I do not own Twilight, or anything associated with it. That gem is thanks to the wonderful Stephanie Meyer.
WARNING: ADULT THEMES AND AU, just to warn you.
I have suffered (suffer) or experienced some of the themes mentioned, However I can only write from my own experiences and the research that I have carried out. If you feel something is not quite right or unrealistic, feel free to message me and I will try to change it!
The title of the story is from the song, Spanish Sahara by Foals. Each chapter will be accompanied by a song(s) either that I feel relates well to the chapter or I was inspired by a particular lyric or melody.
Thank you to the wonderful Sympathetic Me for betaing this chapter and being ever so patient! I'm a terrible person to work with, so im very grateful for her to be sticking by me :)
And of course, as usual, give me your worst!
Chapter 4 – These Four Walls (Keep The Nightmares Out)
Home by Daughter
Cause I don't stand a chance in these four walls,
and he don't recognise me anymore.
Burned out flames should never reignite
but I thought you might.
Take me home.
I am walking home from school. The way in which I walk every day. I skip past the children playing in the road with jump ropes, past the children playing chalked games on the pavement. I have to get home. I run past the local fast food restaurant which is filled to the brim with eleven year olds just like myself, storing their chips, burgers, nuggets and shakes as fat for the oncoming winter. I have to get home. As I turn the corner of my road I slow. I don't know what I will find. It would be easier if I could follow a breadcrumb trail to Renee's sticky sleeping mess on the sofa, but I can't. Instead I have to open the unlocked door and follow the empty food containers. The same ones that I saw children eating from the local take away not even two minutes before. Scared and angry, like every other day I don't say a word. I hold my breath and push the door and stare into the empty room. My hands and legs quiver as my eyes fill with knowing tears. I divert my attention to behind the bedroom door where I find Renee and her best friend (after the toilet), the vodka bottle. I feel for the phone in the dim lit room. Shaking fingers pressing sticky keys, as if they had already been pressed today. 9-1-1. silence follows. 9-1-1. I try again. 9-1-1. 9-1-1. Desperate, frantic, worried and nervous, I don't know what to do or how to feel. I need help. Help now. I need somebody to help me, but nobody comes. I wash my mother's face with a damp flannel before removing the empty vodka bottles; I clear up the wrappers and settle myself next to my mother on the floor. I need help. Renee needs help. But for now we'll just sleep in the hope that somebody finds us and waves all the horror away.
"Bella… Bella are you okay? Bella?" I peer through my lashes at the small girl standing over me.
"Sorry Bella, I wasn't sure if you were awake or not, you were crying and I couldn't just leave you." I frown at her. Crying? I roll onto my side and lay my face onto a sodden pillow. Another nightmare. Not the worst one but certainly not the easiest one to shake. I sit up slowly, pushing my weight onto my arms and then falling back onto my back as they give way.
"Are you okay? Do you want me to help you?" I nod, not able to force the words out from behind my teeth. She came and gently put one hand on my back and held my hand with her other to push me upright. My head is fuzzy and so I close my eyes, waiting for the room to stand still. The girl took a few steps back, so quietly that when I opened my eyes I was surprised to see she had moved.
"I'm Alice." She beams at me. "You are Bella, right?"
"Yes. I'm Bella." Her voice was high but not annoying and she spoke so fluidly the words seemed to just trickle out of her mouth without her lips moving. She was small, very petite but she oozed a confidence that warned you she was strong enough to fight her own battles. She whizzed around the room like she ate caffeine tablets instead of cereal, spoke to me as if we had been friends for years and smiled at me like I was actually a person. Not an eating disorder with legs.
I felt groggy as hell and didn't want to move from my warm space under the duvet. As soon as I left this room it would begin. My time in this hell would start ticking and I wasn't sure I was ready.
I mustered the courage and slid out from beneath my covers in an attempt to hold onto the warmth for as long as possible. Obviously it failed and within seconds I was covered in a layer of goose bumps and the hair on my face was standing to attention.
Whilst I was sleeping Alice had taken the opportunity to have a rifle through the clothes I had neatly arranged and had chosen me an outfit I almost didn't recognise to be my own.
