We All Have a Story to Tell || v.f. ~COMPLETED~

1.7

/ SCARLETT /

lyric-

i loved you so much,

and now i hate you

--

He was into me. Weird. We hardly knew each other. Now things would be awkward. Did I like him? No, I liked Sam. That wasn't going to change any time soon.

I went straight to bed once we got back, after taking my meds. I didn't feel like watching some stupid movie. I didn't feel like doing anything. I was torn. Vic was into me...but I was into Sam...but he was into Katie...but she wasn't into him. That's screwed up, man.

Austin came into my room after about ten minutes. I wondered why he was still here. He sat on Alli's bed. "You okay?"

I shook my head. "Feelings. For people. It sucks."

"Yeah, I get that," he said. "You're not really gay, are you?"

I shook my head, again. "Don't say anything, okay? I'll be out of here pretty quickly anyways."

"How do you figure that?"

"Well," I said, pulling my knees up to my chest, "School starts back in just a few days. It's my senior year, Austin. Once school is going, I'll be too busy trying to get my life together to worry about ending it. I'm not even that suicidal anymore. I just didn't trust myself at home, and I wanted an escape."

I don't think he bought it. I mean, all of it was true, except for the part about not being suicidal. I still wanted to die. But I didn't feel like it was a threat anymore. I felt like I could control myself. And above all else, I had a bit of motivation now. I had no idea what it was from, but the fact that it was there was all that mattered.

When Alli and Tahlia returned, Austin left, but he told us that we could keep the door closed if we stuck a shoe in it to keep it open a bit. They didn't care how open it was; they just cared that it wasn't closed.

"Why was he in here?" Alli asked.

"To see if I was okay," I replied. "I kind of ran back to my room once visiting was over."

"Yeah, I saw." She lay out on her bed and sighed. "Wanna tell me why?"

"Feelings," I said. "Did you hear him?"

She nodded. "So he was talking about you? So y'all aren't gay."

I laughed and shook my head. "That was just a coverup. All right, I'm gonna go to sleep. I'm really tired."

"Even though you took a nap?" Tahlia asked.

"Yeah, I'm always tired."

It was true. There wasn't a time that I wasn't tired. It might not be on my mind at the time when I'm doing something, but if I stop and think about it, I realise that I am tired. It had been that way for a while. I was pretty used to it, anyway.

Fortunately, I fell asleep fairly quickly. I woke up periodically throughout the night in a cold sweat. It was freezing, as usual. Sometimes I'd wake up when a worker would come to check on us. They had to check on all the patients every fifteen minutes. An escape was virtually impossible.

Wait, why was I even thinking about the possibility of escape? What did that matter to me? That would probably get me put in long term. I did not want to be in here for three friggin' months. I would only be in here for a few days if I played my cards right. Act like I'm getting better. Tell them that I'm getting better.

Hopefully, they would buy it.

-

"New kid," Alli whispered as we headed to the Day Room.

I couldn't help but look at him as we passed by. He looked too old to be in our unit. A bit of a beard, broad shoulders, and aged face. Perhaps it was from smoking.

"Hey," Sasha greeted us as we sat at one of the tables that were set up. "Breakfast is delayed this morning. Apparently, a knife went missing. I don't think they found it."

I looked around. Everyone was here but Vic. I wondered if he was still asleep or something.

Austin beckoned me into the doorway. "The blood they took got lost or something, I dunno. They need to take more. Go on into that room down there. You know where it is, right?"

I nodded and headed that way. Something caught my eye as I passed one of the boys' rooms. A foot. Two feet. In the floor. Motionless.

I took a few steps back, scared of what I might find.

I was rightly scared. The boy was lying in a pool of blood, a knife beside his bloody hand. There were cuts all up and down his arms and a few on his legs.

I wasn't as shocked as I would've been if I hadn't been through this before. As I cried out for help, I ran into the room and put pressure on the deepest cuts.

It wasn't until I was straddling his waist to be able to hold both wrists that I saw who it was.

Vic.