1/2
So this has not been proofread at all. If you find any mistake just comment it down and I'll be quick to fix it if I'm online!
WARNING; Mention of self-harm mentioned.
Author: Two things some that your friendship with Faith has taught you?
Hope: Well the first one is, if you live in fake you'll become living, breathing plastic. The only way to be alive is to be real. Experience pain, love, happiness, sadness. Because those emotions are privileges. Some people long to feel them.
Two, that not all secrets are kept to hurt and that not everything written in ink is true. Sometimes you have looked even deeper into a painting to tell the true meaning. The same thing about life. If you judge from the exterior you'll fail.
~Hope Manchester.
••
Getting up from bed today was not as big of a chore as it was before I came here. It wasn't as big as a burden meeting with Sam a few days after I last saw Hope.
It was not easy, but it was not as burdening. Things were never going to be easy, this I knew, being me was a burden enough.
The Skype call I was currently on with my mother made me realise that I craved to be normal for so long, it was practically impossible.
I could be normal over and over again but the truth would always be that nothing would change.
I still hated myself. That would never change.
Not as long as Melody was gone.
But unlike before I found reasons to live. I couldn't remember the last time I spoke to myself in the mirror and I had other things occupy me. I couldn't remember the last time I had taken my antidepressants because I had a breakdown from my depression.
Things were looking up for me.
As my Mom talked I listened to her, so did my brothers who were paying more attention than I was.
I was going to leave next week, I couldn't afford to come back. It would be risky. Not only to my parents but to my brothers and myself.
I needed to prove that I was innocent. I hated that my Mother had them investigate deeply into Melody's life, she had always hated when people meddled in her business.
I stared at my hands in defeat when I heard her voice once again.
"Faith, you have to respect the judge. Aside from that, you're going to have to tell her everything. If you miss one word or one incident, it could even be you dropping a pen, we would stand a chance of losing this." My mother spoke and I nodded having no energy left to reply to her.
Hugo softly massaged my back.
"Also," Vanessa, mother's attorney spoke up. "I think it's only wise that your brothers don't follow you back to New York. Your parents have spent so much covering up your whereabouts that it would all be thrown to the mud if people find out that you stayed together." Chase was about to protest but when I nodded he forcefully bit back his words.
"Sure," I said sounding robotic. When Vanessa and Mom realised that was the best they were going to get from me they nodded. But I couldn't hide my feelings any longer. "But if I may ask," I didn't wait to receive permission before I spoke up. "Where exactly is Dad?" And for the first time since we started this Skype video call, I looked up, looking at my mother in the eye.
She looked terrible, her platinum blonde hair was similar to that of a bird's nest, it was like she had just pulled it in a messy bun to look a bit decent. Her normal bright self-absorbed green eyes looked almost dead, they were worn out and the nasty looking bags under her eyes hadn't helped her case. Her olive skin that once used to be flawless had pimples decorating her face. I guess she had not been taking proper care of herself.
"Oh, um. ." Mom looked at a loss for words like she had not been expecting this question. I was far too amused that possible. "He's busy, why do you ask though?" She concluded with a raised eyebrow.
I smiled. "No reason. I just wanted this marked on attendance when I'm too busy to come to his funeral." I smiled sweetly and Vanessa who was right next to Mom had gasped.
Hugo had choked on his saliva. He coughed violently looking amused and distressed at the same time while Chase slowly patted his back with a grin.
Aiden shot me an impressed smile.
"Faith! That is not anything suitable to tell your father!" Mom scolded me, looking pissed. Ah, I had hit the right buttons. "And your father will not be dying anytime soon."
"Whatever works for you, Mama."
••
"I want to become a teacher one day," Melody told me. Today was amusing. Because not only had she just randomly told me a dream I already knew she had but we were both dancing around the fact that she had another black eye.
I wonder what excuse she'll give our couch. Did she run into a tree again? I mean, how many times in a lifetime can one person run into the same tree?
Melody proved that scientifically you run into the same tree at least twenty times in a lifetime.
At least that was bullshit she had fed our gymnastics coach.
