"This pain only reminds me I'm still alive." -I'm Still Alive, Saving Abel

~

Chapter Six

I woke up Monday morning with a gnawing feeling in my gut and a need for another hit.

Trepidation and worry swirled together in a dizzying cocktail in my mind, as I faced the unavoidable fact:

Today was the first day I'd be at school after what had happened to Camila, and there was no way in hell I was ready for that.

It took at least fifteen minutes to finally gain the courage to swing my legs over the side of my bed and face the chilly morning. I moved sluggishly to my closet and threw on a black hoodie and a pair of jeans, before scooping my blonde hair into a messy bun.

I could smell coffee and waffles in the air as I made my way downstairs, and found what looked like a happy family sitting at the table—if only.

My mother stood at the counter sipping black coffee and buttering a piece of burnt toast. My father, as usual distracted by current events, was eating a piece of bacon while leafing through the newspaper.

"Hi, sweetie," my mother greeted as a pair of waffles flipped up from the toaster. "I made you waffles."

"I'm not hungry," I replied curtly, walking to the fridge and pulling out the cranberry juice. "But thanks, anyway."

"Look, Perrie, I know today is going to be difficult for you, but I want you to do your best, okay?" she replied, throwing the discarded waffles on a spare plate. "Camila wouldn't want you spending the whole day withdrawn."

"No offense, Mom, but I don't think you'd know what Cam wanted," I replied, pouring the glass and taking a long sip. "But still, thanks for the attempt at a pep talk. It's more than Dad has tried to do."

My father, who had not offered so much as a word of condolence since the event, remained oblivious and trapped in his newspaper, jaw working thoughtfully as he read an article.

"You know he cares," she murmured in a small voice. "He just doesn't know how to show it, that's all."

"I appreciate the effort he's made," I said cynically. "I gotta go."

"Perrie," she said exasperatedly.

I turned around and arched an eyebrow. "What, Mom?"

She sighed and pushed her scrambled eggs around on her plate. "Have a good day."

"The best," I said through gritted teeth, turning around to leave. "Goodbye, Dad."

He grunted noncommittally in reply, and I snorted derisively and opened the front door, emerging onto the icy porch.

"Rob!" my mother hissed in reprimand to him. I didn't wait around to hear the argument that was sure to ensue. I shut the door with more force than necessary and walked to my car, grateful for the solace.

I savored the drive, playing my usual driving to school playlist as loud as possible in an attempt to drown out my thoughts. But eventually the inevitable came, and I had to pull into Leighton Fields High's parking lot and face hundreds of judgmental faces as they watched me pull in.

I found a parking space relatively close to the school and shut off the engine. I flipped down the sun visor and stared at my reflection. Two dull brown eyes stared back at me. "You can do this," I told myself. "For Cam."

I grabbed my bag from the backseat and opened the door, stepping onto the gravel that would settle my fate.

Immediately the place hushed, and I swear for a second or two there you would have been able to hear a pin drop. Everyone turned to look at me with identical gazes, and there was one moment of suspended silence before everyone broke into an incessant hum of whispers.

"Is she back?"

"My God, she looks terrible."

"Considering her mom is the queen of botox, I'm surprised she didn't consider a little face lift, too."

"She looks like a zombie."

I pulled my hair out of its bun and used its length to shield my face in a curtain of waves. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and, with my head down, weaved through the crowd of teenagers.

There used to be a time where I'd swagger along the asphalt with the confidence of a runway queen and be rewarded with hundreds of people clamoring for a hello. Camila would be right by my side, that familiar twist to her lips and swing to her hips. But now I walked like a shy dweeb. I hated that insecurity.

I pushed into the halls, where thankfully not many people had ventured yet. I walked to my locker and pulled out my books, keeping my head down and focused on the task. A river of teenagers followed me into the corridor, but Cam had always taught me an important lesson: They were lesser than you, not worth a thought or a second glance. I had to hold onto her gems of wisdom if I were going to remain sane.