"I'm really sorry, I just couldn't help myself. You don't have to wear it today but you must at some point. I bet you wouldn't have thought about putting Burgundy with green, but it looks wonderful together doesn't it?" I nod again. She is right. My burgundy jumper had always been accompanied by dark wash jeans and the racing green leggings that I got last Christmas, yet to be worn. I stared at the outfit hung neatly up on the bathroom door, a whole ten steps away and decided it was far too much effort to walk over there. I slung my favourite sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt as Alice chattered to me with her back turned about the boys she met at the beach whilst on leave and the adorable way in which her mother had redecorated her room whilst she had been here. Hairspray fumes were working their way down into my lungs and it wasn't helping my light-headedness,
I stumbled towards the door, as Alice followed behind looking ready to catch me if I fell.
I decided that I liked Alice. She was the type of person I generally tried to steer clear of. A little too chatty, secreted popularity, and seemed a little too charismatic to want to be anywhere near me. But for some reason, I had instantly warmed to her. She seems genuine and she hadn't mentioned my skeletal frame once. If everyone here was like Alice, I think I might just be alright. I'd have a constant headache but I could deal with that.
Alice led me down the corridor through some double doors and into the Dining area. It was crammed with small rectangular tables, oddly shaped chairs and the smell of baked beans and toast mixed in with washing up liquid. It looked like my worst nightmare. Everyone was queuing up for food like it was George's marvellous medicine. Smiles on their faces and light reflecting of their eyes. I couldn't stand in that queue. My legs wouldn't let me. I didn't want to. Not with everyone scrutinising what I chose and how much I ate. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't and apparently I didn't have to. What I had to do was worse.
Alice led me to a table in the far corner of the room. It was long and could've easily fit five people down either side, but there were on four place mats and one of them was mine. Two adults sat at either end and a few were scattered along the sides, sipping black coffee as the gossiped and Patrick and his ridiculously bothersome manner. Thank god I wasn't the only who thought it. I sat down at my space wishing Alice hadn't been so quick to join the food queue and began fiddling with the place mat that had Isabella scrawled on it. That would have to be changed.
"You must be Isa-"
"Bella, I'm Bella." The woman smiled.
"Okay Bella. Has anyone spoken to you about what is going to be happening as far meals are concerned?" By now, other people had sat down to at the table. There was a girl with long black hair, she was sat in such a way that her hair covered her face. She had bandages on my arms and she looked as if she weighed about 100lbs. She looked cold and tired and I couldn't look at her any longer. Then there was another one I recognised from school. Jessica. Swollen cheeks and bitten lips. Bulimic perhaps or maybe even EDNOS. She threw me a comforting hello and I sent one back with a little hesitation. Then there was a boy at the very far end. He only looked about fourteen. He swung his legs and drew pictures on his place mat but his face was stained with tears and his eyes a shade of red I knew came from weeks of stress. I stared at each of them for a little while, wondering what their stories were, trying to find them in their eyes.
"Bella?" Someone called snapping my back to reality.
"Sorry." The woman looked at me as if she were waiting for an answer.
"Sorry? What did you say?" She sighed slowly.
"Has anyone spoken to you about meal times, meal plans, that kind of thing?"
"No." I whispered. I didn't want to hear about them. I wanted to pretend this wasn't happening.
She place a booklet in front me. I was fed up with reading through paperwork; I left it laying there softly on the table. She picked it up once more and turned it to the first page.
"Right, so this page is meal times, the behaviour we expect around the dining area. Meal times are protected time so you won't be able to have any visitors at meals times or snack times. If you just glance down to the bottom here, it just explains our policy around defiance. You are given forty five minutes to finish a main meal, which consists of dinner and pudding; you have fifteen minutes to eat snacks. If you refuse or do not finish your meal in that time, you will be given a food replacement drink and the amount you're given is subject to the discretion of the social worker giving it to you. At the weight you are now, if you were to refuse on a regular basis, we would be forced into a situation where you may need to be fitted with a nasogastric tube. Now, did you get all of that?"
I took a second just to breathe. The reality of the table where I was sitting and just how many steps away from here Charlie was stabbed in the stomach like I'd ran into a knife. My eyes begin to fill with tears I didn't even know I had any left. I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. Someone please take me home.
