Heartbreak Girl

Chapter 2

It probably wasn't Lauren's wisest decision to make the drive home that night. The hot tears remained obstructing her vision, her surroundings one big blur of streaks of light and speeding cars. If her mind hadn't been so frazzled and occupied with fretful thoughts, maybe she would've had time to worry about how she was endangering herself and everybody else on the road with her. She thanked the heavens that there was a lack of cars alongside her tonight, especially when she drifted over to the opposite lane in her mindful absence and had to jerk the wheel harshly back to the left to escape a near hit. The burly man cursed her out immediately in response to her carelessness, furious that she could have been the reason for the two of them possibly sent into the afterlife earlier than planned. For the rest of the trip in the surrounding darkness of the night, her mind flickered back and forth between the image of the blinding white lights that had approached her during the brief moment of danger seconds ago; and the unforgiving picture of Calum and Addy's painful expression that had permanently been burned into her mind. Although in a strange way, she almost wished she had gotten into that accident; any pain would have felt better than the pain she suffered through right then. She shook her head and thought; how typical of me to be so dramatic. Nevertheless, despite the fear that trickled through her veins and the tears that stained her flushed cheeks, she made it home safely.

She wanted to be as loud as possible; kick, scream, cry, anything and everything a whiny toddler would do just to release a small portion of what she was going through inside. The lack of lights on in her family home was a bit of a hindrance when it came to that idea however, and her lips puffed out and she heaved a depressed sigh before taking out her spare key as quietly as possible.

She was spending the last few weeks of summer break at her parent's home before she had to go back to living in her dorm with Vivian. Everyone she knew had grown up in this small town, she could recognize almost every citizen in their tight knit community by name; most of the students attending her college had come from this very town, Calum, Addy, Michael, Vivian, et cetera. And all had been visiting their relatives and parents along with her before going back at the end of the month to burying their heads in textbooks and drinking more than necessary amounts of caffeine in the late afternoons.

The key didn't fit. She huffed and groaned as she tried jamming it in a couple times, a failed attempt, and ultimately came to the conclusion that she had grabbed the wrong key. She didn't know how she could have made such an idiotic mistake; she had been so excited to go to the bonfire with her friends that she had just grabbed a random key out of the junk bowl and ran with it, plum forgetting to check and make sure it was the right one. Her mistake and she was going to have to pay the price for it. Her last result, an unfavorable passage way to say the least, was her bedroom window which she knows she had forgotten earlier to lock, and headed around to the backyard with tired eyes and sluggish feet. Leisurely she trudged up the back porch steps till she reached the area around her bedroom window, slid open the sticky glass and heaved herself in, trying to smother any grunts and groans during her expedition through. When her torso was half hanging inside her room and her butt and legs sticking out on the other side, the sill bottom digging harshly into her rib area, she made the second mistake of that night when she leant forward too far and practically slid inside, her elbow banging against the wooden framing on her way down. Her cheek was pressed into the plush red carpeting of her old childhood room, taking in a waft of the musty smelling threads, her knees leaning against the window for support unless she fell forward and knocked her bookstand over inevitably waking up the whole household. Digging her fingers and palms into the fluffy flooring, she stabled her upper half before gently pulling her body through then plopped her exhausted form in the midst of her room and heaved a breath of air. And there is where she laid, catching her breath and feeling completely and utterly empty as the flood of memories from a couple hours earlier all resurfaced once again. Not sadness, nor pain, or anger; just empty, void of any energy or will to do anything but sleep. She didn't even have it in her to do her regular night routine like brushing her teeth or to change into her night wear. With what seemed like the billionth sigh she had breathed out that night, she hauled herself off to the floor and trudged her way to her bed before climbing underneath the peach comforter, still smelling like wood smoke and bug spray.