It was Saturday. I think it was noon, maybe a little after. I was laying on my bed staring blankly at the ceiling, thinking blank thoughts, when everything crashed. Of course, I wasn't there for it. I was in my room, listening to music, drawing away little animal sketchings in a pad no one has ever seen, but you see-this is all pointless (maybe because I am?).
Down the street, two houses in fact, a young girl was moving in. Okay, that's a lie, she wasn't a young girl. Innocence doesn't equate to age, at least not figuratively. Anyways, that's besides the point. The point was that this one blonde haired girl was going to change the remaining five months of my stay in school. The last five months I would ever spend behind those walls, caged in without freedoms or liberties or rights.
I didn't know it when I met her, I don't think anyone does, but after I met her I encountered death for the first time and love and hate and pain and sorrow and things I never experienced before. Things I didn't know, not even logically, how to deal with. It didn't matter that I even read books on them, or saw TV specials, or my friends tried to tell me. Nothing is the same as something that is happening to you.
It was Monday now. 6:55 AM and I was running late for school, which started at 7:10 (for whatever odd reason). I threw on a tank top, pants, socks and shoes and my backpack last. I forgot a book, I knew it as I was racing out the door but it was too late then. Too late to turn back now! I grabbed at the door handle of my beetle, swinging it open and threw my back pack into the back seat (irony) and then plopped down. It was at least a 15 minute drive to the school. It didn't take long, actually it took less time than I had originally planned (I probably would have had the time to grab that book), and I was soon seated in my first period course a little too early for my liking. So I just sat there, tapping my pen lightly at the edge of the desk.
Click, click, click.
It became almost soothing, like I had to continue it. I had no choice. Then the door opened.
And she walked in, and she sat down, and she looked at me like someone had just died.
And I was suddenly immensely scared. I didn't know what to do, or what to say, so I just stared at her like I had never seen anything like her before. My mouth was agape, widened by surprise or something I don't know. My pen had stopped clicking, I had pushed it down but forgot to release. I was so busy staring at her, studying her, trying to understand what was happening. She had a petite figure, blonde hair that streamed around her face. She was wearing modest clothing, a sweater and jeans. Nothing one would bother with complimenting over, anyways. Her eyes, though, they held me in deep like a trap. I was afraid to look away, but more afraid to say anything or even just to continue staring. The bell alarm went off, warning everyone they had five minutes left, and soon people droned in and I was no longer staring at her. A red headed girl, Edward, sat down next to me. We weren't exactly the best of friends, but with my reputation not many girls wanted to be my friend. It wasn't like I was a mean or a bad person, but I just wasn't friendly enough, I guess.
The blonde haired girl acquired a name before the end of first period, Julia, and was notably popular among several of the girls and boys that were seated around her. Some, from across the room, stared in envy of their misplaced fortune.
The rest of the day went by fine, smoothly enough and with little thought of her. I was standing outside now, against the brick of the wall smoking away at a cigarette as one of the other senior boys attempted to persuade me that I wanted to hang out with them Friday. I dropped my cigarette on the floor, smothered it into the ground and walked off.
"Call me,I get off at 11pm."
It was typical, their flirtations. I knew I wasn't bad looking. I could get the boys, any girl really can, it was keeping them that was hard. But it wasn't that, it was something deeper. Something inside of me that ticked away this way and that, pounding deeper and harder. It mimicked itself in an echoing voice that said 'Spike'.
Spike was attractive, good grades, skipped class a lot but he had a great personality that teachers almost seemed to praise him for his ability to be absent but still retain genius credits.
He was tall, skinny, flexible beyond words and he could ooze into your life and right out of it. He left a lot harder than he came in, though. He'd suck the very life out of you. He had a few girlfriends, he wasn't a bad person about girls, he just wasn't dedicated. Sometimes I wonder if I try to be like him so he'd like me, but then the inner part of me realizes I was always like this. I wondered if some psychiatrist could analyze me, put me into a category in a book and give me pills that would fix me. And then, as always, I would realize I didn't want to be fixed of this. I wanted to love Spike.
We weren't friends, he and I. I had a sort of thing going on with his brother, Vicious, and Edward and Jet were friends, but besides that I barely saw Spike.
He was rich, this I knew from being at his house on occasion. Mainly I got this from the fact that I "borrowed" a few things that they never noticed. Their mom hated me, their father never met me, and I'm pretty sure there was another sibling, much older, I never met. (Maybe they'd died?)
