A/N: Thank you to everyone keeping up with this story and reviewing! I honestly didn't love this story as much as other things I'm working on, but you guys kept me motivated and kept asking for updates, and now I'm obsessed with writing this story! Please keep reading and please keep reviewing if you want me to continue!

Also, trigger warning for mention of self-harm towards the end of this chapter. Enjoy!

The next morning, Spencer crept into Melissa and Wren's room after they'd both left for work and quietly looked through all of their stuff, with one specific goal in mind. She made faces when she stumbled upon Melissa's cosmetic box, which also houses an array of condoms and other sexual health products. She closed it quickly, completely grossed out of the thought of her sister and Wren doing it. But then she found it: their pharmaceuticals. She took about seven of the orange caplets, enough to use but not enough that he'd notice they were gone.

The first few days, it wasn't bad. She only popped one or two a day. It was great. She would do homework in the library after school, pop a pill, tutor Toby and play whatever game he was into that day (the pills were also good because they somehow increased her sexual energy, making their kissing sessions much more intense. He just chalked it up to what he thought was a newfound confidence in her), go home and deal with her family, pop another pill and work all night.

But when she ran out of the initial handful she'd taken from Wren, she quickly felt herself crashing. She found herself creeping into her sister's room once more, but this time while they were asleep. She very quietly took Wren's briefcase into the hallway, where she could afford to be a bit louder, and removed a blank prescription pad from the case. She ripped off a few pages and slid them into her pocket before returning the briefcase to her sister's room. She forged Wren's writing, and filled her prescription the first thing the next morning.

As the days went on, and the projects Ali was sending her were getting longer and longer, Spencer was taking more and more pills per day. She needed them to survive. Days turned to weeks, and weeks turned into another month and a half. Habits were solidified, and she was really addicted.

Spencer was sitting in Toby's room with a textbook cracked in her lap, quizzing him on theories from the swivel chair at his desk while he sat on the floor picking at the carpet, trying to stall. He'd noticed Spencer looked thinner, more tired and maybe even gaunt in the face due to the darker shadows under her eyes, but he just assumed she was wearing less makeup or something.

"Spencer if you don't stop swiveling and shaking your ankle I'm going to tie you to that chair. And I don't even mean that in the hot way." He couldn't focus. "I'm not making you coffee anymore," he announced. "You're making me jittery just looking at you."

"Sorry." She repositioned herself to be sitting pretzel style so it would be less evident that she was moving so much. Instead she was quickly butterflying her knees up and down, but at least that didn't make the same noise or movement of the chair that her ankle twitching had caused.

"You've been jumpy all week. Actually, you were like this last week too. Is everything okay?"

"I'm fine." She snapped. He had noticed she'd been actually acting very weird lately. He decided it was just the time of year where a lot of seniors were stressed. Also, girls are weird and he figured it was just beyond his masculine brain matter. "Anyway, you still haven't told me anything about the quadratic equation." She raised her eyebrows.

"Uhhhhmmm…" he flashed her a smile before taking the textbook from her to read up and memorize it before going back to the beginning of his key terms and starting all over.

When they were done, he sat on the edge of his bed and smiled at her. "Come here, you need to relax now. And I kicked ass today, so we're going to have a good time." He grinned like an idiot.

"Oh really," she smirked, her eyelids heavy. "I just need to go to the bathroom." She said, grabbing her purse and going into his bathroom, quickly dry-swallowing another pill; her third of the day at it wasn't even dinner time.

She emerged and he was standing by his desk, digging in his backpack for his phone charger.

"I set the alarm," he smiled, plugging in his phone, pulling her in by her belt loops; a trick he had actually gotten from her.

She smiled and pushed her lips against his. They stood there for a few minutes and kissed, before he guided her by her hips to his bed. He moved them a bit too fast, pulling her down, and suddenly she got dizzy and stopped kissing back, blinking furiously to regain clarity in her vision.

