Hey, Everyone!

This is not a happy story. At all. But I wanted to write something that would make you guys feel for the past couple days, and here it is.

Sorry I haven't updated BoO in a while, I'm kind of blocked on what to put in Chapter 18...hopefully I'll have something up by the beginning of next week. :)

Enjoy!

Pasting on Smiles

Annabeth watched the girl pull her hoody up over her head nervously, pulling her sleeves down her wrists to hide the self-inflicted damage so she can feel.

She was automatically envious of her.

"Annabeth?" Rachel asked, nudging my shoulder with hers. "You okay?"

She nodded, snapping herself back into the present.

She stuck another smile on her face and nodded again to her friend for emphasis. "Yeah, I'm good. I'm just wondering about…her."

Rachel turned to see who Annabeth was referring.

"Oh, Stacey? Yeah. I wouldn't be wondering. I be worrying, Annabeth," Rachel replied.

"Worrying about what?" Selena came over with a mouthful of apple from the lunch line.

"Stacey," Rachel and Annabeth said in unison.

Selena nodded. "I'm praying for her."

Annabeth nodded as Selena sat down across from the two girls. "So what kind of stuff do you want to do today?" Selena asked. "After school, I mean? It's Friends Day Friday!"

Annabeth nodded. "I know! I'm so excited!"

Her fake enthusiasm clenched around her heart like a vise and made it hard for her to breathe. But Annabeth fought through it, like she always did.

She'd thought it would get easier the more she did it, but it only got worse, because Annabeth only got worse.

"Maybe we could go see a movie?" Rachel suggested.

Selena and Rachel plundered about what could happen for them after school that day. Annabeth threw in suggestions to seem like she cared even though she truly didn't.

"I'd need, like, forty five minutes before we go out, though," Annabeth said, like she always did.

Because she did. On Friends Friday, Annabeth had way less time to sit and try to pull her life and thoughts together. She was going to have a quick cry and spam session of writing before leaving the house.

The girls decided to meet at Panera and probably go to Charming Charlie's from there. A snack and clothes shopping with her best friends in the world.

At least, that was how Rachel had put it.

The lunch bell rang soon after that, and they all stood up and Annabeth threw away her lunch tray. She left the hallway and said goodbye to her friends. She ditched them and sought out the girl with red wrists, Stacey.

Annabeth knew she was going to be late for her next class, she would probably have to skip it, because these things took time that she knew she didn't have as a student. But Annabeth was going to make time. A life was a life.

She walked around the hallways with a purpose, looking around corners and ducking into the girls' bathrooms that she passed. She even looked into the opening of the boys' bathroom, just in case. Annabeth really didn't want to have to work in the boys' bathroom.

But then she heard a strange moan that sounded really…confused from behind a vending machine.

She slowed her pace and knocked on the face of the vending machine lightly, not wanting to look into the girl's business. "Hello?"

"Who…who are you?" she stuttered.

"I'm Annabeth," Annabeth said. "I heard you from down the hall. Are you okay?"

"Go away. I don't know you."

"Can I sit with you?" she asked, still not looking around to see her.

Stacey or not, she needed my help.

"Why? You sound like a pretty good girl who should be in class by now."

"I'm ditching. You know, it's not nice to judge people," Annabeth added with a slightly lighter tone. "I'm bored being her by myself. May I?"

The other girl was quiet for so long, and then she said, "Yeah, sure."

Annabeth came around the side of the vending machine and found the girl with her hood up and her knees up to her chest. She was picking at her fingernails with her back against the wall. Annabeth sat down next to her and pulled her own knees up to her chest, too, thankful she'd decided to wear shorts that day. And then she asked, "Why you wearing a hoodie?"

"I'm cold," the other girl replied automatically. Too quickly, and too forcefully. She was lying.

"Ah," Annabeth said, nodding. "I was kind of cold in the cafeteria. Do they have the AC blowing, like, full blast?"

The girl's head tipped forward slightly and a couple pieces of black hair laced with dark blue fell forward, hiding the side of her face. The corner of Annabeth's mouth tipped up slightly, watching the other girl react to her voice and actions.

It seemed positive enough.

"I'm Annabeth," Annabeth said to the other girl.

