Saving Melanie Deen

Chapter 27

It was a gloomy Saturday and I was laying in bed. In my bed.

My squeaky old bed was uncomparable to the bed I had at Ethan's house. My bed had a broken frame with cigarette burns and unwashable bloodstains on the mattress. Yeah, not the best bed you've heard of. But before meeting Ethan, I never complained about it. I was glad that I had a bed. There were nights when my mother's boyfriends wouldn't let me sleep in my bedroom because I "didn't deserve a bedroom" in their opinion. So after that, I was beyond thankful to be able to sleep in my own bedroom on my own bed. After meeting Ethan and him so kindly letting me stay at his house (or so I thought), my views on things changed entirely. I saw what life could be like if I finally left this good for nothing town and achieved something in my sorry excuse for a life. That all came crashing down, however, when I found out how Ethan had earned the money for that beautiful house. And that was not the route I was willing to take.

I rolled over onto my back, hopelessly thinking about what my life would become now. I mean, what it'll be back to. It was naive of me, to think that this time it would be different. Because it won't be any different. Not even the slightest bit.

My mother had already left for work with great effort and an obvious hangover. Even she managed to get up. So what am I doing? I was still laying in bed. It was as if all my heavy thoughts were swirling around in my exhausted mind and I couldn't capture any of them. In other words, I couldn't process anything to save my life.

My phone was still turned off from the night before. I groaned, grabbing it from the floor to finally turn it on. To my surprise, a tsunami of notifications flooded the screen as soon as it came to life. Wow, did everyone suddenly remember I exist? Shocking.

6 missed calls from Megan
8 missed calls from Quinn
6 missed calls from an unknown number
4 missed calls from Officer Hunt
17 missed calls from Ethan

Talk about remembering me when it was already too late.

I tapped on the unknown number and waited for the person to pick up. Judging by the times of their missed calls, I came to the realization that this number called right after Quinn. So I guessed it was Trent.

"Mel?" He picked up, yawning.

"No, Bob the builder" I deadpanned, rolling my eyes. He called me 6 times last night, so he obviously knows this is my number. So why the unnecessary waste of vocabulary?

"Melanie, why the hell did you ignore all those calls last night? You scared the shit out of us. Do you even realize how serious this is" He snapped, taking me by complete surprise. I purposely called him to avoid the lectures, knowing he was far too chill to give me a damn headache. But here we are. Also, how cute. I scared the shit out of them. Oh and yeah...this is oh so serious. Except when I called needing their help, nobody was available. But yes please do proceed about how serious this is! Quite an interesting turn of events, I must say.

"Oh really? Why's that" I chuckled, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I quickly pulled a robe on, waiting for his answer.

"Well, Ethan said you left with Nathan. So we thought you were with him when-" He cut himself off, taking a deep breath.

I froze at the sudden change of the atmosphere.
"When...what?" I dared ask.

He gulped as if his throat was running dry from every word he uttered."When Nathan got shot" He choked out, failing to hide his anger.

My whole body turned cold and my hand grew clammy with cold sweat as I held the phone.
"What..." I muttered, running my other hand through my extremely knotted bed hair.