Jade sat on the small counter in her kitchen, leaning slightly forward so her head didn't hit the decaying cupboards that held various broken plates, glasses and bowls. She was eating Peanut Butter straight from the jar, using her fingers to scoop it from the sides and then delivering it to her cherry red lips. Her feet dangled over the side as she kicked them back aimlessly, looking down at her chipped black toenails. She was dressed appropriately for 2 AM, wearing nothing but a large flannel, that she had acquired from an ex-boyfriend, draped over her pale frame.
She was a girl of barely seventeen, and living on her own had proved to be not vastly different than living with her father. She struggled to pay bills more than she would care to admit, and her fridge was usually bare. At that moment, it held little more than three cans of root beer, one lean cuisine, a bag of pizza rolls, one carton of yogurt, and half a carton of milk. Her pantry was even less stocked, holding only a few cans of Spaghetti O's and a single loaf of bread.
She had learned to manage on a low budget with little difficulty, adjusting to the constant feeling of a never-quite-full stomach, and often indulging in sweet things she now counted as a delicacy, like Nutella and Peanut Butter. She had lived like this before, and taking care of herself was not a new concept to her. She had been fending for herself since the age of eleven, being left to cook and forage for food on her own.
Jade had been living in the same apartment for almost a year now, having been emancipated on her sixteenth birthday and finding this place shortly after. It was run down, the ceiling covered in water stains and cracks in the foundation. The counter she sat atop was starting to peel, and Jade had even gone to the lengths of attempting to superglue it down, but to no avail. And as she ate her Peanut Butter and kicked her legs, she played with the ends of it, holding it down and then releasing it and watching as it curled away.
It was a single-room apartment, her bed tucked away in the far corner. She didn't have an actual bed frame, and her mattress sat on the floor, but she did her best to dress it up with a nice comforter and multiple pillows. She had a stuffed bunny that sat in the middle of the black and white striped blanket, never quite having the heart to throw away her childhood toy.
She tried her best to make her apartment as homey as she could, putting a small TV in front of the second hand couch that sat in the living room. It was covered in cigarette burns, half from the previous owner and half from her, but it was comfortable. Her clothes had a designated drawer but instead they lay scattered across her entire apartment floor, and you couldn't get anywhere without stepping on a pair of black jeans or lace underwear. She had a grand piano which sat in the corner, easily the most expensive thing in the entire place. She had considered selling it to support her habit, but it was something that she couldn't bear to part with. It was old and worn down and sounded off key more times than not, but Jade loved it. Writing music was something she took comfort in, and it had slowly become the only somewhat "normal" aspect of her life.
Jade's black hair hung in greasy waves over her eyelids, and she kept pushing it back with the palms of her hands to keep it from touching her sticky fingers. It was one of her bad nights, the kind where she retreated back into her mind.
It had been three hours since she last shot up, but she tried her best to go as long as she could between using. She'd had the habit since she was fifteen, but she reasoned with herself that it was kept under control. She was still fully functioning, able to pay her bills and lead whatever she had left of a normal life. She had been smoking cigarettes since she was eleven, starting shortly after her mother disappeared. She started drinking shortly after that, and by thirteen she was messing around with boys far older than she was in search of the father she never had.
She spent most of her time at school smoking out the girls' bathroom, not being able to tolerate classes like History and Science and Math. She started clipping highlights into her brown hair and wearing shirts that were cut low enough to show off the breasts that she had developed far before any other girls her age did. She was intrigued only by English and music class, and spent every lunch period in the music room, teaching herself the piano. She had friends, but none of them were of any real quality, and so she hung out mainly with older kids, girls of sixteen and seventeen and boys of eighteen and nineteen.
Her neighborhood was definitely not one of wealth, and dreading the experiences she faced at home she opted to stay out late, exploring the world around her. It began harmlessly, and at first she would hang out around the abandoned railroad passing, surrounded by bottles of rum and telling stories. She was always the youngest there, although she was never treated as such. She was accepted as one of them, and by fourteen she had the body of a twenty year old and, wanting to give herself an edgier appearance, dyed her hair black. The girls her age told her the color made her look somewhat like the devil, but she liked the way it framed her pale skin and made her blue eyes pop. She started wearing heavier make up then, dark black eyeliner and eyeshadows of dark purple and brown. She was desperate for the attention of the older kids around her, and subconsciously tried to push herself away from the look of innocence her father had liked so much on her.
She got her very first piercing during the summer at fourteen, a warm night spent in the back of the truck of some kid she wasn't too familiar with, slightly drunk but sober enough to feel the needle pinch her nose. It hurt, but she welcomed the pain, and in fact found that she had even liked it a little. She got her next piercing- her favorite one, her eyebrow- only one month later, this time making sure she was sober enough to feel the needle entering and exiting her skin. It was a new feeling, and although it made her eyes sting and water a little, it was a sensation that made her entire body tingle, and before she knew it she was getting her first tattoo.
It was done at a professional shop, but one that didn't ID her and wasn't known for being the most sterile. But she went anyway, accompanied by two boys of nineteen, and got a red ace of hearts tattooed on her left ring finger. It was the same one as Amy Winehouse, someone Jade had grown to look up to and admire. One of the boys, the one that she liked, whose name is nothing but a distant sting now, asked her if it hurt. She told him no, but the truth was it did hurt. It's just that she liked the hurt.
