"Hey, Tory, when did your mom say she'd be back again?" I looked at my best friend, Ally Sullivan, and shrugged.
"I think she said she'd be back by seven." I replied, just happy to have Ally sleeping over tonight.
"Tory, it's almost eight, do you think somethin-"
"No! Nothings wrong she has to come back soon!" I almost shout in my momentary state of panic. Both my grandparents died when I was little, they were smokers and I don't remember much about them. I never met my dad. Mom's the only one I have left. No sibling or any other family really, though my dad's probably still alive.
"Ok. Sorry, Tor. She's just been gone a really long time." Ally put a tiny hand on my shoulder.
"I know. Sorry I shouted at you..." I whispered and swiped my hair out of my face. She started to run her fingers up and down my sides. Peals of laughter fell from my lips, and I'll never let anyone know, but I'm really ticklish.
The phone rang and with little laughs still falling from my lips I answered it.
"Hello, Tory speaking." As politely as I could just like mom taught me.
"Miss Brennan, I regret to inform you there has been an accident with your mother." The voice on the other end sounded mechanic, almost, and my heart plunged into my feet. "A mechanic named Alvie Turnbauer ran a red light and hit you mother's car. If there's a friend you can stay with we suggest going there for the time being. I am sorry for your loss."
The person hung up and with out doing so on my end the phone clattered to the hard wood floor and I followed it. No tears came or fell. I couldn't hear or feel, there was no cold, wooden flooring under my soon to be aching knees, no Ally screaming 'what's wrong?' I don't know how long I stayed there until Ally hugged me, or until I whispered "you were right."
Then everything came at me too loud, and too much. It hurt so much I felt like I was breaking apart.
I don't know how long I cried into my best friends shoulder with her long blond hair shielding us from the hells of the outside world. I do know that I woke up in her house though, still wrapped in her arms. I was deaf again, trapped in a night mare I can't ever wake up from.
Ally's lips part and even though I don't hear her say a word a moment later her mom comes rushing in, her brown hair flying and a dirty apron covering her work cloths. She says things to me but I don't know what she says, I can't hear a thing. It's like I'm so far under water my eardrums have burst.
I keep staring forward at her, blank and emotionless on the outside, but inside I'm a wreck. Mom's gone and I'll never see her again ever. Next time I'm really aware of anything I'm crying again, sandwitched between Ally and Mrs. Sullivan I don't try to stop the tears, I just wanted to cry until my body curled up into an empty, dehydrated husk.
I really wanted to just pass out again, because it doesn't hurt as much when I'm not awake. But I don't pass out, and as miserable as I was right then I was happy to be settled in my best friends arms, with her mom hugging us both. Even if she's not my mom it was nice to be held by her. Mrs Sullivan eventually had to speak, and I knew it but I was dreading it. Now I could hear the words she said and they were not words I wanted to hear.
"Tory, darling. There was a man who came to talk to me, about permanent residence for you. In your mother's will she's left everything to you, but she wants you to be sent to live with your father until you're old enough to take care of yourself." She was crying too.
"No... I can't loose this too. I d-don't wanna move away." My voice rang hollowly in my own ears as I cried. I'd never cried so much in my whole life. Mom even said I was a quiet baby and the thought just brings more tears to my over flowing eyes.
"I'm sorry, but we have no say in this. We would love to take you in, we already love you like one of our own, but both the law and you mother's will say to send you to your last known living blood relative, which is your father."
"No!" Me and Ally shouted at the same time. Now I really was losing everything.
"I've been told you have two days until they take you away." She whispered and stood up. "I'm so, so sorry Tory."
And she walked out of the room wiping tears from her face, taking all the shreds of everything I've ever known out of the room with her. Tears poured down my face and I curled into myself. I was shaking, sobbing miserably into my knees with Ally hugging me from behind.
Two days. Two flipping days was all I had until what little I still had was going to be taken from me and I'd be shipped of to God knows where.
"I don't want you to go away." My friend cried into my back. "Not now not ever."
"I don't want to go away." I sniffled, somehow managing to slow the sobs that were shaking my body.
"I want to stay here in Massachusetts and I want Mom back. I don't wat to leave what I have left here and start again. But I don't have a choice now do I?" I laughed bitterly and I could feel Ally's bright blue eyes on me. I looked up and her eyes were so shiny and dull with misery that the bright, happy blue I loved was gone and was replaced with a miserable, dark bluish grey. If here eyes were like that I don't want to know what my green ones looked like.
"I just want this hell to be over and for thing to go back to the way that they were. I want this to just be a really bad dream and that I'll wake up and you're still at my house and that Mom's coming home with the pizza and that all of this is just going to be an awful echo." I mumbled and rubbed my eyes with my fists.
"M-maybe it wont be so bad?" Ally doesn't sound any more hopeful than me, and I just throw myself at her and cry.
"You know what?"
I don't answer her.
"We only have two days left with each other and I don't want to spend it crying into each others shoulders." She says, wiping her eyes. "I know everything's gone down hill really fast and that everything we've known is about to change, but we can't just spend out last two days together crying about a horrible tragedy that's changed everything, when we might not even have those two days left to be sad."
"Maybe." That's all I could get past my lips. I couldn't trust my voice anymore, so I wiped my eyes and gave her the biggest, fakest smile I've ever smiled and we stand up. I want to cry some more, but Ally's right. We have two day's, maybe less, and I don't want my last two days with my best friend since preschool to be spent turning into empty, dry-as-a-desert-skeleton shells.
Of course, it can't last. We could have had fun right then but too soon it was going to have to end.
My legs gave out from under me and I fell back o the ground, my hands clutching my chest.
"It hurts." I whimpered.
"I know." She whispered.
She hugged me and this time I didn't cry. We stayed there until her mom called us for dinner, with her arms around me and my wet hands holding my breaking heart. When we finally did go downstairs at the table there was a little package with my name written in Mrs Sullivan's fancy, curving script.
Mr and Mrs Sullivan stood of to the side, Mrs Sullivan holding Ally's three year old baby brother. Ally went to stand with her father.
"We had to get you something." Ally said when I just stared at them.
"We couldn't leave you all alone when they take you away from us. You're like a second daughter." Her mom said.
"We love you and we'll miss you very much. Please just take this little this as a piece of mind for us at the very least." I've always liked Mr Sullivan's voice, deep and calming and you always just want to listen to him say more.
"Open it." Ally smiled, excitement showing through her own sadness. I picked up the little package and used a knife from the table to cut the tape away. I opened the box and pulled out an iPhone with my name engraved on the back of it.
"We'll pay for the bill, don't worry about that. Please, just take it with you wherever these people take you." Mrs Sullivan promised.
"I'll text you every day just to make sure you're still OK."Ally held up an iPhone of her own, with a butterfly case on it. She pulled something out of the pocket of the light little jacket she was wearing and handed it to me. A case just like hers only with green butterfly's instead of blue ones.
"We match." And I laughed for the firs time in however long it had been since that car accident. It hurt to laugh, but it was a good hurt. For the first time I felt something other than emotional agony and misery, and I would be sad again in no time but right this second this painful laughter felt wonderful, like the best thing in the world.
Is this a one shot or should I make it more than that...? Review and the first 5 reviews I get will decide whether I continue or not.