BADLANDS | camren

I

A/N: Yooo, I'm back with a multi-chaptered story for y'all. It isn't going to be super long, I think it's going to be 10 chapters? Anyways, it's going to get pretty dark in later chapters, fair warning.

Hope you enjoy!

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Badlands

1. One

There's a few things in this world that can make Lauren Jauregui's skin crawls as much as the sounds of the headboard of a bed banging against the wall. Scratch that, there's nothing worse, she thinks as she hears the familiar sound of her mother moaning and screaming like a dog in heat.

She's disgusted and she rushes to get her headphones on, blasting a Halsey song on full volume to drown out what's going on in her mother's room. She thought they were past this, but shame on her for needlessly getting her hopes up when she knows her mother all too well. Of course, it wouldn't take her mother a day to find another deadbeat bum to warm her bed and stomp on her already non-existent self-esteem.

Lauren wonders if her mother always hated herself, or if she started when Lauren's father left her all those years ago. The nostalgic part of Lauren's brain tricks her into thinking she had a better childhood, but she remembers all the screaming and yelling and breaking things. Of course she does, the memories sits in her skin like scars. Yeah, her father leaving messed her mother up, but it messed her up too, her innocence went out the door along with her father.

She lies down on her narrow bed and squeezes her eyes shut, forces herself to get lost in the song as she ignores the fact that her ears rings in protest at the volume-she doesn't care, she'd rather go deaf than have to hear her mother's grunts.

The next morning, she wakes up the way she fell asleep, curled up on herself in a tight ball. She read somewhere that people who slept like that felt unsafe and subconsciously tried to recreate the comforting fetal position in their mother's womb. Lauren can't help but think her mother's womb was never a safe place.

She's late for school, but it doesn't matter. She hates going there, she hates her teachers and the flaccid kids who only care about impressing each other, she hates them for complaining about their overcaring mothers, hates watching them being embarrassed by being picked up by their fathers. Those kids wouldn't know a real problem if it bit them in the ass, and they won't appreciate what they have until they lose it.

She finds her history report where she left it in the kitchen. It's wet and falling apart, the big, fat red D smudged. Her mother had used it to dry up stains and Lauren almost laughs. She remembers leaving it on the kitchen table in hopes her mother would see it and give a fuck, but this was all the answer she needed.

She ignores the faint sting in her chest, instead focusing on the emptiness in her stomach and starts making scrambled eggs. She's standing over the stove when she hears heavy, clumsy footsteps coming down the stairs.

A strange man appears in the doorway. He's a big-boned man with a receding hairline, a dirty wife beater strains over his round tummy, and he reminds Lauren of her mother's truck-driving boyfriend-this one is rough around the edges too, they always are.

"Morning," he grunts with a half-hearted smile, his beady little eyes rake over Lauren's body and she feels naked under his gaze. She regrets not putting on clothes and coming down in her little top and tiny shorts.

She ignores him and continues scrambling her eggs.

"Damn, you're a rude little one, aren't you?" He huffs and Lauren tenses when he walks into the kitchen.