Discarded
Angst-T
Summary: "People always leave..." Summer angst, SS.
A/N: This isn't some of my best work and it's pretty dramatic and I know it's been done a thousand times but I had written it a little while ago and I decided just to finish it up and post it, and you can never get too much Summer angst ;-) . So, enjoy and please review.
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With an earsplitting boom, she slams the door to her bedroom shut, the doorknob rattling in her grasp. The entire house seems to vibrate, her lamp and other possessions on the nearby shelf shaking from the intensity of the contact.
She walks across her room blindly, knees trembling before giving out and she collapses at the foot of her bed, friction of the carpet scraping and irritating her bare legs. She vaguely realizes that it's a miracle she was able to drive home and get back in one piece. For the past twenty minutes everything has been a blur, water pooling from her eyes and clouding her vision, making even the most obvious things appear hazy and indefinite. Her surroundings are now nothing but a mash of purples and pinks and lavenders, the individual details of her elaborate room undistinguishable. Her name on the envelope crushed in a death grip between perfectly manicured fingers is nothing but a mess of black swiggly lines on white paper.
The first few lines had been what she expected. Dear Summer... I'm sorry... I can't be here without Ryan... This isn't about you... Thank you for everything... I still love you... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
She wonders why he spent time picking the right words and filling the paper front and back. The message was quite clear and blunt. He cared about her, he loved her... just not enough to make him stay.
She's never enough to make them stay.
She allows herself to reread the letter once more and briefly realizes that it is pathetic that she was dumped with a fucking Dear Jane note. The first time she let her eyes scan over and comprehend what was happening she had hardly been in the right frame of mind. After a few lines, the words were slanting, becoming smudged by tears she hadn't known she was crying. And soon she was running past Kirsten down the stairs, trying to hide the fact she was sobbing and trying to get out of there as quick as she could before she had to witness Sandy and Kirsten learn that in the past hour they had lost not one but two sons.
When she finishes again, she's different, calmer. She folds the letter in half, into fourths, eighths, sixteenths, and soon all she's holding is a teeny tiny square in her hand, gripped so tight that her knuckles match the shade of the paper. His words are covered by themselves, their existence being shielded, and suddenly, it's like there's no real evidence that Seth was ever really there at all. Maybe he was just a figment of her imagination. Maybe she made him up. Maybe she has snapped. Maybe she's crazy.
She lets out a half-sob, half-laugh, and considers that she's overreacting. At least he had the decency to leave a note. At least he created some form of a goodbye and tried to show her she cared. He didn't up and leave without as much as a warning. She knew he was gone now, he had told her himself. She wouldn't have to spend countless nights with her nose pressed against the window, waiting for the return of someone that was never coming back.
She rises to her feet and catches a glimpse of her tear-stained cheeks and raw red eyes in the mirror. The reflection lasts for only a second before her tiny fist is smashing it, and shards of glass fly beside her already bleeding knuckles.
And soon her chair is overturned and her phone is on the floor and jewelry boxes and books and curling irons and every other insignificant possession she owns is flung against the wall, becoming broken and destroyed as she too falls to pieces.
She rips her Valley poster off the wall and kicks the box containing the new pair of Manolos she purchased last week. She hears her father come up the stairs and knock on the door, asking what all that racket was about.
She hadn't even realized she was screaming.
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Three years ago...
"Summer! Young lady, you open up this door right now!"
Her father's words fell on deaf ears. His threats that he was going to break down the door, meaningless and ineffective. The words he had spoken no more than ten minutes ago echoed in her mind, pulsating against her brain and making less and less sense as she comprehended what exactly they were saying and what exactly all of this meant.
How could she have just left? How could she have just walked out so abruptly without so much as a good-bye? What had she just woken up that morning and decided she was sick of doing the mom thing and it was time to move on to bigger and better things? She'd just say sayonara and maybe if she had the time she'd drop her daughter a line from wherever the fuck she had skedaddled off to?
She knew her parents' marriage wasn't perfect. It didn't take a rocket scientist to guess that "insensitive son of a bitch" wasn't her mother's new pet-name for her father and that his retaliation toward the "idiotic whore" wasn't just another term of endearment.
Summer gulped in a feeble attempt to catch her breath which at the moment was coming out in panting, hysterical gasps.
Things like this weren't supposed to happen to her.
