Chapter 14 | Butterflies & Rainbows & Unicorns & Glitter
“We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” ― Up
“You like, really suck at this game, you know,” Ava tells me, checkmating me for the third time in a row.
“Thanks,” I sarcastically reply as we both reset our sides of the chessboard, starting a new game then.
“That wasn’t a compliment,” She assures me. “That was me throwing shade,” Ava adds for clarification.
“Yeah, thanks for that, Captain Obvious,” I respond with a small laugh before moving one of my pieces.
“So, what’re you doing here?” She randomly asks me, sliding one of her white pawns across the board.
“Here being the psych ward?” I ask and when she nods, I sigh heavily. “Well, my mom thinks that I tried to kill myself and my dad just kind of hates me a whole bunch, so they had me admitted,” I tell her.
“Why would your own dad hate you?” Ava curiously wonders as I move one of my black pawn pieces across the board. We’ve been playing chess for the past half hour and I have lost every single game.
“He’s just crazy,” I reply. Tom really is a psycho—he’s the one that belongs here, not me. “Well, that and the fact that I refused to beg his parents for a quarter of a million dollars to get him out of prison.”
“Holy shit,” Ava replies, her eyes bugging out a little. “A quarter of a million dollars? What the fuck did your dad do? Kidnap the President?” Ava asks me then as if a $250,000 bond is just so super rare.
“If he tried to kidnap the President of the United States, I’m pretty positive he’d still be in prison,” I inform Ava with a laugh, pushing a lock of my hair behind my ear. “But yeah, he, erm, he killed someone.”
“Your dad killed someone?” She questions in an incredulous tone of voice, missing a perfect opportunity to capture another one of my pawns. I don’t say anything though because I actually want to win.
“I mean, it wasn’t like, on purpose or anything but it was still his fault,” I reply. “He’s always had a slight drinking problem and one night he was drinking and driving, which was basically a pretty normal thing for him. He went through a red light on this particular night though and ran head-on into another car, killing the driver,” I explain, recalling the event that sent Tom to prison six years ago. “As if that wasn’t bad enough, he didn’t even like, try to help the man. I mean, if he had gotten out of his car or even just called an ambulance, that guy might’ve made it. He didn’t try to help him though, he just drove away like did nothing wrong.”
“That’s fucking disgusting,” Ava notes, crinkling her nose in distaste and shaking her head.
“Do you always swear so much?” I ask Ava, noticing how weirdly vulgar her vocabulary is.
“Pretty much, yeah, I do,” She confirms with a nod. “But anyway though, did you?”
“Did I what?” I ask her in confusion, finally managing to capture one of her pawns.
“Like, try to kill yourself? You said that’s why your parents had you admitted, right? Were they at least right?”
“Oh, right. No, I didn’t try to commit suicide,” I tell her honestly. “My psychologist has me on a couple of different medications and I accidently overdosed.”
“So, you made a mistake and your parents just forced you to come here? That’s literally the stupidest thing I’ve heard in my entire life,” Ava tells me then.
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Saving Sawyer | ✓
Teen Fiction{ Watty 2015 Winner + Featured Story } Meet Sawyer Jameson. On the outside, she's a normal seventeen year old girl with amazing friends, a charitable job and a loving family. She's beautiful, funny and easy to get along with and just by looking at...