It had been three months since I saw the horrible sight of her father assaulting her. It had brought us closer than we were, it was like I knew a privileged chapter of her life that you needed millions of keys to unlock.
"Oh really? Wow, I never realised." I said dryly. We were both stargazing. Looking at the stars from her yard. With the tight security in my house, it would be impossible to look at the sky.
Melody sighed and sat up resting on her hands as her legs stretched out and her back raised. "You need to get a boyfriend,"
I copied her actions. "You need to get a life,"
"I do not."
"You do too."
"Shut your pipe," she glared at me. "Let's call its truce."
"I call it you lying to yourself." She groaned and fell back to the grass on her lawn.
Her father was out of town for a few days, it was enough freedom for Melody to do things she never had the chance to do when he was home.
An example, stargazing.
"Whatever," she waved me off.
I decided to kill the mood of this beautiful night by being realistic. "If you run into social services what are you going to tell them?" I asked her.
She scoffed. "The tree's a bastard."
I clenched my fist. "A tree doesn't leave a fist mark on your face you illiterate." Her eyes widened and her hand flew up to her bruised eye. She had only just realised.
She gasped and tears pooled in her eyes. "Oh my gosh, Faith. What am I going to do? Dad is going to kill me if I tell a soul! He'll ruin me, I'm sure of it!" I looked at Melody my anger not reducing.
"I can help you with it. I can get it cleaned up and put some make-up on for you. But if you keep on having any more run-ins with the tree I'm sure they are going to have him in a cell soon." Melody glared at me, her eyes filled with as much anger as in mine.
"Oh really, you think you're so smart right? Well, I hope you haven't been having any more slip-ups with your pocket knife. You don't need any more accidental cuts." She shot back at me.
"You daughter of a shit ball," I wanted to launch at her when she grabbed my hands and sighed.
"Listen, I'm sorry. It was wrong of me to use that against you." She pulled the sleeve of my pyjama top down, revealing a fresh red cut. "Because I'm not perfect either and anyone perfect should be eliminated from this world." I smiled at her. My smile was small but genuine and I pulled my sleeve up.
We both had different reasons for doing everything we did. She kept quiet because a part of her still loved her Dad. I cut because a part of me still couldn't accept that to my parents I was the child that was a mistake...It should have never happened, I should have been a boy.
"Yeah, you're only looking out for me. We outcasts have to look out for ourselves."
"Outcasts," she repeated. "I like that, a lot. But promise me that you'll stop cutting." She looked at me pleadingly but I shrugged.
We were both doing things that were equally harmful to ourselves but I wanted this moment under the stars to be recorded by this particular scar. I traced the mark of the cut, it was still fresh and red. Destroying my olive skin.
"Promise me that you'll report him." I looked at her the same way she had looked at me. We fell silent for a few moments.
"Then let's promise that nothing will escalate," she brought forth her pinky. "Pinky swears are the deadliest ones. If you do break it you'll be cursed for eternity." I laughed.
"Whatever." I wrapped my pinky finger around hers and she broke our finger apart.
"Good, now let's go draw a naked baby with the stars."
At the end of the day, I was not the one to break the promise. She had broken a promise that she had initiated. I wonder how long that curse would last on her. I laughed bitterly at the unwanted memory as I traced my finger to the scar of the cut.
The cut that Melody had seen.
I missed her and my scars would always remind me of her.
Because if I died trying to get her justice I swear to drag her father to hell with me. Even if it meant never seeing Melody—or even her grave— again.
I looked at the letter I had addressed to Hope.
It would be my final goodbye to her because I was a coward and seeing her would only remind me of the friendship I had just recently lost.
I tucked the letter into the white envelope. I had spent hours working on it till I was satisfied. I had poured everything into it.
She deserved to know the truth about me. And if the message I had sent to her on Hugo's phone had been sent she would be buzzing with questions.
I tried to act nonchalant in the latter because that was it, the last time I'd communicate with her.
As I finished putting the letter in the white formal envelope I wrote in the best handwriting of mine.
For Hope Manchester
I gulped and looked at it. This was not the ideal goodbye but it was the only and safest one.
I just prayed that maybe she'd understand. One day.