"Stacey," the other girl said quietly, turning her head slightly in Annabeth's direction. She stopped, however, seemed to think twice, and went back to staring at the wall across from them.

"So, what class are you ditching, Stacey?" Annabeth asked.

"English," Stacey said. She laughed without humor. "I hate that class so fucking much."

Annabeth nodded. "I'm ditching History."

"I can't…read, very well," Stacey said timidly. "I'm dyslexic."

Annabeth was shocked. She looked over at the side of Stacey's hood and said, "I am, too."

And that made Stacey finally look at Annabeth. "What? Really?"

But Stacey's words were ignored as Annabeth took one look at Stacey's face.

She had sunken cheeks and dark circles under her eyes. Her skin was sickly pale and she looked almost like a zombie out of one of Annabeth's favorite TV series The Walking Dead.

She liked the graphic novels a little better, was the show was nice on a rainy Saturday. It reminded her that things could be worse in her life.

"Yeah, I am. I've struggled with it since I began to learn to read," Annabeth said. "Are you feeling okay?"

"Just a stomach bug, I'll be okay," Stacey's answer was too fast and too thought out, once again. She's lying, but she's said this one too much. "How has…dyslexia made you feel?"

Annabeth pressed the back of her head against the wall behind her and closed her eyes, living in her third grade year for only a moment. "At first? I didn't even understand it. Once I figured out it held me back?" She pried her eyes open to keep from crying and slowly shook her head, staring at the line where the ceiling and wall across from her met. "Like a worthless nothing."

Stacey didn't say anything.

"I always thought people would judge me, look at me funny if they knew, so I never told anyone, not even my teachers, and I fought through it. I tried to write papers and I ended up with bad grades and then a parent teacher conference had my parents telling my teacher about it, and ended up making my life a lot better. At first my parents were really pissed for not saying anything. But the teachers didn't put me in special classes, they just helped me read, and write, and get better and figure things out."

"The…teachers?" Stacey asked.

Annabeth nodded. "I was in third grade at the time, though."

"I…didn't know someone like…you could feel that way, ever." Stacey said quietly.

"What did I say earlier about judging?" Annabeth chastised playfully, looking over at Stacey, quickly sticking on another smile when she wanted to cry just thinking about how horrible she had made herself feel.

"I've seen you around, Annabeth," Stacey said. "I see you with your friends who you're always talking and laughing with. It seems so easy. It seems like you just love being happy, like you know happy and you love that. I…don't, and…"

Stacey's eyes shot up to Annabeth's and tears were pooling in her eyes.

"Hug?" Annabeth asked, opening her arms out.

And then Stacey fell into them, sobbing. Annabeth wrapped her arms tightly around Stacey's shaking body and her own heart ached. But not in sympathy, like most people would. Annabeth ached in understanding.

And that hurt most of all.

Stacey pulled away slowly, hiccupping her tears to a halt. And then she looked Annabeth in the eyes and asked, "Can I show you something?"

Annabeth nodded.

"You can't say anything to anyone, okay?" Stacey pleaded. "I just…trust you."

Annabeth smiled. "That's nice to hear."

And then Stacey rolled up her jacket sleeves, and Annabeth saw the deep cut that hadn't fully scabbed over and the shallow ones that had already turned to pink lines of new skin.

"Why?" Annabeth asked, trying not to show anger or embarrassment, but more like a light curiosity. "With what?"

"A Swiss Army Knife. I keep it under my pillow," Stacey laughed humorlessly, staring at her wrists, too. "Because of these."

She took of her jacket and I blinked in shock.

Her arms were covered in small puncture wounds, like what it looked like when you got a shot at the doctor. But they seemed so random at first, just all over her arms. But Annabeth took a closer look and horrifying realization cast a cold chill over her.

Little scars were placed over her major veins in her arms.

"I've been doing heroin for about nine months," Stacey's voice was choking up on her own tears. "And then I cut my wrists to try to get it out of my system again. Because I just have to do it, and then I hate myself so much. Three of my veins have already collapsed, one in this arm," she gestured to her left, "and two in the other one."

Annabeth's face was still and grim. She was horrified.

"I don't know…what to do. I've been craving a dose since I woke up with morning and I've pushed all my friends away and I just hate everything so fucking much and I just wish I could-"

"Stacey?" Annabeth asked softly. "How about going to the hospital?"

