To all of my fabulous chapter eleven reviewers- thank you!! I seriously hope you guys like this chapter. and i'm stoked you guys have liked it so far. ya'll are the bestest.
Chapter Twelve: Weight of the World
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Brooke drove back to Peyton's house that afternoon. She had spent the night with the blonde but failed to get her to go to school that morning, so she had gone by herself. She turned onto Peyton's street when she saw an unfamiliar car in the driveway. It pulled out before she reached the house and turned towards her. She squinted to see who was driving the car as it passed.
She parked in the driveway and hurried up to Peyton's room. She stopped in the empty doorway. Peyton was sitting at her desk, staring off into space, apparently lost in thought.
She wished she hadn't done it. She sincerely wished she could've taken it back, redone the moment and refused to do it. But she couldn't. She didn't know why she did it. She remembered feeling wanted, but it didn't seem like it was enough to make her want to go back down that road again.
She heard someone clear their throat. She thought it was probably Rick, coming back to laugh at her for being weak. She turned to look at him, instead finding Brooke. She forced a smile as she concealed the vial in her hand and moved it out of Brooke's eyesight. She didn't seem to notice.
"Hey." Brooke's eyes were filled with worry.
"Hi." Peyton replied softly.
"Why was Rick here?" Peyton's eyes went wide.
"Rick?" Was all she could think of to say. She knew it was a mistake.
"Yeah. Rick... that sleazeball that was here the other day. I just saw him leave here."
"Oh." She said after pondering the possible answers to Brooke's question. She couldn't think of anything to say other than the truth, and that simply wasn't the right thing to say.
"Peyton, what's going on?" Brooke asked.
"Nothing." She said firmly. She was beginning to get annoyed with constantly having to prove she was fine to Brooke.
"Then what happened last night?"
"Nothing." Peyton said as she stood up. She walked over to where she kept her records and began looking through the albums, attempting to get away from that line of questioning. She felt Brooke standing close behind her.
"Talk to me." She heard Brooke say softly. She spun around to look at Brooke.
"There's nothing to talk about." Peyton answered, causing Brooke to shake her head no.
"There's last night, last weekend, and now this." She said and motioned behind her to the bed, where the sheets told of the mess that was the previous hour. "You slept with the guy at the club, and now that Rick guy? Peyton, two weeks ago, this was not you. Something has changed." She expected Peyton to say something. The blonde only looked away from her. "I don't like what I'm seeing, Peyt."
"Then maybe you shouldn't come over here without warning. Maybe not even at all." Peyton said quickly. She hadn't meant it; she loved Brooke. But it was too late, and she was against apologizing. She watched Brooke's reaction go from shock to anger to concern in less than thirty seconds.
"I'm not leaving so you can hide from this. We need to get you through whatever this phase is. What are you trying to do anyway, get Haley off of your mind?" Brooke asked, honestly wondering if that was Peyton's motivation. Peyton's eyes went wide with anger.
"Get out." Peyton said, almost growling. She could feel her blood boil at Brooke's mention of her liking Haley. She didn't know why, she didn't even wonder why, but Brooke knowing about her feelings made her even more furious.
"What? I was just wondering." Brooke said, surprised by Peyton's reaction. Peyton didn't seem to change.
"Get out. Now."
"Peyton-"
"Go." She said loudly, almost yelling. Brooke stood still. She knew Brooke had heard her. Brooke nodded slowly then took a step backwards. She looked at Peyton for a moment longer before hurrying out of the room. Peyton stood looking at the empty doorway for minutes, wondering what had just happened. She had just yelled at her best friend for doing nothing more than caring.
She was a moron, she knew that. Then she was impulsive on top of that. She shook her head no. She wasn't doing this again; she wasn't going to beat herself up over this. That's what was going wrong. She could fix it. She would fix it. Starting now. She wouldn't do the brooding thing anymore.
She sat back down at her desk and stared at the drawings on her walls. She wondered why she was doing everything the way she was. It would be so easy to push it all away and make everything better. She didn't need to screw random guys, she didn't need to yell at her best friend, and she certainly didn't need cocaine. She could fight it. She was going to, starting now.
A half an hour had gone by since Brooke had left. She had yet to get up from her desk. She found herself too consumed by her thoughts to move. She still clutched the vial in her right hand. She tapped nervously on the arm of her chair with the index finger on her left hand. She could feel her muscles yearning for the substance. She thought the lack of it in her bloodstream had pushed her to go off on Brooke. She wouldn't have done it if everything was normal; it had to be its fault. She fought hard to push it out of her mind. She decided the best way of doing that would be doing something else to occupy her thoughts.
She sat down as she flipped on the tv. Her eyes scanned over the listings in the tv guide. She found nothing on except game shows and made for tv movies, both of which she abhorred. She looked in the refrigerator, but found it empty. She didn't have much of an appetite anyway. She looked for something to read, but found she didn't have the attention span to conquer something like a novel.
She tried doing her homework, but the most math she could do seemed to be adding two to itself, and even her answer to that, four, seemed like it was somehow not right. She tried surfing pages on the internet, but found nothing to her liking. She again, sat still in her chair, rolling the vial in between her index finger and thumb, wondering what to do next.
She couldn't draw when she was like this. She didn't understand it, but she knew she didn't like it. These cravings seemed to block her artistic abilities. But at the same time, she didn't care that she couldn't draw; she didn't really want to draw. She knew that wasn't the way it was supposed to be. She watched as the sun went down, thankful that the night was more gentle than the day. She knew morning would come eventually. But she didn't want to think about that.
She could feel the way he touched her. It made her shudder, knowing she had given herself away to him so freely. It made her feel worse about herself when she thought for sure she couldn't possibly think any worse of herself than she already did. She had let him use her how he wanted without even putting up a fight. She had been weak, had let him win. She shut her eyes closed tightly, not being able to stop thinking about how stupid she had been.
She wiped a tear from her cheek. Her hand shook as she lightly tapped the contents from the vial onto a cd. She inhaled one line, and then a second. For minutes, she waited for her pain and doubt to be smothered by the energy of the drugs. Nothing happened.
She could feel her spirit break even more. Not only was she trying to get high, but she couldn't even do it right. She snorted two more lines, hoping this time it would work. After a while of waiting, she could feel the rush starting again. It lasted for half the time it should've. Afterwards, she could feel the doubt and anxiety set in again.
She knew she wasn't thinking clearly. But she didn't listen to the small voice in her head when it told her to think twice. She inhaled four more lines, hoping to once again rid herself of the pain she felt when she was clean. For twenty minutes, she listened to angry music and drew black scribbles on pages that seemed to her to be too white. She turned to a new page and drew a scrambled drawing of her impression of herself. It looked more like a slightly personified version of a collection of scribbles.
She could feel herself growing weary as she came down from her high. Her bed was starting to look awfully comfortable. She decided to lay down, just for a short nap. But only after changing her sheets first. After laying down, she felt herself quickly drift off into a night filled with dreams that were anything but ordinary.
