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34 | thirty four
Scottie and Stacey sat on the hood of his car in the McDonald's parking lot, licking ice-cream off their plastic spoons.
"So what now?" Scottie asked.
It had been a day since the funeral and for some reason, Stacey felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.
"I don't know," Stacey shrugged. "Try to decide which parent to live with, I guess. Or I could move out."
"Which one would you pick?" Scottie asked. "Honestly."
"Neither," Stacey said. "In a way they're as bad as each other. I don't want to live with that anymore."
Scottie was silent for a moment, staring at her before nodding slowly. "We're nearly graduating soon."
"Yeah," Stacey smiled slightly. "It'll be nice to just...get away."
Scottie looked over at her and smiled, throwing his finished ice-cream into the garbage beside the car. "One day you asked me why I stayed with you."
"Yeah, so?" Stacey asked, putting her ice-cream in the garbage too.
"Well I'm going to give you the real answer."
Stacey licked her lips apprehensively and turned to face him on the hood of the car." Okay."
"I don't know how you'll take it," he said.
"I can be understanding...sometimes."
Scottie cracked a smile. "Alright well, my older sister was called Morgan. And she went through some problems during high school."
Stacey frowned and Scottie continued.
"She was called a slut, whore and tramp, anything you can think of. People hated her and judged without really knowing her. She wasn't happy and I never saw it. She would come home and be just huge smiles. I never would have guessed until she..."
Scottie's voice cracked and he cleared his throat. "Until she cut off all her hair and cut her wrists."
Stacey's face fell and her lips parted.
"And so when I saw your hair all cut up, I was terrified. I was so scared that you had done the same thing and some sort of...connection grew. I didn't want you to end up like my sister did."
"What happened to her?" Stacey asked softly.
"She killed herself." Scottie said slowly. "And I found her."
Stacey watched as the boy in front of her suddenly gasped in a sob and she put her hand on his shoulder when he began to cry silently.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"You don't need to be sorry for anything," Stacey whispered. "Nothing."
Scottie continued to cry and Stacey stroked his back, noticing that the two of them weren't that different after all.
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