Anyways. Vicious was a good lay and all, sometimes he made me feel full of life, but then I would hear Spike. Either in the back of my mind, or penetrating from the walls, and it felt like someone was sitting on my heart and I couldn't breathe anymore. I don't know why I do, I should hate him. He gives me looks, looks that say "I know who you are" when I leave his house, and sometimes I feel like that girl. I feel like that hooker on the side of the street. But a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do.
Moving along. I live alone. Well, not really alone. I had three roommates. Two of them were in college and the third was just drifting from job to job, but as long as he had a job I didn't care. They were all boys, I just didn't get along with girls-like I said. Edward lived there some of the time, she'd bunk on the couch, but she was more of a drifter than any of the rest of us put together.
The house is pretty okay, it isn't the best but then it isn't the worst, either. There's four bedrooms, so we fit pretty snug, and two and a half bathrooms. I never really see my roommates, but then they're usually always working or I am and we never seem to have corresponding days off. It doesn't matter, the house is clean and the bills are paid and sometimes I don't care. My room isn't anything special, either. It doesn't have anything in it that people would be envious of, except for lots of clothing. The bed was pretty bare, there were no pictures on the walls, I had no nightstands, no stereo, no television, just a small laptop that slides easily under my bed after usage and some books that I've left conveniently on the floor. It's easy enough to clean up, anyways. There were decks of cards everywhere, too, sometimes I work at the casino. I had to lie about my age, I told them I was 23. I looked it, mostly in my body, so it's all good. I don't think they care, anyways, they don't seem to even bother with IDing people who come in. I work under the table, probably because I've been taught to cheat. I don't ask questions, I just do. That's my job. I'm not really friends with anyone there, either. That isn't the kind of place one wants to make friends, everyone backstabs everyone and there's a lot of theft. It takes a lot to get home, too, especially on paydays because I'm handed cash and in a place like that-well, holding a couple hundred in one's hands isn't a good idea, let me tell you. I've had my fair share of beatings and robberies there, but I don't complain, it's extra money and I need it to live.
Like I was saying, that was my house. and right down the street was Julia's house. It wasn't much better than ours, but then it was just her and her parents (as far as I could tell). Her mother looked nice, tall, skinny, kind of held the same depressed look but I only saw her in the morning's getting the newspaper and generally speaking no one looks their best then. I hadn't seen the father, not clearly. I've seen him leave and come home but he wears a suit and hat (which is ridiculous in my opinion) and it's too hard to really get a good look at him unless I were to call at him. I never saw Julia leave, though, unless it was for school. She'd get up, go out to her car (which was a fairly nice one, might I add), go to school and come home and that was it. I wondered if there were bars around her room. Sometimes after school I'd spend the whole day out front of my house just sitting leisurely up against the garage door and smoking away just staring at her house waiting for anything to happen at all. But nothing, till just after four when the father arrived and then nothing again.
It was during one of these days, at around 8:30 pm I was out front just smoking away as the sun set that a car pulled up. A really nice car. A really familiar car. It stopped just short of the end of her driveway, and out came Spike. My heart skipped a beat. He closed the door and it skipped another. He looked over at me and I surely would have been announced dead right then and there. I gave him a glare, scoffed (though he couldn't hear me) and turned away. He didn't say anything, and I couldn't see anything from the side of my peripheral view, so I figured this was his way of ignoring me, and up to the door he went.
I could almost feel him pushing on the doorbell, almost even hear it. Then the door creaked open, and either they said nothing or they said it quietly enough that I wouldn't be able to hear them, and he went inside. I couldn't really see who was behind the door, but I didn't figure Spike would be there visiting with her mother. Jealousy flared up deep within me, on top of this anger.I scoffed, got up, and hopped into my own car.
"Well fuck this!" I cried out suddenly, and when that was released it was almost like everything in me was released and I began screaming loudly. After a moment I swerved out of the driveway and sped off to Spike's house.
Vicious was already there, in his room enjoying some alcohol and watching tv. I stole it from him, chugged him, and then climbed over him. He smelt of it, reeked of it, and I kissed him hard. Everything in the room smelt of it, smelt of something dirty and used. I wanted this to be wrong, horribly wrong, like everything else in my life.
"Nothing's going right," I found myself whispering to him as my hand searched his neck and hair for anything that would make him arch.
"I'm the only good thing in your life," Vicious whispered back, and I didn't know if he was saying that to keep me coming back like a drug user, or if it was the truth.