How hard could it be? • LM / SS

Chapter 96

                             "Don't blame me,
                         love made me crazy."

Max rapped his knuckles against the door to his sister's room again, trying to coax her out. She had picked up her car from wherever she had been staying and drove home before anyone could find her. No one really knew what was going to happen next, but the first thing all of them needed to do was go to Deaton's so he could explain exactly what he knew. There was too much of a grey area that needed to be cleared up, too much information that was being held secret. "Come on."

Jade rested her head against the wall, trying to pluck up the courage to open the door. She didn't think she could face all of them, see the disgusted expressions on their faces. She couldn't blame them, though; they should be ashamed.

But no one could top the shame she felt towards herself. The fact that she had killed seven people in one fleeting moment of anger. Seven people who wouldn't be able to go home. The mothers and fathers waiting at the dinner table for their babies. The wives and husbands waiting for the love of their lives, trying to reassure their children that they were just running late and would be home soon. The best friends waiting for a call back. The pets wondering if their owner just decided to abandon them. The amount of lives she had ruined in one night. Because her actions didn't just effect the ones she had killed. It also effected the people that were left behind, as well as her own family and friends.

All she had to do was walk forward and pull down on the handle of the door, but she couldn't move. She was frozen, stuck in this mindset that refrained her from being able to move. All she wanted to do was flip that switch, to feel nothing again and to block out this heartache that was slowly but surely tearing her apart. Though, she knew she couldn't allow herself to. She couldn't become that empty shell again and destroy countless lives in a selfish act of avoidance. No, she needed to go to Deaton's. She needed to know the truth.

She needed to know what that memory had been about. What Natalia had been talking about. And what the fuck Elizabeth and Sean had been keeping hidden from their children.

Melissa heard the lock click from the opposite side of the door, whispering a few words to her son and nephew about giving her some space before stepping into the threshold. Everything in the room was still unchanging since the girl had left. The only noticeable changes were in her niece herself; the vivid pink was streaked through her hair again, her clothes similar to what she usually wore, just taken to a more extreme level and the shift in emotions were transparent.

"I can't move," she explained, trying to focus on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth.

"Okay," Melissa nodded, standing in front of the girl, but not too close as to invade her personal space. She could only imagine that the added emotional stress from the last while hadn't helped. She knew from talking to Ms Morell that the twins had PTSD from the car accident and that there was a lot of different coping mechanisms. In Jade's case, when talking about flight or fight mode, she either ran or froze. "How are you feeling?"

Jade started to panic, her body tensing up at the question. She never understood how she was meant to answer that, or how she was meant to identify her feelings. Literally, how? "I don't know but I don't want to feel it."

"That's alright but remember what Lydia said. It's normal to grieve but you stuff all your emotions down which is why you don't want to feel it. But we can deal with that later, all we need to do is breathe and sit this out."

It took six panic attacks later, but between Scott, Max and Melissa, they managed to lure her out of her room and into the car.

She sat in the back seat, her legs pulled up to her chest as they drove through the small town of Beacon Hills. She didn't even want to begin to imagine what kind of a story was being made up about why she ran away. Well, she had plenty of experience with people spreading rumours, so one more wouldn't hurt.