"You alright, champ?" he teased. "I'm fine," she said pushing her lips back into his, her hans finding their way up his shirt to caress his muscular middle. She'd been getting very handsy lately. He couldn't complain.

When they were finished, she got up to get her bag and follow him out, as he was driving her home since her car was getting the brakes replaced, when she stumbled once more.

"Woahhhh, steady, girl." He caught her before she could fall and let go only when he was sure she was balanced on her two feet. This wasn't the first time he had to do this in the past few weeks, either.

"I must be dehydrated. That's all," she offered. Truth was she couldn't tell you the last time she slept, and not only was she awake for days at a time, she would often forget to eat in the midst of running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Grab a bottle of water by the door on your way out." He said, following her up the stairs.

She did and went to his car. He drove her home with her hand on his thigh the whole ride, drawing circles on his leg. She really liked him. And now that she'd become friends with many of his friends via his parties that he insisted she come to, she was spending not just tutoring time with him, but much of her social time as well.

He pulled up in front of her house. "Are you going to need a ride to the movies tomorrow afternoon?" he squinted. Aria had wanted everyone to go to the movies and then out to dinner for a low-key birthday thing.

"Oh, right…"

"You still are coming, right?" He straightened up.

"Yeah..uhm, I'll text you if I need a ride. Probably not, though." Her head raced with all the things she'd thought she'd have all day to do tomorrow, but she now wouldn't be able to. "I gotta go inside, I can't miss family dinner." She lied, her parents wouldn't even be home. Her mother was spending the weekend in New Jersey taking care of her Nana, and her father was away on business in Syracuse for the whole week.

She quickly opened the car and jumped out the door, and he put the radio on in his truck, switching the stations until he got anything more than static before pulling away from her house. She ran up to her driveway to the gate around her back door, but she stopped in her tracks. She stood still again for a moment, trying to stop her vision from becoming spinny and fuzzy again. Only this time, blinking furiously didn't clear up the haziness that overcame her. Instead, she fell to the ground, and everything was black.

"Spencer!" Toby yelled, abruptly turning off his car and racing from the car to meet her where she'd collapsed in her driveway.

xx

The last thing she remembered before collapsing was the crippling anxiety of finishing her homework, as well as Ali's, before Aria's party tomorrow.

Now, she was in a hospital room hooked up to an IV drip-bag, and everything was hazy, but started to finally clear again as her eyes adjusted to the bright fluorescent lights. Toby was sitting next to her. He exhaled loudly as she sat up and opened her eyes.

"Spencer, you little shit," he punched her shoulder lightly. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"What are you doing here?"

"I brought you here," he raised an eyebrow. "Don't you remember?"

"You didn't have to bring me here. Ali I needed was a glass of water," she barked.

"Spence… they had to give you an injection to slow down your heart rate. You're on that IV now so they can get your hydrated and nourished… you were in bad shape. Your body was running on fumes. They—" he was interrupted by a doctor coming into the room, respectfully asking Toby to wait outside.

The doctor was a psychologist, and wanted to talk to her about the amphetamines that came up in her bloodwork, which doctors had briefly mentioned before when Toby was still in the room.

She very calmly explained she had a prescription, and showed them the pill bottle with her name on it from her bag. She told them that with the stress of school recently, she'd accidentally taken more than one that day. They believed her.

Toby came back in. "Well?"

"I can go home once this drip ends and the nurse takes my vitals one more time." She said, sitting up.

Toby wanted to ask her about the amphetamines. He had heard that word before. He was pretty sure that was a pretty hard drug,.. speed, he was pretty sure. It made sense, her constant jittering. But the doctors didn't seem concerned she had a drug problem, so he let it go.

He drove her home within the next half hour, walking her inside since her parents weren't home and making sure she got in okay.

"I told you I was fine." She grumbled as he brought her up to her bedroom.

"You said that before you collapsed, too." He reminded her. Once he saw she was sitting in her bed, he stepped back. "Do you want me to get you dinner? I can make you a sandwich or bring you something from downstairs… or I can pick something up for you."

