against the glass. The vibration of the car on the road makes my head buzz but I don't move. Everything is spinning.
The door opens sometime later and I fall out of it, my hands scraping the pavement. The girl wrenches me to my feet.
"You're a mess. I'm not dealing with this anymore."
I trip up the stairs to my porch. The girl fumbles in my pockets and pulls out my keys, dropping them into my palm.
"Next time, you're not invited," she growls at me.
I hear her heavy footsteps descend the stairs. I try for a few minutes to get my key into the lock, but it feels as if my hands are in slow-mode. The door opens and light spills over me. I wince, shielding my hand over my eyes.
"For Christ's sake," a voice mutters. "Harold! I've found her. She's wasted, again."
My bag slips from my shoulder, landing with a thud on the ground. The contents flood out of it. Condoms, cigarette packets, a lighter, and a bag with three caps inside. My foster mother purses her lips down at it.
"Harold!" she shrieks once more and my foster father appears, looking weary. I have no idea what the time it is, somewhere between two-to-three a.m.
Eileen pinches her fingers against my face and I try to look at her, but my eyes are rolling into the back of my head. She inhales sharply.
"Harold! Look at her pupils."
She shouts. Cries. More shouting.
The staircase is vibrating, moving side to side. I stare numbly ahead, watching the colours of the walls bleed into each other.
Harold, the kinder and more considerate one of the two, exhales, his fingers tapping against his stomach, which is so round his t-shirt doesn't fit over it.
"No point talking to her now, she's not here," he says. Not here. That is his favourite term to use for me. "I'll put her to bed."
It's a challenge to climb the stairs, but we eventually make it to my room. My clothes litter across my floor and my bed is unmade. Eileen hates mess. She probably drank an entire bottle of wine after seeing it.
I collapse, sinking into the mattress in a muddle of tangled limbs and knotted hair.
Harold sits heavily beside me. "We can't do this anymore, kid."
I close my eyes, burying my face into the pillow.
"We have tried and tried with you..." he breaks off.
He has more to say, but he doesn't. He struggles to his feet and after a few moments, leaves the room, blanketing me in darkness.
***
It takes me over half-an-hour to peel myself from my mattress. It feels like my body has been run over and reversed across. My stomach churns. I use the walls to guide me into the bathroom.
After being sick more times than I care to admit, I shower and dress, growing more nauseous with each passing moment. What happened last night? Dancing. Kissing strangers. Swallowing pills. Losing half my clothes. Smoking too many cigarettes—A standard Friday night.
When I get downstairs, Eileen is placing cups of tea onto the table. Harold is speaking with a woman. She has a mess of curls bundled on the top of her head, a blazer tightly stretched over her torso and half-moon spectacles planted on her nose. My heart drops into my stomach at the sight of her. I've seen her before. A few times now.
"Addison," Harold starts, noticing me appear, interrupting the woman mid-sentence.
The woman turns to me and I shrink under her gaze. Eileen stares at me. Her face holds anger, sadness, disappointment.
The silence stretches around the room like a weighted blanket, covering us and cutting off the air supply. I flick my eyes between them all.
"What's going on?"
"Take a seat," Harold gestures.
Stiffly, I do as I'm told. Eileen busies herself to make me a cup of tea, which she knows I won't drink.
"Hello, Addison," the woman greets me, a formal tone to her voice. I don't want to meet her eyes but I force myself to.
"What is this?"
"Your parents—"
"Foster parents," I correct automatically.
"—Have expressed some concerns about your behaviour."
I look to Harold. He won't meet my eyes. Instead, he picks away at his thumbnail. Eileen sets down the cup in front of me and I turn my gaze to her. She recoils from my withering stare and sits as far from me as she can.
"It appears they have tried to communicate with you about this for a while, but there has been no improvement."
"Harold," I quickly plead, knowing where this conversation is going. "You don't want this."
Eileen scoffs. "You see? This is what she does. She manipulates him." She glances at her husband with distaste. "And he lets her."
The woman—I think she assumes I remember her from before as she didn't bother to introduce herself, but I can't think of her name—raises a hand.
"Addison, I'm going to cut right to the point here," she says, clasping her hands together and leaning forward. Her patience has run out with me. Long ago. "This... arrangement isn't working out."
I sink low into my seat, feeling bile in the back of my throat.
"Mr and Mrs Jenning have had to make the heavy decision of letting you go."
My fists curl against my thighs.
Letting you go.
As if I'm a butterfly caught in the paws of a lion and I'm now free.
I've been through this before. I won't be free.
"We couldn't find a foster family to take you on. You will attend Downright High and live there until you are eighteen. Once you have graduated, you will be free to do as you wish. There are packages and other support funds that will become available to you. I will give you a spreadsheet that goes over all of this with you."
The room closes in on me.
Downright High. The school for delinquents. The place you're sent when no one wants you anymore. The worst school in the state.
"Harold," I whisper.
His lower lip trembles as he refuses to look up. Eileen makes a sound of annoyance at the pair of us.
"I get no say in this?" I eventually ask.
"We have tried!" Eileen bursts, slamming her mug down onto the table. Tea sloshes over the edge, splattering across her freshly cleaned tablecloth.
Once more, the woman holds her hand up and Eileen bites her tongue with much reluctance.
"I'll help you pack your things," the woman tells me. "And then you can say your goodbyes."
I jerk, my eyes locking onto hers. "I'm moving today? Right now?"
She nods. Her eyes drift over my shoulder and I follow her gaze, seeing two men walking into the kitchen. They stand side-by-side, hands folded behind their back. I swallow uneasily, understanding.
My body deflates as I hang my head, my eyes burning with tears desperate to escape.
Another foster home to tick off the list.
"I'll get my stuff," I mumble.
Eileen looks surprised at my admission. I would usually make a scene. Scream. Throw things. Argue. I don't have the energy today. I stand. Finally, Harold meets my eyes.
"I'm sorry, pumpkin," he murmurs.
"No, you're not," I spit at him.
I turn my back to the people I have lived with for the past twelve months, wishing to never see either of them again.
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Thoughts on the first chapter?