The same boy went on to be the one she lost her virginity to, the same summer of fourteen, in the backseat of his car, listening to the air conditioning and feeling the cracked leather seats and letting him kiss her all over. The pleasure was minimal, but the way he told her she was beautiful had ignited a fire in her veins. It was the closeness of another person that she treasured, not the act itself, but the feeling of being wanted. Her eyes were open the whole time, staring out the sunroof while on her back, looking at the stars and wondering when it would be over. He dropped her off at home afterwards, and she found herself feeling more alone than she did going in. It was not love, nor lust that she felt that night, but a feeling that she spent searching for in the beds of anyone else willing to make her feel beautiful, if only just for a moment.
A few weeks after losing her virginity, Jade turned fifteen and began seeking love anywhere she could find it. She started going to parties, hanging around bored college students, letting them get her drunk and take her to whatever bedroom was closest. Things with her dad, though she hoped would have gotten better, were getting worse, and she then spent almost every night out, often failing to make it to any of her classes. She started having an affair with a married man she met at a bar, and for a while it went well. He bought her gifts, things like necklaces and chocolate, and Jade spent hours scribbling songs into her journals about him. It was what she considered her first taste of love, and the inappropriateness of it only added to the thrill she felt in the pit of her stomach. She didn't mind being his secret, but she was always disappointed when he went home to his wife. She was sure that one day he would leave her, that they would run off together and he would buy her a house and they would get married.
But eventually he started to worry, and he'd always say "we shouldn't have done that." right after he finished nailing her, her breathing hard and her breasts exposed. She clung on to him, though, until one night he broke it off with her altogether. Jade was one for the dramatics, though, and she called his wife and told her everything. It was her first love, her first heartbreak, and the first of many toxic relationships.
She experimented with different drugs after that, party drugs and hallucinogens, not really taking to any of them in particular. She had a bad trip in the basement of someone-she-didn't-know's house, after he gave her a tab of drug she hadn't known either. She ended up hyperventilating in the bathtub, crying and clawing at the skin on her thighs. She kept searching, though, willing to take anything that would keep her from reaching into the dark place in her mind.
Heroin was the first drug to grab her attention. She immediately liked the needle, making her think back to her piercings at age thirteen, and how the sharp pain had intrigued her. She loved everything about it, in fact, and the first time she did it she watched the boy giving it out cook it up with hungry eyes, taking in the way he did it, the way his hands moved, imprinting it all into her memory for later.
She began buying it on her own shortly thereafter, waiting until her father went to sleep to sit cross-legged on her bedroom floor, enjoying the way the lighter burnt the spoon, the way it slid up into the syringe, the way the smell stung her nose.
She retreated from her friends, then, spending more and more time alone in her room. She no longer attended parties and went out all night, now that she found a way to escape without actually leaving her room. She started to get more comfortable with it, and found that doing it after school would make it less painful- both mentally and physically- when her father touched her.
She got herself emancipated at age sixteen and dropped out of school softly thereafter. She assumed her father had found more girls to abuse after she left, and her guesses were confirmed when the BAU came knocking on her door only two weeks earlier.
They were looking for a serial rapist, and from what they knew, he had only one living relative. A daughter. She hadn't been compliant, and lashed out at them for attempting to talk to her about her father. She knew that there were girls out there, girls like her that needed help, but she had gotten better, and she didn't want to be dragged back down into his world again. The nightmares had stopped, and she didn't want to ever get them back. One of the agents, Agent Morgan, was the one that gave her the hardest time. She didn't like him, and especially didn't like how he let himself into her apartment and demanded help from her that was under no obligation to give.
It was the other one she had grown a fondness for, the tall and thin one. He had sparked her interest right away, and he was the only one who didn't treat her like a child. She knew he went snooping around her apartment and that he had seen her gear, but he never said anything about it, which she appreciated. He fiddled with his hands when he spoke to her, and his voice was gentle but it never wavered. He had bags under his eyes like he hadn't slept in weeks, his tie was crooked and his hair was messy.
The first time she was brought to the interrogation room he had been the one to sit across from her. He offered her some of his coffee, which she took greedily, and he asked her to trust him. She crossed her arms and wouldn't look at him, not until he leaned in close to her and lifted up his sleeves. He had scars that she recognized immediately, the same scars that she wore after she shot up. He didn't seem the type to do something like that, but she saw in his eyes that he's suffered more than he led on. He was the only one that managed to get her to open up, to admit what her father had done and where he might be. She ended up spending several long nights in a police station after that, helping them track him down.
She learned the agent's name was Dr. Reid, but his first name felt better on her tongue, so Spencer it was. He memorized her coffee order after the first time, and she spent hour after hour in the station listening to him talk about statistics and facts, and he listened to her talk about her experiences. It was the first time she talked about it out loud, fearing the way people would look at her afterward. She didn't like to be pitied. But he didn't look at her how other people would, he didn't look at her like a child that needed to be protected. He looked at her like she was a human being. He gave her his card after that, took her aside and told her to call him if she wanted to talk about anything, or if she started having nightmares again, something he said he knew about all too well. Or, he said, if she just wanted a distraction.
In those two weeks she had grown fond of him, and now that her father was caught and in custody, the team had left her alone. Her stomach was twisted in knots, and she missed him, missed the doctor that had made her feel safe, even just for a moment. But now she was alone, and her dad was in her nightmares again, and she was left feeling like she did after she spent the night in the boy's car, looking up at the stars. It was a feeling that made her feel small again, like a child sitting perched at the window, waiting for a mother that she would never hear from again to return. So she put away her jar of peanut butter and sat herself down on the sheets that had long been stained dark with menstrual blood and injected a liquid paradise to distract herself from the hell around her.
And so the young girl, one of only seventeen, doused herself with hate, and set fire to her sadness.