"I'm not hungry." She said, readjusting her pillows.

"Okay." He said, sitting on the beanbag chair near her bed.

"What are you doing?"

"Staying with you." He said, mindlessly picking up the issue of Rolling Stone from her bedside table and thumbing through it.

"Why, though?" She narrowed her eyes.

"Because that's what friends do. Your parents aren't home, and if I leave and something happens, no one will be here to help you."

"You don't have to."

"Would you just let me sit here, who is this hurting?" he rationalized. She just grew silent.

"Thank you for taking me to the doctor. I shouldn't have yelled at you for doing that."

"Well I wasn't going to leave you in your driveway…" he laughed. She had hit her head kinda hard on the pavement and had three stitches to her cheek as well.

"Whatever," she smirked. "Give me my laptop. I need to do homework." She motioned over at her desk, but he didn't budge.

"No. You need to relax. You overworked yourself into the hospital. You're taking a day off."

"I don't have time for a day off!" She yelled.

"Well I'm not giving you the laptop." He said, picking it up and sliding it into his own backpack so she couldn't get it.

"You can't do that!"

"I just did…now shhhhhh… rest."

She groaned like a kid, but shut her eyes soon and slept for a few hours, now that the drug had been flushed from her system she could actually sleep. But she woke up cranky, withdrawing from the drug, needing to pop a pill but knowing she wouldn't get away with it while he was there.

He stayed the night with her, and insisted that she stay home from Aria's party. She was excited because that meant she could work on her homework without him trying to protect her, but he cancelled on Aria, too, to stay with her.

"You're ridiculous. I don't need a babysitter I'm 17 years old."

"I'm just being a friend." He reminded her.

"Well. Boo you." She squirmed, not knowing what to do with herself.

"Still jittery?" He squinted. "Spencer what is wrong with you? Still?"

He grabbed her wrist to try and stop her moving, and felt a raised marking over her inner forearm. He turned her wrist over and grazed over it softly with his thumb. Her face had lost all it's color, and she grew dead silent. After a moment, she finally came back into her own and pulled her arm from him.

"Just go to the party, okay"

"Spencer, what was that?"

"What was what?" She played dumb.

"On your arm. That scar."

"Nothing. It's od."

"It doesn't feel old." He said, remembering how raised and prickly it was.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Spencer's brain rattled. "Leave." She said sternly.

He just looked at her with big, longing eyes.

"I said leave." She said again, forcefully. Her eyes were welling up. He didn't know what to do.

"Did you do that to yourself?" his eyes grew wider.

"I'm going to call the cops if you don't get out of my house right now." She felt her eyes start to spill over as she pointed to the door.

"I'll leave. After you tell me the story."

"What story?" Her eyes narrowed as she wiped away her tears as they flew down her cheeks.

"Your story." He said softly. She was so mesmerized by the gentleness of his voice that she'd failed to notice that he was now holding her hands.

"What do you want to know?" She didn't want to talk about the scar.

"Everything. I want to know your story." What is that? Did she cut herself…on purpose? Is she depressed? Why didn't her parents come home when the doctor called them? Her mom is only in Jersey… her sister is nearby and she didn't come, either… what was the amphetamines from…why did she want me to pretend I was her boyfriend… why haven't you asked her to be your real girlfriend? Toby's mind raced with all the questions he wanted to ask, but he wanted her to come to him on her own terms.

She sighed heavily. "First, will you make me some tea? And maybe a little toast?" She pleaded. He just grinned, happy to be of use, finally.

"I'll be back in a few." He ran downstairs. She got up and changed into a long sleeved sweater while he was gone, and removed her laptop from his backpack. She quickly emailed Alison telling her that she wouldn't have a draft for her until tomorrow the very earliest, but it was okay because the full paper wasn't due for another five days – all Ali would need to do was bullshit a rough draft or outline to hand in for peer review. She closed her laptop with a heavy sigh just as Toby came back with a steaming mug. "I didn't know if you wanted butter on your toast or not, so I put a little oo the side of the plate, and I didn't know how you take your tea, so I just put a little honey. I hope that's—" he cut himself off when he saw the laptop on her bed. "Spence, Please, just one weekend. Relax."

