𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗿𝘃𝗼𝘆𝗮𝗻𝘁

Wake Up

✿

"You have to choose. It's me or her." My dad moves his pointer finger side to side, pointing at himself and my mom.

"I'm not doing that." Lydia's words are still slurred by the anti-anxiety meds, and I sit down next to her, pushing her hair out of her face.

"We aren't fucking choosing." I look over to Lydia and apologetically nod at her. She looks so vulnerable; her body rolled up in a ball with her knees pulled to herself while she struggles to keep her eyes open enough to take part in the conversation. She has pushed her back against the headboard, and is propping her body up against mine.

He shouldn't be asking this shit when she's like this.

"Watch your mouth, young lady."

I don't respond, both me and my sister staring at him in silence. My mom is looking at the floor. She already tried to talk him out of it, he wouldn't listen.

"Give me an answer." He moves towards us and grips his hand around Lydia's arm, trying to shake some clarity into her drug filled system. "Choose, Lydia."

My hands reach out and push him away before I can tell myself not to. I have to follow through. "Leave her alone! She isn't in her right mind."

"Did you just fucking push me?"

Before I can speak back, my mom places her arms around his. "I told you we shouldn't do this. Not tonight."

"And I told you, I'm doing this tonight."

"And I told you, you're not!"

She yells back. This is the first time I've heard her yell back.

I watch as his arms break free from her hold, moving back. "Don't touch her!" I jump out of Lydia's bed, unable to hold her up and stop my dad from hitting my mom at the same time. My tight grip on his wrist forces him to turn around and face me. His chance of using his free hand to hit me is cut short when I make the first impact. My knuckles hit his jawbone, causing me to shake the pain out of my hand afterwards.

I swear I just broke my middle finger, and in my moment of blinding pain, I look up to see a fist making contact with my eye. This knocks me straight on my ass, and I have to force my body to stay conscious.

A muffled "Get out!" Is heard from my mom, along with the stomps of my dad's work boots.

"Maeve!" Lydia slurs, pushing her weak body out of bed to sit next to my body, which is lying on the floor.

"Maeve, get up!"

Stiles? No...that was Lydia.

"Maeve! You've gotta wake up!"

No...that's Stiles.

My body is jolted up by a sudden gasp, my chest feeling like it's caving in on itself. I can feel my heartbeat, pushing against my ribs as my chest heaves.

"What?"

"You hit your head...hard." Scott's body is crouched over mine, his hair draping over his eyes.

"Huh?" I look over to my shoulder. Stiles' hand is gripped on, probably from trying to shake me awake.

"When we were running?" he responds, cocking his eyebrow. He continues when he is met with nothing but a confused look in response. "You kinda looked back while going full sprint, and turned around to a wall in front of your face...yeah...you ran into a wall."

"Oh."

They each hook an arm under mine to pull me up. "We need to get somewhere safer than the middle of the halls."