As if this day hadn't been bad enough. She had spent all morning sulking in her room, pulling Marissa's ear off over the phone about how unfair it was that she couldn't be like every other normal thirteen year old in Newport and go to Luke's birthday party; who cared if she had already RSVPed to some bar mitz- whatever if was called, it wasn't like she had actually planned on going.
Mere hours ago she screamed at her father, telling him how by refusing to let her go to Luke's, he was ruining her life.
Now she screamed in an empty room at no one, because her mother wasn't there to hear her allegations on how by abandoning her without warning did in fact, ruin her for life .
Her breathing quickened and her tear-flow increased as her thoughts unraveled themselves, the harsh reality of the situation setting in deeper and deeper with every passing second.
It didn't make sense. Mothers weren't supposed to abandon their chi... Why would she just...? Didn't she...? She couldn't... How...?
Summer gulped, a loud sob reverberating from her throat as she continued to hyperventilate in the middle of her room, the onslaught of questions running through her brain were suddenly becoming to overwhelming to configure into a logical sequence.
How... could... she?
Her water-filled eyes came across the ivory picture frame on her desk, the one she looked up at when doing the occasional homework or making the frequent shopping lists.
Summer picked it up, looking down at the snapshot inside, her four year old self smiling happily, her tiny fists wrapped around her also grinning mother.
She stared at the photo a minute longer, fingers tracing over the glass the delicate smile on her mother's lips, before smashing it down on the hard wooden surface of her desk, the frame and its covering shattering upon impact.
No need for happy memories together, Summer thought, it's not like they'd have them ever again.
In fact, she didn't need anything her mother had given her.
A bottle of Burberry perfume was pushed off the edge, its sweet-smelling contents immediately spilling.
What was the point of having all of this shit?
Her new Fendi bag, her mother's apology present for forgetting her birthday, was now being massacred as she picked up a pair of scissors and began cutting viciously.
Hours of shopping, thousands of wasted dollars...
An NSync CD was cracked in half after much bending and twisting. Summer snorted, showed how much her mother knew about her taste in music.
And for what?
A jewelry box was thrown down and kicked, a glittering assortment of Tiffany items scattering to all four corners.
It didn't mean anything.
A rocking chair filled with neatly organized teddy bears and plush animals was tipped over, its victims toppling to the floor having been caught in the line of fire.
It didn't fix anything.
Her cell phone, normally glued to her ear, was unmercifully chucked against the wall, losing its antenna and several buttons in the process.
It hadn't made her mother stay.
A stack of alphabetized DVDs, acquired from years of collection, tumbled over in a clattering heap.
And it certainly wasn't bringing her back.
Her lamp tipped and crashed, the bulb fracturing and dimming the room to partial blackness.
From then on, it started to get ugly.
A boombox toppled off its shelf.
The drawers of her dresser were ripped out.
Her 500-channel TV was knocked off its stand, its screen cracking and cords pulling from the outlet with an earth-shattering boom that could have been heard clear across town.
Her father who had been passively trying to get her to come out now got a bit more aggressive. She vaguely heard him fiddling with her doorknob and banging from outside.
"Summer! You get out here this instant, do you hear me? Now!"
Her straightening iron ricocheted off her dresser, snapping in two. A bottle of lotion lost its top as it hit the ground, a gooey, vanilla scented stain beginning to settle into the carpet. She delivered a swift kick to her stereo, denting in a button and bruising her bare foot in the process. The pain didn't phase her, she was hurting too much already to feel anymore.
Princess Sparkle stared at her from its position on her nightstand, innocently witnessing the massacre its owner was inflicting upon her surroundings. Summer hesitated a moment before reaching over and hurling the purple horse into a corner.
Childish securities wouldn't help her now. Maybe if she had been a little more grown up, a little less immature, her mother would have stayed.
She stood there, momentarily taking in the destruction of her cherished sanctuary. Her lips parted, another huge gulping sob escaping as she attempted to speak. There was only one thing she wanted to ask.
"W-Why?"
And then she sunk to her knees, throat raw with quivering sobs, as darkness engulfed her.
Two weeks later and ten pounds lighter, she sat in a psychiatrist's office, anxiously ringing her hands together, once perfectly manicured nails now ragged bitten down to the quick. She learned that rage blackouts were common after a traumatic incident and that apparently she had a lot of bottled up anger and unresolved issues.