"I just needed to send an email." She handed it back to him. She sat up against her wall so she could sit up and sip her tea. Toby moved to sit across from her on her bed, very lightly grazing her ankle with his thumb trying to soothe her. He could still see the stress in her eyes.

"I want to hear your story," he called again.

"Everything?" She repeated his request.

"Uhm, well what about your family?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, she scoffed and laughed a bit. He was taken aback by her response.

"My parents are not really my biggest fans, I'll start there. First of all, they really wanted the perfect American family – two kids, a boy and a girl, a big house with a white fence, and lots of disposable income. They got all of it – except they got a second daughter instead of a son. I guess that's really where the trouble started… Did you ever know my sister, Melissa? She was a senior when we were freshmen."

"Vaguely. She was super involved so it was hard not to…right?"

"Right. She fit into all these boxes of pretty, and popular, and beautiful, and heartbreaking, and the kid of flirt that my dad could bring on lunch meetings for potential clients because she could help him get those gross old guys to sign contracts… and she did everything the way my parents wanted. She's the golden child… so when they realized I… wasn't Melissa," her voice cracked a little. "When they realized that I wasn't her, I wasn't good at flirting or sports, I didn't have her light, pretty features or her confidence,.. they just couldn't accept that. If I did anything in a way Melissa didn't, it was wrong. Still Is that way, really. And I saw how much it broke their hearts when I would come home as a little girl crying over a bully, because Hastings are supposed to be powerful and envied, not bullied… I realized that when I was still a baby… maybe 8 years old. So I stopped telling them when bad stuff happened. I made up whatever I had to to make them think that I was like Melissa so they might be proud of me, or at least happy. I'm kind of a perfectionist…the one thing I did inherit was that trait… and it's hard to stomach disappointing them so greatly so often,"

She found herself talking and opening up much more than she ever would have otherwise, but she was tired and vulnerable, and the way he stroked her back while she talked and made her feel that he was really listening changed everything. She became more open.

"Sometimes, I think they knew I was lying about stuff. That's why they never acted proud of me for doing a lot of the same stuff Melissa did…because they knew I really wasn't… But at least they knew I was trying," she wiped back a few stray tears she hadn't even felt fall until the wetness tickled her face when a breeze came from her window. God, you're so pathetic. Stop talking to him. Stop telling him all of this. She yelled internally, but when she looked up, he was so intently listening, hanging on her last word and waiting for her to continue.

"It was never really all that important to me to be the best or to be pretty or the smartest, ya know? But I just needed them to think I was worth something. That I could be enough. Even if no one else thought it, because I know that this is just high school, and one day I might be something different to someone." She wasn't even sad when she said it, but the words cut through him and broke his heart a little bit.

"So, that's why you wanted me…to pretend." He swallowed hard, never realizing how deep this was. It wasn't about having a guy to go to to escape the scrutiny so often felt of older relatives asking "so who are you dating?" He swallowed hard again, feeling a lump in his throat he couldn't shake. "You wanted them to think you were like Melissa? Why would I make them more proud of you?"

"Because for once I would be normal." She said quietly. "I believed that if they saw me with somebody that presumably thought that I was…enough…that they might believe it too. I know it's stupid, but—"

"You are enough." He interrupted her. "You exist. I mean, that's enough. There's no other credential for being enough than just simply being.." he tried to make sense of her feelings.

"Tell me you feel the same way when you've just been shoved into a locker for the second time before lunchtime." Her words reached him coldly and without emotion.

"I'm sorry…they're jerks…WE're jerks," he emphasized, realizing he was one apart of that torture. He reached over and squeezed her hand. She sniffled a little.

He turned over her wrist again. "Can you tell me about this now…please?"

She turned away from him.

"I just want to know if you…why you hurt yourself."

