a/n: Well hello there. I'm sorry this took so long, but I've been busy dealing with all manners of unpleasant things (school, life, etc.) so I've had to put this on hold. It's fairly short and mostly FLASHBACK, but it's probably my favorite so far. I know I promised to use a play in this one, but it didn't fit. Sometimes they do and sometimes they really don't. I will eventually use it though! And don't worry, I will finish this story. Eventually. Information you may or may not find important: Jade has a brother named Eric and I made him up; again, her mother's name is Lila and her parents divorced when she was younger; this chapter is definitely dark and probably out of character but then again, I've pretty much making up her character and writing darkly for the first six chapters so you've probably learned to accept that by now. Love, Ophelie23.
Jade looked around the silent, empty house and closed the door quietly. She took off her jacket and let it fall on the floor. She moved upstairs then, removing all her clothes and letting them drop messily on the floor. She was too tired to care.
They had left the park just as the sun was rising. He needed to get home before school, just to let his parents know he was okay. Sometimes Jade envied that. Growing up, it was always her mother who needed checking up on and it was always Jade who did the checking.
She started running the water for a bath, letting it heat up so that it was almost too hot. She felt cold and stiff from the night outdoors. But then again, Jade usually felt cold and stiff. She slowly lowered herself into the scalding water, but the warmth didn't go deeper than her skin. She still felt chilled.
The sharp air of 2 a.m. pricked her pale skin. Gooseflesh appeared on her arms, but she was impervious to the cold. All she felt was numbness. She had ended up here somehow. She wasn't really sure. These days (well, nights) she seemed to drift from one noisy, colorful, saturated party to another. She felt sick from all the color, from all the sound and loudness, from all the ringing of excess and youth. Because she was young.
She seemed to float, allowing herself to be taken from one place to another. Allowing herself to be given expensive weed and cheap alcohol and stollen pills. Allowing herself to turn over control to the world. She was resigned. But it didn't feel as free as she thought it would.
She was at the beach, but it was a different beach than she normally knew. It was smaller and more wild, like it hadn't been imprinted on by thousands of sweaty tourists. Her eyes were following a lone seagull as it made its graceless flight from the parking lot where she stood, looking, watching, to the black sea. It wasn't beautiful.
She made her way slowly down to the sand. It felt damp and cold underneath her bare feet. Somehow, she had lost her shoes.
She felt tired, she realized. But her mind was as restless as ever. It kept flickering like an old film, the distinction between past and present, between reality and illusion, fracturing and splintering violently. Memory can do strange things to the mind.
Time became blurred by the drugs and the melancholic loneliness.
They all say that fourteen is a tough age. But when adults say things like that, it's empty. It's meaningless. They're own memories have been too long sitting, been distorted and damaged by years of inaction.
It had been a year since she stopped seeing her dad and her brother. And in that year she allowed herself to sink into her mother's world. Without Eric there to look after them (although she would never admit she needed looking after), Lila had sunk even further into half-medicated depression. But it was better than the alternative. So Jade ignored her. She knew it was wrong. It was bad. But she was scared of getting too close to Lila when she was down. She was scared of what could happen to her. That she would end up the same.
So she lulled herself into a world of ghosts and moonlight and water and cigarettes. She lulled herself into a world of illusions and streetlights and city busses and fast. She spent her nights (and early mornings) just watching, tiredness trickling down her mind. Illusion and golden figures, faces, fast, fast, fast, slow. They told her with joking tones that she didn't even need the drugs (looking for euphoria but getting nothing but hysteria). She tripped on her own thoughts. Reality wasn't even real anymore.
She wanted to feel again. She wanted the unbearable droning ringing of the world to stop. To mute. She wanted too much. She wanted someone who would tuck her into bed at night. She wanted someone who would whisper untruthful, but hopeful things into her ear. She wanted someone to shelter her and shield her from everything. She wanted someone, anyone, who could make it all go away. She wanted life, she wanted feeling. But all she got was emptiness. A hollow shell.
She wandered back up to the pier then and looked out from the edge of the plank. Leaning over the edge of the rail, she pierced her skin with the blade, not even bothering to notice her own trembling hands. She watched, detached, as a single pure drop of blood spilled like paint onto an untouched surface of cool glassy water. At once her head swam, her mind filled with a dull, deafening drone. The blade slipped from her shaking fingers. Her thoughts were bursting with agonizing want. Someone. Someone. Someone. She might have screamed.
It was delayed grief and guilt. Grief for the loneliness of life without her father and brother. The family she was kept from. The people she loved. The person she loved. The one person, her only brother. She had been there for him. She had chased away his monsters. She had saved him. And now he wasn't there for her. Jade has monsters too. Flood. Flooded with guilt for everything she had done since she last saw him. For violating every unspoken agreement between them. Take care of mom. Be good, Jade.
Be good, Jade.
Desperate, exhausted, numb. She could do nothing else but throw herself into the black water. The warm Pacific water was eerily calming. She relaxed her body, trying to stay submerged. Silver silence filled the moment and she felt momentary relief crash into her. She wasn't suicidal. She just wanted all that noise to stop. She just wanted to feel something. She just wanted peace.
She broke the surface, her lungs screaming and her body trembling. Gasping for air she managed to clamber back onto the pier. She lay there, feeling the air chill her. Feeling something, finally. Tears came, for the first time in a year she felt sadness seep into the spaces that were previously filled with anger. Sadness on top of anger. Sadness mixing with anger. Sadness distorting anger. Somehow she ended up at home. Something had brought her home in physical safety, but her thoughts were still plagued. This wasn't death, she thought. But it wasn't life. This wasn't anything. This was everything. And this was still nothing. This was existence.
Jade opened her eyes, her breathing heavy and her pulse rapid. She couldn't have fallen asleep. Not in the tub. So it wasn't a dream. It was true. It was memory. It was remembered.
Shaking, she got up and hurried out of the bathroom. She quickly got dressed in whatever she could grab from the floor and left the house.
~ I hope you liked it! Reviews and comments are appreciated as always.
