Chapter Text
September 23rd of 2008. One year since Nicole’s dad died.
One year since it had been and stayed her fault. Fuck, ew—she hated dwelling on that idea.
She wanted to say that she didn’t remember the date. Hell, she didn’t even use a calendar, and she certainly wouldn’t have marked it if she did. But she’d remembered it. She’d remembered counting every day since in her head for months—and then counting every day until the annual marker when it was July.
Every day became a fucking fight to the finish line. She’d barely scrape by, left beaten and bloodied. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d viscerally destroyed her body, but she didn’t have the energy to do even that anymore. Her mom was nowhere to be seen, either, which she was glad for. But the absence of one reminded her of the absence of another.
She hated her mother. She hated seeing her prance around, drowned in vodka and Vicodin and quick fixes. She didn’t care. She probably didn’t even remember.
It boiled Nicole’s blood—on high heat.
God, she wished she didn’t care. She wished her legs wouldn’t tremble every other step, or that her classmates noticed her faltering.
Everybody saw her fucking fail.
She could see it in the way Emily looked at her with a perplexed interest—like she was studying something.
In the way that Megan held her tongue a little bit more, as if with pity.
How the guys got more confident for a while, before shying away when Nicole said absolutely nothing to them, not even looking their ways.
It felt disgusting. She was disgusting.
It would be easier to get out of school and throw herself into the familiar. Drugs, lunacy, and shoplifting band tees. A false objective to take her away from what really mattered.
Did it matter? Did he matter?
…
She’d done everything in her power to distract, distract, distract. With hope, she’d believed that skipping with Jecka would’ve helped.
However, Nicole found that it certainly didn’t when the mall cop’s hip-bound revolver glinted in the sun.
Not when FYE’s display screens played Sesame Street. Fucking Sesame Street. Maybe Nicole had just imagined it—at this point, she wasn’t sure.
She was supposed to be unmoving. Anchored, if you could even go that far.
But lately, for whatever reason and against her wishes, she was a complete mess. So much weaker. She’d lost a lot of her drive to be her best—her most powerful. It wasn’t like she’d gotten nicer, but she’d softened up a disgusting amount. She looked pathetic. Pathetic and out of her element.
She couldn’t quite bite anymore.
Unfortunately, knowing that she had a problem didn’t solve it.
A snap of someone else’s fingers, seemingly one that came after many others, knocked her out of her train of thought. The source of the sound and very visibly concerned, Jecka bored holes into her eyes. Across from her at the mall food court’s table, Ari was also looking at Nicole, a tentative look on her face. If she had something to say—she certainly looked like she did—she didn’t say it.
“What? What are you looking at me like that for?” Nicole spat. “God forbid a bitch get fucked up and zone out,” she added, covering for herself.
“Yo, Nicole??” Jecka questioned. “What the fuck was that? Literally not once have you ever blanked for fifteen minutes while looking like that. What did you take?”
Ari’s gaze flitted back and forth from Nicole to the blonde, but she didn’t add anything herself.
“Emily probably just has harder shit, oh my GOD, chill. You clearly need this more than I do.” Nicole struggled to keep her voice from breaking, barely able to keep an even tone. She crossed her arms, leaning back in her chair.
Look like you're in control.
Jecka sighed, her voice softening. “I don’t.. you’re just … weird lately, okay? Is everything—“
“Oh fuck off!” Nicole interjected, her brows furrowing. “I’m fucking fine, stop getting on my ass and let me be high for fuck’s sake.”
That was way too much, wasn’t it?
Jecka didn’t respond. She looked sad. Ridiculous.
“I’m leaving, see you bitches later.” Nicole stood up, leaving before the other two could get a chance to speak.
As she left, she heard Ari’s voice from a distance. She couldn’t make out any of the words, and was sure that if she had she might’ve intentionally popped a vein right then and there.
Fucking dog stepping out of line, wasn’t she?
Nicole didn’t actually care. That was worse than if she did.
