Fighting For Life (published)

Plan

Aubry's POV-

"Mam?" I heard from somewhere seemingly far off, but kept my eyes closed. Maybe if I ignore it, it'll go away. "Mam?" I heard again this time with someone touching me.

I jerked away the instant the person made contact with me and my eyes shot open widely. I groaned in pain and almost cried as I blinked my bleary eyes. There was a lady standing in front of me glaring. "What?!" I demanded loudly.

I was so tired, in horrendous pain, and cranky. Turns out, it's extremely hard to find somewhere to sleep when you have nowhere to go. It's even harder to allow yourself to go to sleep, you must stay on guard so no one can mess with you. Therefore, sleep doesn't come easy when you're homeless... Who knew?

"If you don't have a ticket for a bus, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. We can't have the homeless clogging up our seats for the paying customers," she said as she looked at me like I was gum on the bottom of her shoe. There were two other people there... two. Yep, I was surely taking up too many seats for all the hordes of customers... note, the sarcasm. "That's what shelters are for," she added finally as I got up from the chair that I was laying in.

She watched me like a hawk until I walked to the door leading outside. Before I walked out, I looked at the clock above the ticket booth. Fifteen 'til seven, it read. That's just under two hours before school starts. I needed to find somewhere to sort myself out and change clothes. Then off to school, I go. Though, that was the last thing on my mind. I had much more pressing matters to deal with in my doomed life. I had nowhere else to go though, so just kept trekking down the road.

School was quite a few miles away. I guess it was a good thing that the mean lady woke me up. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have had enough time to stop and clean up. That'd be a disaster... I was sure that I needed a touch up on my makeup and I was a proper mess.

I walked at least a couple of miles before I made it to a twenty-four-hour grocery store. Luckily, there was hardly anyone in the store because it was so early in the morning. No customers meant very little employees as well. This was already working out great for me.

I went straight to the bathroom and changed my clothes which was pure agony. I dressed in the first articles of clothing right on top. Thankfully, it was pretty much my standard attire. Comfortable black yoga leggings and a way too big, long, boxy, black sweater that hung past mid-thigh. I decided that the sports bra I already had on was a good enough under shirt. I didn't want anything squeezing my body more than necessary, and I knew that taking off that article of clothing was going to be too painful to even bear. I was in so much worse pain than I was the day before. I guess it is true what everyone says, the second day is always much worse. Was that actually a saying? Or was I just making stuff up in my very fuzzy head?

After I dressed, I looked in the mirror. For the most part my makeup stayed intact throughout the night. I just had to do a few touchups and reapply some lipstick to cover up my busted lips. As I changed my lipstick, I studied my lips... they were very cracked and swollen making it look like any one little touch and blood would start pouring out of the battered flesh. In fact, I had to be so gentle with the application on my lips so I didn't just smear blood all over my trying-to-be nude lip color.

My nose was also considerably swollen, crooked, and so incredibly sore. I couldn't even breathe out of one of my nostrils. I put on some highlighter and tried to contour it to make it look smaller and more normal. Once again, I didn't look great, but it was passable.

The strangle marks on my neck weren't covering up too well, so I braided my long hair to the side and let the long braid cascade over my shoulder. That covered it up decently enough, at least enough for people who just glance at me in passing wouldn't notice. I never got more than a quick glance or once over, so I wasn't too worried.