Bad Girl (TYG)

Chapter 5; Black Mail

The next few days are excruciatingly boring. President Grimes pulls the four of us out of training for questioning and so my days consist of school in the morning and interrogation in the afternoon.

By time it's the third afternoon that I sit in Mrs. Thompson's dingy white office, I want to scream.

She sits reading a paperback book because I've zoned out completely and stopped acknowledging her at all. So we sit in complete an utter silence. I need to get out of here.

"Mrs. Thomson?" I speak after a moment.

"Yes?" She asks, peering up at me from her book.

"Why did you choose to be a counselor?" I ask her.

She looks at me for a moment before setting her book onto the desk.

"That's a rather long story." She says, pressing her lips together.

"Please?" I ask.

"I will tell you the story if you promise to tell me one thing in return." Del says, raising her eyebrows at me.

I nod my head.

"I promise." I agree.

"Alright." She says, sitting back in her seat a little bit. "When I was seventeen, I met a boy named Axel. Everyone just called him Axe for short. Axe was known as a bad boy around the school, but I didn't realize how true that was until we started dating. My parents and friends warned me to stay away from him. They warned me that he was a troublemaker, but I didn't listen to any of them.

He was a known drug dealer and he stole from stores. He liked me because I helped him. I'm pretty sure that was the only reason he liked me. I'm not sure that I ever really loved him either, I more loved the idea of being with him. The adrenaline rush it gave me to do something illegal and get away with it. All my life I had been a good girl. Perfect grades, perfect boyfriends, a goody two shoes. I felt I deserved some time to just let go. So I did.

One day, Axe and I robbed a gas station. It was for meaningless stuff really, but stealing is stealing. The store owner caught me and the police showed up. I went to juvy for six months. When I got out, I immediately looked for Axe, but he was nowhere to be found. He dropped out of high school and left town, with out so much as a goodbye to me. I never heard from him again.

Afterwards, I was heartbroken, but my parents wanted nothing to do with me and my friends were long gone. I sat by finishing my senior year of high school alone. The kids at school shunned me and I told myself that I deserved every second of it. With that kind of mind set I got myself thinking I didn't deserve to be alive anymore. It's dangerous thinking that way. So one day I set off down the street, planning on drowning myself in the lake near my house. I accidentally bumped into an old woman on the sidewalk and she offered me a cup of tea and cookies. I think she could sense that I needed help. So I went into this strangers house and found myself confessing everything that had happened to me in the past year and everything I felt. And she talked me out of it. She talked me out of killing myself. Afterwards, I knew that I wanted to be just like her. I wanted to be able to help people as well. So I turned my life around and worked my butt off in college to get a degree."

"So that's my story." She finishes, sniffing a little bit. "Now it's your turn to answer a question."

I nod my head and she wipes her eyes once.

"What did you see in the picture I showed you a couple of days ago?"

"I'm- I'm not really sure." I say. "I think it was me, but I looked different."

"Different how?" She questions.

"I can't explain it." I say simply.

A silence falls around us again and I sit thinking for a couple of minutes.