𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐀 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐓, 𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐝₁

𝐱. 𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐡

When your on your death bed, people joke about seeing someone hot—a shirtless male, if you will.

But not Athena. She'd always been different. Not physically, but mentally. Constant anxiety attacks, not wanting to get out of bed.

Crashing, as her mother would call it. She was crashing right now.

Ragged breaths leave Athena as she swallows thickly, trying to unbuckle herself. Her femur was definitely shattered, that was for sure. She'd have to do her best to get out of the car. She had a blaring headache—a concussion was in the picture.

She could feel the blood dripping down her face.

Athena pulls herself out of the car, falling onto the ground, just now feeling the pulsing pain in her fore arm.

She could faintly see the truck driver calling 911.

Everyone was going to know, Athena thought.

To anyone else, it was a selfish thought. But to Athena, it wasn't. She'd been keeping this secret for a while, and the last thing she wanted was for everyone to be mad. For Amelia— or hell, even Addison to find out.

Then, everything went black.

🪷

When Athena was a kid her and her mother would have movie nights— constant movies. Along with snacks.

On certain nights of the week, they would watch movies til the sun came up, not worried about work or school.

It would start as soon as her mother got home—ten o'clock sharp.

Athena would have the movies set. Depending on the day, the movie genres would change.

Wednesday was Athena's absolute favorite. Horror.

She loved the suspense and the dumb decisions of the teens. You would think gore would effect a young girl. But not Athena.

Before everything went on, she wanted to be a police officer. But everything quickly changed.

Before she'd found out about her mothers disease, her mother and stepdad fought a lot. And then it stopped.

Everything stopped.

Movie nights, her mother coming home, her mother going to work, family dinners.

That's when she knew. Everything was fucked.

Her mother would try to convince her everything was going to be okay.

But she knew better.

She'd been in period three biology when she figured it out.

Heart disease. Hereditary. Deadly.

The four words that started her panics—crashes.

🪷

"Charlotte.." Athena rasps, her throat tasted like metal.

"Here," Charlotte grabs the pink hospital cup filled with water.

Athena greedily gulps the water.

"Why do you do that?" Charlotte asks, sounding distant.

Athena's nose flares, "You don't understand."

Charlotte scoffs, standing up out of the chair.

"You wanted to keep it a secret!" Charlotte shouts, but has to bring her voice back down. "Now everybody knows, Athena."