The Art of Finding Jasmine Rose Peters

35

'Keep smilng, keep breathing and keep living.'

~JRP

The third hallway after the principal's office, locker 308, the pills. That was her destination. There was no one or nothing that could stop her from taking them.

Her storming footsteps numbed the noise of the hallway and the screeching sounds her ears were making.

Hayden knew what she was doing was not good, she should stay away from the drugs but she couldn't. The pain they were inflicting on her was too much that she had to take them to stay away from the pain.

Her hands fumbled as she input her pin and opened her enormous locker. She snatched the pills hidden securely behind a bunch of textbooks. She looked left, then right to make sure no one was watching her before entering an empty classroom she had seen no one using. The school was full of them.

She clenched her left fist to stop it from shaking too much and tried prying the lid off with her left one. She pried the lid off, but the bottle slipped from her hand and landed on the floor. She knelt down, picked up two of the white substances and popped them in her mouth.

She crouched into a sitting position and waited some minutes till the cooling effect flooded her. She had missed the calmness it brought her, the sense of peace and serenity that she only knew when she had some of it. But it will be the last time, she promised herself, hoping she could avoid it this time.

After her senses had come back to her, she started picking up the white substances splattered on the floor.

"Need some help?"

She whipped around to find a certain blonde boy with a leather jacket and hands stuffed in his jeans' pockets, leaning on the closed door. How had she not heard him come in? She must've been really out of it.

"How long have you been standing there, Mason?" She thought the footsteps she heard following were all an illusion of her mind. She didn't know someone was really following her. And for a split second her heart constricted because she wished it was someone else.

"Long enough to know that you need help." He strode to where she was crouched and knelt down, carefully picking them up and inserting them into the container.

"Why did you follow me?" She paused. "I thought you hated me."

"I don't hate you, Hayden. Never had and never will." She snorted, but he ignored it and continued. "And I don't blame you for not telling us anything. Everyone has his secrets to keep and should never be pressured to spill them."

She kept quiet, mulling over his words, and picking up the remaining pills. "Thanks," she muttered once they were done.

He shot her a small smile before pulling out a packet of cigarettes and taking one. Hayden immediately scrunched up her nose. "Please don't light it," she found herself saying.

"I won't light it if you don't take your pills in front of me," he said simply, the cigarette dangling between his middle and index finger.

"Why?" Hayden took a seat on one of the chairs facing his own.

"Because," he paused, "drugs are never the answer."

She raised an eyebrow, his sentence amusing her slightly. "Yet, you're the one with a cigarette between your fingers."

"If there was a way for me to stop, I'd have stopped by now." He was telling the truth, and more often than not she also wanted to stop, but she couldn't. Maybe she really did need rehabilitation.