two || ✓

thirteen || find me

"oh glory, you will find me..."

-

The silence of the break room in the back of the venue provides a rare sense of comfort to the troubled girl within it. Sitting in one of the far corners, she closes her eyes, the people surrounding her fading from her vision and into distant memories as she basks in the (albeit, feigned) solitude.

She takes a deep breath, filling her tired lungs with so much air, she almost feels as if she'll suffocate. And as she opens her eyes and feels the crushing weight on her chest again at the sight of the men surrounding her, the men she can never escape in the life she has built for herself, she cannot tell whether that would be so bad.

If she weren't a coward, she tells herself, she'd look anywhere but the floor. Her eyes — once so full of happiness and love, then anger and shock, and now, nothing but solemn defeat — cannot bring themselves to land upon anything besides the carpet of the room, the reliable patterns traced by her eyes that sink beneath her feet when she stands.

The floor is soft and kind.

The floor can't hurt her.

Of course, the images of her face and hands and knees and the rest of her body pressing and scratching against it remind her once again that she is so very wrong.

And so Hayley stares at the ground for longer than she can bear to keep track of, just as she has every night before their shows for the past two months now, in an attempt to remind herself that, sometimes, things can hurt her, but don't. And she repeats this self-imposed mantra in her head again and again and again, until she can almost imagine believing it.

She wonders how long it will take before she can finally free herself from this poisoned ritual, this mean cycle — of waking up every morning and cursing God for not listening to her, then of falling asleep every night and praying that maybe tomorrow will be the day I don't wake up. Praying and begging to God that maybe that night will be the night some blessed angel finally takes her away from all the pain, all the suffering, and brings her to that heaven she's never stopped calling for. But she is far too dirty to go anywhere like the land she's dreamed of anymore.

And she is already in hell.

And so she lies awake at night because what else could I possibly do? and she thinks to herself what's that Nirvana lyric? do it and do it again and she tells herself to stop dreaming — an angel isn't going to come save you, and God, heaven isn't close in a place like this. So what is she to do but lie there and take it?

"Hayley?" Her thoughts are ripped away from her mind, but it is slow and painful, like a band-aid on a flesh wound. The call of her name sets forth an inexplicable sinking feeling in her chest, but the softness, the gentleness reminds her of her mantra. But she knows her mind is never too far from the darkness, and she can expect the thoughts back as soon as Taylor's sweet, delicate voice stops distracting it. "We're going back now, are you staying here?"

Everyone else has stopped trying, Hayley knows. And it makes her admire Taylor even more for continuing to hold onto her so desperately, which makes it that much harder to reject all of his attempts. She knows that she's breaking his heart, of course she does, because she can feel hers break with every crack she makes in his. But she has to do this. He can't save her now. He wouldn't.

And besides, she doesn't want to know what would happen if she'd actually gone with Taylor. If she'd escaped — or, more likely, attempted to.

Taylor takes her silence as an answer, and he heads out of the room alone with most of the guys. Hayley doesn't have to look up to know who's left.

"Hayley." The more familiar voice. The rough one, the far-from-loving one, the one that prepares her to be taken from herself once more. The one that launches that sinking feeling into her failing heart like an anchor in quicksand, stealing from her every piece of herself she'd once admired, or at least been privileged enough to stand.

She doesn't look up. "Let's go." She listens.

And she stands, feeling the same feeling of the carpet sinking half an inch below her heavy but far-too light steps. And she follows him, trying and failing to mentally prepare for the night, the same night and morning and whenever-he-wants she's been living through for two months.

And as she walks, she risks allowing her mind to wander along with her, imagining what might have happened if she had gone with Taylor. But immediately after, the words of the man she follows rings through her mind, darkening whatever hope she might have had left in her thoughts and feelings.

He won't believe you.

She was not meant for this. As a child, a teenager, a young adult, this is never the pathway she was supposed to go down — an obstacle she was meant to endure. And what she used to do to overcome obstacles she wasn't meant to endure was write about them, get them out of her head and into her passionate words. But she can't sing of this, she knows this. Not to the men who need to hear them and never can, never will.

When she looks up, she finds herself at the generic but all-familiar hotel door she sees every night. And her mind stops torturing itself as it knows that there will be more than enough suffering already, and she will not need any more inflicted by herself. But before it comes to its long-faded, long-ignored, and disproven senses, it hits her one last time.

What would have happened if I had gone with Taylor? she asks herself. She looks up to the man before her, waiting for her to step into the room, into hell, repeating the answer in her head in such a concrete way, it almost feels as if he'd been listening and decided to answer for her.

Nothing, Hayley.

She steps in through the cursed doorway, an unconscious tear falling slowly down her face as her foot makes contact once more with that godforsaken carpet.

Nothing. He wouldn't have believed you.

-

i believe things should be getting clear for you now, but if they aren't, do not worry about it. i do not mean to reveal everything at once, as i had meant to carefully break down what i had so abruptly built up, and i will continue to do so in the two chapters remaining. i hope it is working, because i would never want to suddenly destroy all the walls and let everything come crashing down on you.

but if they are getting clearer for you, that's good as well. or, maybe it's not, maybe it means something else, i'm not sure. but after writing this all, things are unmistakably clear for me, i think.