"My parents can't afford that," Stacey said, shaking her head. "There's no way. It's my own stupid choice and I have to live with it."

"Are you insured?" Annabeth asked, examining her arms and a couple more puncture wounds.

Stacey nodded. "Of course. My parents care about my life. Sort of."

Annabeth pulled out her phone and pulled up Google. "By who?"

Annabeth looked up the company's terms on hospitalization due to self-harm and drugs in teenagers fifteen and older.

Annabeth smiled hopefully. "They cover that."

"W-what?" Stacey stuttered, and stole the phone from Annabeth's hands. Her eyes ran over the screen so many times Annabeth thought she was in shock. And then she deflated. "But we'd still have to pay over two thousand dollars if the bills rack up past thirty thousand dollars."

"It might," Annabeth said, nodding. "But guess what? I'm sure we can pull together two or three thousand dollars if needed. Let me drive you to the hospital. I'll call your mom or dad and then once we get this checked out, we can handle the bills. Okay?"

Stacey was still staring at the screen of Annabeth's phone, the glowing blue light making Stacey's face seem even more ghoulish and unhealthy.

Stacey handed the phone back to Annabeth and nodded slowly. "Okay."

Annabeth curled into a ball in her bed that night, scratching at the insides of her wrists with her fingernails. She desperately wanted to scream and cry and beg for mercy, something, anything, with no one. Because no one was listening.

She still remembered Stacey, and her story, her problems, had left another, but this time darker, stain on Annabeth's soul. Annabeth could relate to this one.

What if she had never told anyone about her dyslexia? What if she had let the charade run on so long and she felt so worthless for so long that she ended up on heroin just to feel something other than self-controlling sadness that never went away?

She was constantly balancing, a never ending struggle to try to sit on the edge of the cliff without falling into the dark abyss of self-consuming sadness that would end her, and the hazy happiness that didn't seem real that her friends lived in.

A tear trickled down Annabeth's neck and she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.

But who else was supposed to do what she had just done today?

If Annabeth left herself fall down the cliff and into the black abyss, Stacey would have probably killed herself because no one would help her and no one would listen. Annabeth was a rather persuasive person, just on her own, and that was really necessary for what she did for people.

No one else knew what it was like to just sit there and take it. To listen to all these horrible stories that could have been her. To try to help by giving advice that has saved lives for the past two years.

But that turned Annabeth into a sad clump of falsehood. A web of lies to big it and strong it held her to the tree that was her responsibility to help these lonely people. But the tree's roots did poke out of the dirt and look into the abyss. If one of the webs were to break the whole thing would come crashing down and she'd fall into the abyss, hopeless to stop it and too lost to try.

Her tree would probably fall down with her.

Her anchors were so strong, yet they were so easy to destroy in an instant. One horrible moment could ruin it all, where as one bad day only made them stronger.

But Annabeth would never fully go over to the hazy happiness because she knew it just wasn't real. It couldn't be real. Happiness was sometimes, but sadness was forever.

It sat in her chest like a rock and it would never truly go away, no matter how hard she chipped at it.

So she'd given up.

And now rivers were flowing down her cheeks and she wouldn't stop them. Her lip didn't quiver. Her eyes didn't push closed. She didn't make a sound.

Her face remained emotionless as she stared at her shadowy ceiling, even as the tears rained down.

Because no matter what happened, she would just have to paste on more fake smiles tomorrow while she weaved another lie into her web named Stacey.

Because she had helped Stacy live today. Another root shot out from her Responsibility tree, but it pushed out of the cliff and dangled into the abyss, the longest of all the others that looked into the darkness.

Annabeth wouldn't say a word about Stacey to anyone until Stacey came back and decided to. Because that was who Annabeth was.

And thanks to Stacey, she had another way to keep herself from teetering.

Annabeth pushed her eyes closed and forced the tears to stop.

She rolled onto her side again and then stuck another smile on her face, just to practice.

Because that was what Annabeth was good at.

Pasting on smiles.

So that was that, like I said, not the happiest thing, but I hope it taught some of you a lesson or two about people and I hope it made you feel today :)

Thanks for Reading!