After a couple of sessions of psychotherapy and a refillable prescription of Zoloft, her doctor and father deemed her cured. As if the sting and ache of abandonment didn't follow her everywhere, she didn't wake up every night sweating and panting, wondering if it had really been a nightmare. Just like that she was fixed. She was whole again.
If only it was really that easy.
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She's laying on the floor when she comes to, cheek pressed up against freshly vacuumed carpet, now aligned with shards of broken glass and other miscellaneous parts of dismantled items. A large segment of what was once her mirror lays cracked and broken in front of her, distorting the reflection so she can barley see that its her. She sees her swollen face, the tear-stained cheeks, the mess of mascara and eyeliner so meticulously applied earlier now swirled beneath raw eyes. There's a cut beneath her cheekbone from a stray piece of glass and she almost laughs as she inwardly comments to herself. She looks like a fucking crack whore.
Gingerly, she sits up and surveys the damage littered carelessly around her. She's shocked at the sight. It looks like a full-fledge wrestling match has taken place in the center of her room. She's amazed that she was able to create such disorder all on her own. She always underestimates what her own pain and anger is capable, she only revels in realization after the fact.
When she stands and tries to walk across the scattered sight its like she's struggling through an obstacle course. It's tedious and difficult not to cut her feet on broken shards that have become weapons after being separated from whatever they once were. She starts to count backwards in her mind. How long had it been, five months? Maybe six since her last one? Figures, all her rage seemed to dissipate once he came into her life. She wonders if it will erupt into an unfixable catastrophe now that he's gone. She smirks bitterly at the irony. So much for dropping those therapist appointments down to only once a month. She's going to be in need of around-the-clock psychiatric help. She's pretty sure that freaking out and trashing her own room before blacking out pretty much justified an apparent lack of emotional stability.
The journey to her bed ends as she reaches her destination, her quivering body falling into the extra-soft mattress so that soon she's sinking and being swallowed by purple sheets. Purple sheets that mere months ago she lay flat on her back, gasping and sweating underneath him, pleasantly pleased to learn that when it came to sex, practice was indeed an effective means of improvement and that they weren't destined to a fate of fish-moves and flying limbs.
She rolls to the left and is met with his scent. She sleeps on the left side of the bed, she always has. The huge queen-sized mattress has always been too much for her tiny body, all she really needs is one corner to curl up in.
Her bed had become theirs over the passing months. After school and on weekends when her father was working 24/7 and she always had the house to herself, he would come over and they'd make love and nap and she'd wake up an hour or so later in his arms and wonder how such a skinny and physically weak boy could make her feel so protected. And then he'd wake up too and mumble, half-delirious with sleep, words that would make her heart race and open up just a little more.
Her chest lurches and she briefly considers it is her heart closing back up again, its gates being relocked and no longer accepting any more visitors now that her most recent one has checked out.
There's no more knocking at her door and she understands that her father had obviously given up, walked away and decided that his daughter screaming and breaking things was nothing out of the ordinary or something to be concerned about. He eventually got tired and left. She's not surprised, it's always the same.
People always leave.
And she's always the one left behind.
She had known something was different when she found him sitting off by himself at the wedding, looking like the lost misfit he'd been all his life. And when she showed up and reminded him that he wasn't alone anymore it meant nothing to him. It "wasn't the same thing." The reassurance of the girl he pined over for years wasn't enough.
She promised they'd get through it. She told him she was still there. She laid her heart on the line only to have it stomped on.
She makes a silent pact with herself to never let her guard down again.
She'll become the bad girl again. The one with the permanent sneer on her face. The one that rolls her eyes and said 'ew'. The one that doesn't give a fuck about feelings. The one that loves and cares for no one.
It would be easier that way.
Her tears stain her pillow and she picks Princess Sparkle off from up the nightstand, clutching it to her chest, thankful that she had enough sense not to let her beloved childhood friend receive the brunt of her frustration this time.
And it's as if she's thirteen again and that fortress of spite and resentment is being put up and walls are being formed and she's making promises with herself never to trust another human being as long as she lives. It taken three days for her to finally come out of her room.
She wonders how long she'll lock herself up this time.
fin.
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A/N: Those rage blackouts are a bitch. Sorry if this sucked but if you could review anyway that would be nice :-)