"Are you okay love?"
No. No I'm not fucking okay. I've been placed in a fucking nut house like I'm crazy, its miles and miles away from routine and order and morning runs. I'm really tired and I just want to go to my room in my house and sleep until I'm thin enough to die but no. I can't. I have to sit here and eat the food you say that I need. Food that is just calories. Just calories swimming around my plate, whispering to me that they are going to make me fat. FAT FAT FAT. I dug my finger nails into my palms and bit hard into my bottom lip.
"It will get easier."
I didn't want to talk to stupid woman any more I didn't want to talk to anyone. I looked around the table and realised that everyone was waiting for me.
'Everyone starts at the same time'. Jessica mouthed to me across the table. I nodded and a wave of guilt flooded through me. I didn't want to make them wait for their breakfast. That wasn't fair, although I am sure they were grateful for the few extra moments in which to prepare for what was about to happen.
A white bowl was placed in front of me. It was filled with cornflakes, swimming in milk. Full fat, maybe Soya, definitely not Non-fat. A glass of water sat next to the bowl and covered the 'LA' of Isabella on my place mat.
I stared into the milk, hoping there would be some kind of miracle where I would sip my water, shrink like Alice in wonderland and drown myself in my milk. But no miracle came. This wasn't wonderland; I was crossing the path from Hungerland into Fatland. Fat Disgusting Piece Of Crap Land.
I noticed everyone was already eating. Jessica had almost finished in fact and the other were taking quarter spoonfuls of milk and following it with three or four cornflakes at a time. Every second or three they would glance up to the clock. Shit I had forgot about the time.
Ten minutes had gone already.
"C'mon Bella, you've got toast to go yet." I stared at the woman next to me. She sat there with a mug of milky tea, a small drip stain on her cream blouse. She looked at me smugly. She may as well have had 'you have to eat shit and I don't have to eat a thing' written on her forehead. That was it.
"I'm not having anything. I'm not fucking having anything. Not this or shitty toast or anything else you want to shove down my neck. I'm not having a single thing. Don't fucking try to make me either." I stood up, my heart thumping against my ribcage and my hands and legs shaking violently.
"Bella, sit down. This isn't fair on the others." They were all staring at me in fear. In fact everyone was staring at me. They knew what was coming. I was sure they had seen it before a million times.
The woman went to touch my hand.
"Don't fucking touch me. Don't you dare get anywhere near me." Patrick walked over; his outer skin of authority looked ridiculous to me. He couldn't do a thing.
"Right Isabella, it's time to sit down now. You need to eat your breakfast."
"How about you eat my fucking breakfast, in fact you can have it-" I point towards the bitch with the tea stain. "Yes, we will swap. You can have my cornflakes dripping in fucking calories and I will drink your thirty calorie tea. And for-fuck-sake my name is Bella. B-E-L-L-A. If one more person calls me Isabella, I'm going claw holes through my hands." My legs began to sway and I found myself on the floor. The energy I was expelling with my anger had taken everything. It had taken the energy I was using to merely survive. Note to self- savour energy, you need it for standing up and breathing.
Somebodies hand settled on my shoulder.
"Come one Bella. It's going to be okay. Come on." Alice felt for my hand and hauled me off the floor, a thin layer of crumbs cover my sweatpants. Tears fell fearlessly down my face and my breaths began to shorten. This wasn't just eating. This was ruining everything I had worked so hard for. All these years of pain for nothing.
Everyone had finished. It was just me to go. I sat down at my chair and stared aimlessly at my place mat, I felt the heat from Alice's body next to me, she sat down and smoothed my hair. I didn't have any words to give her. I didn't even have some kind of meaningful look I could show her. I just stared at her. Stared deep into her melted chocolate eyes and hoped that she would understand.
She did. She held my hand underneath the table and squeezed until the sensation was drained away.
Patrick came back with a glass of brown milky liquid. Unsure.
I wasn't ready. ButyouhavetobereadyBella.
"You have fifteen minutes to drink that. Feet flat on the floor please Bella." No sympathy. What did I expect? I had starved myself into a hospital. Tears fell heavily into the glass and the table and blurred my vision.