—
She’d only realized she’d walked home when she was in her room, knees buckling beneath her as she shifted her weight onto her footboard. Her legs felt uncomfortably scuffed, and she’d realized she’d worn her most chafe-causing jeans. Great.
Nicole pressed her forehead into the wood in front of her, its texture pressing against her skin not nearly enough to make everything else feel quieter.
She looked at the razor blades on her desk, and then her pocket knife that he gave—her needles. She saw her razor blades and a few sewing needles.
The idea of seeing blood in any amount made her sick to her stomach. Images of heads splattered across the room like popped balloons made themselves at home in her head.
Bullet wounds.
Her nails dug hard into her arms, involuntarily, and she had to force herself to stop so as to not break any skin.
For a while, she couldn’t be bothered to actually get up and sit in her bed.
With a good hour few minutes of struggle—mostly slightly raising her knees which slammed right back down one two many times—Nicole had clambered up into her bed, splaying herself out on the mattress.
Her clothes were so uncomfortable. Too much on her. Clinging. Like the brutal pictures were to her mind.
She didn’t have enough energy to change or take them off.
The ceiling hung high above her, and it seemed to be swirling with red; though that couldn’t be right, could it?
Whether or not it really was, Nicole continued to stare dead into the swelling massacre that had appeared where beige paint was supposed to be.
Interestingly, the lavender around it had faded to a dull grey—partly because of the lack of light, partly because of Nicole’s very-likely-psychosis.
A few hours went by. She’d scarcely blinked.
It was starting to get late—or, early into the very first hours of the morning. She would sleep if she could but the multitude of time she’d spent restless staring upward seemed to speak for itself in the fact that rest wasn’t in the picture right now.
The red started to scream.
Not a second went by where Nicole didn’t see her father’s brains blown out, acrid oatmeal coating the tiled floor and stinking up the entire room that she’d once sought for a break from life—not for it itself, but for its inhabitant.
She needed the get the fuck out of here.
Reluctantly, she fished for her sidekick from her side. She somehow found it, maybe out of luck, given she wasn’t sure she even had it with her. Briefly, it turned into a handgun pressed to his temples. She bit back a scream, head spinning as she refocused her vision to instead show the familiar device. What she should be seeing.
Digits flying quicker than she thought possible, she’d opened Ari’s contact and sent a rapid ‘comng ovr.’, the spelling mistakes completely unintentional for the first time in her life.
Ignoring the chorus of voices ringing in her ears, she’d somehow been able to get up and creep down her stairs, almost throwing herself out of her house and onto the street.
She’d walked to Ari’s before. She knew where it was.
Despite that fact, she dragged every step as her feet ached more than they were supposed to for such a slow walk.
It was only a few blocks away. There was no world where Nicole should’ve taken more than thirty minutes to arrive.
That didn’t change the fact that she did.
She wasn’t sure what the redhead could even do. Probably annoy the shit out of her enough to make her snap back into herself? Set her back into her old ways? Every idea that came into Nicole’s head was moronic, and she was well aware of their delusion.
Her girlfriend’s house finally came into view, and she had to stop herself from collapsing on the porch.
The door was unlocked. Nicole hadn’t bothered to make sure Ari was awake, but Ari hadn’t seen her text either way. Nicole didn’t know that it had been unlocked because she’d forgotten to check the door.
It was quiet inside, maybe even vacant, save for the person Nicole was looking for.
Good.
When she slammed Ari’s door open, she had expected to see the redhead.
Maybe even earn an excited cry from the girl—she was stupid enough to do something like that.
That would’ve been normal.
That would’ve been what she should see when she walks to someone’s house to see them. Everything that she expects, nothing else.
However, what she didn’t expect was being faced with the sight of Ari shaking in what was essentially a pile of her own blood; her thighs sporting gaping wounds that exposed a layer of skin much too far, likely needing stitches.
A used serrated knife sat on the floor beside her, and her dull eyes only slightly reacted as they met Nicole’s abnormally wide gaze.
Nicole’s pupils blew up, and she felt tears prick at the corner of her eyes, too shocked by what she saw for her to realize that she’d started to cry.