She didn't look up. She didn't want him to make fun of the emo girl who couldn't appreciate her privileged life with a wealthy family and everything she needed. She wanted to disappear.

But when she looked up, she saw his eyes swollen, as if he wanted to cry. She didn't say a word, but he pulled her arm to his lips and laid a line of soft, light kisses across the singular line of raised flesh.

"I did it when I was in middle school," she finally started, his lips still on her wrist. "When I realized my parents were embarrassed of me and didn't tell their friends about me like they bragged about my sister…" she trailed off. "But I stopped…That's when I learned about the lying. It worked so I stopped. I was stressed and overtired the other day and I opened up an old scar. I didn't mean to, I was just so out of it…" she didn't tell him it was because she was so upset and so high on Adderall that she didn't even remember bringing the razor to her skin, all she remembered was the bottom of the shower turning pink.

"You were just tired?" he raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't know what I was doing."

She was on drugs, he thought, but he didn't bring it up. He had brought up enough emotional turmoil for her for one day, and he could see her embarrassed and pink-cheeked.

"Well…next time," he started slow. "If you ever feel like you're stressed and you might…hurt yourself…or take something, or do something you would regret, or would make me sad…." He spoke quickly when he said the part about taking something, hoping she would get the hint that he knew and wanted her to stop, but not slow enough for her to interject and defend herself and lie to him. "Please come find me. You're really much better than that, Spencer."

He spoke slow, as to not upset her. He maintained eye contact the whole time he spoke. He was really very good at getting her to be calm. She leaned forward, letting herself fall into his arms, and just wrapped her arms around his neck. She didn't say a single word, and he kept their silence, too.

They sat like that until she fell asleep, and he tucked her in, once again retreating to her bean bag to watch her sleep.

I hadn't realized that the bullying that was killing her wasn't the names at school…It was her own parents. The torture didn't end when she left school, but it only just began when she turned the keys to her front door and came home to a mommy and daddy who made her think they didn't want her there. He wanted to cry for her. She doesn't deserve that.

xx

Alison checked her email, delighted to see that Spencer had actually sent her something early. But when she opened it to see no document attached, she was furious. She had no patience for this. If Spencer wasn't going to follow her rules, she was going to ruin her. She logged into her computer, trying to concoct just the right form of blackmail to hurt both Spencer, and as promised, her ex boyfriend Toby Cavanaugh.

xx

Toby didn't know what to do. As he watched her sleep, he worried about her. He worried that she would hurt herself again. He worried that she would take more pills. He dug around in her room until he found the orange child-proof confidence she'd stowed away in her purse. He pocketed it, hoping to keep it away from her.

Not knowing what to do, he texting his friend Caleb, who was the only one of his friends in a committed relationship, and therefore understood girls the best. He also had a rough past in the foster system and had seen his fair share of stuff, so Toby thought he might have some insight.

He texted Caleb telling him Spencer's story, of course the abridged version that let out much fewer personal details. He told him that he was worried about her and the drugs, and that he was afraid to tell her that he liked her, because he wanted her to know she had a friend, and he was afraid to ruin that.

I thought you were already hooking up with her, man. Caleb responded to the relationship part, after warning Toby about Spencer's probable withdrawal symptoms within the next few weeks.

It's complicated. She wanted her parents to think she was dating someone to get them off her back, and I wanted her to tutor me but she didn't want to – so we made the deal that she'd tutor me if I pretended to be her boyfriend. So we hook up during tutoring sessions, but that's all. It's not real. But we're friends. Good friends. Toby added.

You have to let her know the deal is off, and then start from scratch. Caleb suggested.

I'll think about it. She's waking up now and I think she needs to eat. I'll see you Monday. Toby finished.

xx

Alison smiled, delighted with herself and her creativity when it came to this kind of thing. Revenge. Alison smiled at her computer screen again as she looked at what she'd found. All she'd had to do was conjured up some old passwords from the back of her brain, and BAM, she'd found her weapon of choice. And oh, was it good.