The fifteen minutes trailed on like days in winter and I still finished with only seconds to spare. Alice was there every mouthful, sip and gulp of the way. I loved her already.
"Well done Bella. I know that was hard. But well done." Alice smiled at me with her perfect teeth. Why could I have not become Alice when I had grown up? Why could I have not been anyone else but me? Why did everything have to become so fucked up? Renee ruined everything. I wondered if she would be proud. To see her daughter so sad that she had to starve herself to near death. Living death.
I was escorted to the Living area where I was watched for three hours after my meal, in order to stop any kind of purging and I sat, the whole three hours, and longer, cheeks drenched. The day tiptoed on and I had to ensure for every meal. I sat on my own table and once Alice finished her food, she would sit and hold my hand. By the time it got to ten, I was exhausted. I'd had enough, the amount of food I would've eaten in two weeks, I had eaten in a day and it had drained me. When I slumped off into my room, Alice was already sat in bed, her pink pyjamas too bright to miss, reading the latest issue of Vogue.
"How you doing Bella?" I allowed my legs to drop me on the bed.
"I feel like I need a week's worth of sleep." That was all I could manage. We lay in the silence for a few minutes and I thought about Alice. She seemed so caring, so kind, so normal. It was hard to see why she was here at all.
"Alice, can I ask you a question?" It slipped out before I had time to process it.
"Of course Bella, what is it?" She looked up from her magazine, waiting for an answer. I sat there trying to work out the right way to say it, a way in which not to offend her. Tact wasn't my strongest feature.
"I don't mean this to sound rude in anyway, and please don't take offence by it but I was just wondering why you were here?" I closed my eyes and waited for her to reply.
"Don't be silly Bella, that isn't rude at all. It is normal to feel inquisitive, especially in a place like this. I, um, have Bipolar and was put on a course of medication. When it started to work properly my doctors expressed that I should try and wean myself off it, which is what I did. Doctors don't really like you to be on medication like that for prolonged periods of time. However I came off it and spiralled. I fell into my most manic time. I wasn't sleeping, ever. I couldn't think, all my thoughts would jumble into one. I wouldn't stop. Everything I did needed to be fast and have rhythm. I would talk forever about things I knew nothing about and was in a constant state of elation. I was buying things like I had all the money in the world. Fast cars, lots and lots of clothes." She laughed and I wanted too but it felt awkward. I couldn't laugh when she was telling me something so personal.
"But it got worse and worse and I began thinking things that couldn't possibly be true." Her voice cracked a little and she stopped but it didn't stop me from asking what I knew she feared.
"What exactly did you think?"
"I thought I was invincible. Literally. That I was immune to laws and rules and morals. I thought I could do anything. I would steal things; act as if I were a god. I tried to kill myself because I thought I was immortal." I didn't know what to say. There was nothing I could say. Nothing to change it or make it better or do anything, so I just sat and waited for her to finish. "And that went on for about a month. Then it led into the depression. A depression that left me taking daily overdoses, not having the energy to open my eyes or to even breathe. I didn't leave my room for three weeks and I um…" She clutched at her arm and I clutched at mine. She didn't have to say the words. "Anyway, it got to a point where I would've succeeded in killing myself if I had carried on, I nearly did too many times. My mum decided that here was the best place for me and it was the best thing she could have ever done. I have been so grateful for this place. I know it's hard Bella and it is only the beginning but it will get better, just make sure you use this place for what it is meant for, to get you better!" She had such a calm caring quality to her. She made me believe her. When I was with Alice, things did seem, even if only a minuscule amount, to be getting better.
"How do you do it though? How do you keep yourself above the water? How do you keep swimming?"
"I realised that I had so much. So much and I was throwing it away. I am a person, not a mental illness and I wasn't going to let it ruin mine and my family's lives any longer." Alice beamed at me and I managed to muster a smile for her. "and with tablets of course." She giggled and I couldn't help but love her.
"Goodnight Bella, I hope tomorrow is better for you."
"Night Alice, I hope tomorrow is better for you too." I turned over and snuggled myself under the duvet, trying to will the goose bumps away.
"It will be." She whispered just before I closed my eyes and settled into sleep. The one place that used to be safe.