dun dun dun! this one's critcal. Semi-short, but critical. Feedback for this would be like undeniably incredible. I'm a little nervous for it. Proud, but nerous. Aww okay well tell me what you think!

"You jump first."

"I'm so not jumping first." She called back at him. The blue light danced across her delicate features. Her bony shoulders, tan from the southern California sun.

Tan from the days she had spent binged out on the beach. But that wasn't important right now. Right now she was Marissa. Maybe not Marissa Cooper, or the girl she used to be the last time they had a rendezvous near a pool, but she was Marissa in this moment. She was Marissa, in a white dress and for once the freckles in her eyes were shimmering ever so slightly in the blue and white tones dancing across her face.

She turned around and laughed. Looked at him and absolutely laughed. Not a fake laugh, not a protected laugh, a full out burst of giggles erupted from her mouth. Nothing held back. Nothing put behind.

"You're laughing." He screamed. He ran after her, another fit of almost forgotten foreign laughs escaping her lips as she ran barefoot across the wet cement. The back of the suburban chain motel that they were staying in provided them with the perfect spot to forget their troubles. A brown wooden fence, the giant metal box covering the air central air system , some fake landscaped clay looking pebbles, and browned grass was all that separated them from the real world. Them, from the highway, and the plastic looking commercialized fast food places, and half developed malls on the other side of the highway. But that wasn't important. Tonight they didn't live in the real world.

Marissa felt like Cinderella, only Cinderella wasn't a junkie prostitute and as she recalled Cinderella was poor and then became rich. Not the other way around.

But it wasn't like that mattered. She heard herself breathing in the dark. Not knowing where he'd come up from. That terrifying, but giddy feeling of being chased. But this time, it was for pretend. Her feet were wet, and the air was still sticky but it was starting to cool down just a little. She didn't even hear herself scream as he came out of no where and pretended to throw her in. Dangling over the water she screamed at him.

"Ryaaaaaan!" Laughing in between. Then she fell, dragging her with him. She was underwater. Everything blue, swirling, repeatedly freckling. She took a minute. Before she reached the top. The chlorine barely stinging her eyes. Her white dress stuck to her, and she ran her hand back through her hair. Breaking through. The night airhitting her. Spitting water out, and subconsciously coughing. Only she wasn't suffocating. No, she was defiantly breathing. The water was everywhere. She had always loved it. He was right there. The look on his eyes coming in and out with the blue light reflecting in steady waves.

Swimming over she draped her arms on the hard cement ledge. Where he already was. She hung there and looked at him.

"You're different." She said. Almost to herself more than anything.

"You're exactly the same."

She turned and bit her lip. She couldn't imagine wishing more than anything in this moment that that were true. She wished she was exactly the same. She'd give anything to be that naïve again. She'd give anything to be free of every single chain that was tying her down, she'd give anything to feel trapped by Newport, instead of trapped by herself.

She looked down, she didn't want to do this now. Everything had been so perfect. Everything had been so lost and forgotten. Blocked out by fences and blue pool light.

"Marissa…" he pleaded.

She looked at him. She took his hand. Running it across her arms. All the countless times she'd spent, binged out. All the countless times she'd given herself for just one more glimpse into something she'd sure she would find…over and over again. Here eyes were blue again, but she'd known the past 3 years they hadn't been. He traced her scars, feeling every time she'd injected a hit. She'd searched so hard. She'd ended up at the bottom. Feeding gracefully with the bottom suckers. All she'd needed was white lines and some straws. All she'd needed was an alley and a place to find her happiness in all shapes and forms. She closed her eyes.

"The first time I did it, I said to myself it would be the last time….the money I had taken from my mother had run out, I couldn't afford anything without that money. There was no way I was going to go back. I just kept thinking that maybe if….I still remember. It had been almost a year since I'd left. I met AJ. They all knew I was different. So from then on I'd come in. Go in the back room, they'd give me my fix, I'd go numb….all I really wanted was to not feel anything. All I really wanted was those few precious moments of calculated happiness where everything was forgotten…" She traced the edges of the jagged cement. The way the pebbles clung to it. "I just remembered thinking… I've forgotten what it's like to feel anything remotely hopeful. The first time, I cried. I cried the entire time. I don't even remember him touching me..."

Looking at him, his eyes hard and sincere. Like every word she was speaking was tearing him apart. He moved his hands up her arm. From the backside of her arm, to the side of her face. He kissed her. Gently, faintly apologetically. Touching her, tracing her. Trying to take her in bit by bit in the blue and smothered moonlight. "Marissa…" he breathed in her name with every single touch he'd give her.

This first time, she cried too. But it was nothing like the other, it couldn't have been any different.