Shoutout to @Rupe01 & @therubicscube for following along, reading, voting and commenting <3 it really means a lot to me!
Give them a follow and check out their stories, 'The Tourist Trap' & 'Ice Cold Love' -- both extremely well written and fun to read!
Panic has inevitably crept its way back into my life, waiting, as if dormant until provoked; provoked by my lies and unwillingness to face things. What I knew would happen is happening, I'm backed into a corner and I don't know how to get out. The water is boiling over the pot, spilling and scolding and I haven't the faintest idea how to clean it up.
Tomorrow we go to Halifax, to our apartment that isn't mine, not really. A weekend for fun, for memories, for students of St. Mary's, not for imposters.
The funny thing is, part of me wants to go, like actually go because spending this summer with Darrin and Leah has made me feel a little like myself again, but I can't, because how can I go to a school with a scholarship for running when I can't even run? It's not like I can show up and say, oh hey remember me Yeah, no, sorry I'm just gonna sit over here and watch. I've got good grades sure, but I got into St. Mary's because I'm a runner, because of my records, my talents...and none of that matters now because I can't.
"Katy," my dad knocks on the bathroom door, "Darrin is here, he's out front with Jake."
I've been in the bath for an hour, my dad would freak if he knew that I continued to pull the plug, so the water doesn't overflow. But the constant whooshing and sloshing as the it fills the tub keeps the noise out of my head. And right now, there is too much noise, too much noise.
"K, I'll be out in a minute."
I lay there for a bit longer before I let the water drain for real, my fingers and toes wrinkle with proof that I took more time than necessary. I stand in front of the mirror wrapped in a towel, hair dripping skin glistening and it's almost laughable how normal I look on the outside. Just a happy girl with a summer glow getting ready to go to the movies with her boyfriend and little brother. Just a girl just a girl just a happy normal girl, but inside the girl is trapped, the girl is suffocating, and the girl is scared.
"Katy!" I hear Jake shout from downstairs, "hurry up I want to get there in time to get food and a good seat...I'm not sitting front row."
"Okay I'll be down in a few minutes," I towel dry my hair and pull it back into a braid I don't have the energy or apparently the time to bother blow-drying it or styling it for that matter. I open the cabinet to look for hairspray and lined up in a perfect little row are the pill bottles with my moms name on them. Yellow bottles white bottles, half empty half full...just there.
I hated these pills in the beginning because they would steal her from us, they robbed of us of the precious time we had because she'd take them and disappear, but as things got worse near the end I begged her to take them, counted down the twenty or so minutes they took to kick in. I waited for the moment when the creases of pain would melt away, when she would exhale with relief. Sometimes, I wondered what it felt like, to float away, to be oblivious to the chaos, and sometimes I wanted to take one...and meet her there. A place where we could be happy...a place where we would feel nothing.
"KATYYYY!" Jake screams
I slam the cabinet shut and splash some water on my face, when I come down the stairs Jake is standing at the bottom arms crossed and annoyed.
"Are you for real?" he says, "the movie starts in twenty minutes."
"I'm sorry...I lost track of time."
YOU ARE READING
Before, After & In-between
Teen FictionSeventeen year old Katy Steven's has everything she's ever wanted, until she doesn't. When an unexpected tragedy strikes her family, Katy is left with a future uncertain and a secret that threatens to destroy everything she has left. With the pain...
