gone ✧*｡ luke a.u.

30: august 30 2011

WARNING: i do not intend to cause ANY offense whatsoever to any religious groups or beliefs by one of the paragraphs coming up in this chapter ok that's just the way ellie looks at things :)

~:~

ELLIE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30TH, 2011

Too much fighting. There was too much fighting, and it was screwing with her head. She couldn't do this; how did they expect her to listen to this for so long? She needed someone, but no one was there. Where was Dan? Where was Ro?

And then she remembered that they were gone, like they had been so much recently. Dan was vague and always out, too busy with friends and places whose names he never disclosed. Even little Roman was never around anymore, and it scared her to feel this alone. And then she would remember that she had been the one to encourage them to leave in the first place. So they could stay happy.

But if they were so happy, why was it so hard for her to be? She couldn't do this without them.

It had been going on now for more than an hour. She had lost track of time after her music played itself out, and now she was curled up in her bed praying that it would stop. That the shouting would stop. The screaming. The words she could understand were too much for her to bear.

"Money . . . drugs . . . who is he? . . . stealing from . . . you think . . . how dare you? . . . time . . . sorry? . . . because I wasn't . . . money . . . drugs . . . money . . . drugs . . . drugs . . . drugs . . . drugs . . ."

She was there when it happened, downstairs in the kitchen. She was there when it started, and she just watched Morgan do it. She just watched and fled.

Right there, in the kitchen, Morgan was telling Ellie about how she had spent all her money buying her fucking vodka. And, for fuck's sakes, why was vodka so expensive? Fuck, she needed more cash. Did Ellie have any cash?

Ellie just shook her head and kept quiet. As much as she hated the way things were going, it was best to stay out of Morgan's path when she was like this, especially with Dan and Ro gone. Morgan seemed to be significantly crueler with her sons gone from the house.

It had been like this since Jack left, a downward spiral of self-destructive recklessness through alcohol. Each time Morgan came home drunk it was worse than the last.

"Your dad, then. If he doesn't have something I'll be fucked," Morgan said. She went down the hall to Dave's office and Ellie followed silently behind her, staying by the door as Morgan dug through the draws of his desk.

Neither of them heard the front door open, or shut. Neither of them heard his footsteps. And then he saw Morgan with two fifty dollar notes between her teeth, her hands digging through his files, and she looked up and just like that the shouting started, and Ellie retreated.

It had been so long since that happened, and still they hadn't stopped fighting. It never ended.

Ellie didn't know why it was getting to her so much. She hated being this vulnerable, she hated crying, she hated anything that didn't match the strength she pretended to have, and she couldn't quite understand why she was coming apart like this. But she hated it. Oh, how she hated it.

Her phone was between her fingers and she checked it anxiously every minute or so, even though she knew it was pointless. Dan still hadn't answered her texts and probably wouldn't at all.

The moment her phone buzzed with a new text her heart leapt to her throat. Dan?

from: lukey :)