"Look at them all," Camila observed from next to me, and I jumped at the sudden voice. I looked up. She was wearing the same outfit I'd found her in, but looked as calm and sassy as usual. "Look at the way they're gawking at you. You should really do something about that, you know."

I shook my head and started down the corridor, wracking my brain for a safe place to find salvation until class started and I could meld into the back of the class. Hopefully the bleachers would be empty.

"I'm just saying," Cam continued as she trotted faithfully beside me. "That's no way to treat the Queen Bitch. You want them to stop talking, make them. Prove you're still on top. You're already so good at that."

"Not real," I murmured to myself. "Not real."

"Says who?" she replied confidently, giggling.

"I guess I really am crazy."

"That's what drugs do to you," she observed.

I made it outside into the frigid air and made my way down the back toward the football field. Due to the temperatures, not many people were braving the brisk winds, and I was thankful for less eyes on me.

"What's happened to you, huh, Perrie?" Cam asked. "You're pathetic. This is not the legacy I left behind. You want it, take it. Own it. Don't walk around with your head down like some kind of coward."

I turned to her. "You're not real," I hissed in her face. "Don't act like you have any right to say anything. Why don't you leave me the hell alone and go torture someone else?"

She whistled, which dissolved into a girlish giggle I missed hearing in real life. "Now, that's the kind of sass I like to hear. Why don't you turn that anger around on those classmates, huh?"

"Per?" I turned around to see Jeremy slowly walking toward me. "Who are you talking to?"

"No one," I replied, glancing to the side to see Cam had disappeared.

"I have something for you," Jeremy told me, unzipping his bag and pulling something out. "Only in an emergency, okay?"

It was an innocent-looking black make-up bag, and inside lay a needle with the cap already on. I looked up at him, bug-eyed. It wasn't like him to offer drugs, not even to me.

"Whoa," I whispered. "You're the last person I expected to be handing me unsolicited needles."

He looked away, and I could tell by the set of his jaw and the grim look in his eyes that he wasn't happy to be doing it. "Believe me, I don't want to. But I know today is going to be a tough day for you. This is the last one, and it's only to be used in an emergency. Got it?"

I nodded and tucked the package back into my bag, just as the bell rang overhead. "Thanks, Jer."

"I gotta go," he said curtly, and walked off without another word. I stood there and watched him go. He wasn't as righteous as Jake, or as muscular as Zachary Templeton, but there was something that set him apart from the rest. Maybe the bleeding heart I knew he had, or the tortured look in his eyes. Something that made me want to stay close and never leave.

There was a good in him, only hidden by layers of parental neglect and drug use. If I could crack the armor and reveal the wholesome guy beneath, I knew he could do incredible things in the world.

So why did it feel like I was the one building up his walls, not tearing them down?

~ * ~

I don't care how heartless the devil is, or how fiery the pits are. I don't care if there are murderers and demons and flying little bat creatures with big claws.

Nothing conjured up by poets like Dante could compare to the hell I experienced for the first three relentless hours of school.

Whether it was walking through a hall crowded by gossip about my return, or the way people discussed the fact I was a suspect in a murder investigation, it was the fact that it didn't matter how far up the back I sat, it still felt like all eyes were on me. I was nauseous, intimidated and threatened, and the needle in my bag inched closer and closer to my fingers as I reached for the next notebook needed for class.

Lunch was a release, yet also a brand-new worry. It meant getting away from the whispers of a confined classroom, but also having to seek somewhere that would get me away from the student body.

I shoved my way through the crowds that spilled out, some into the sprawling grounds and others shuffling towards the cafeteria. Neither was a viable option. I considered a classroom, but if I got caught I'd be in even more hell than I already was, and every classroom always had students or teachers in it.

Feeling claustrophobic, I practically ran for the toilets down the block. No one ever used it except to touch up make-up and whisper about boys, and I fell in with a hapless sob of relief. It was funny how I used to savor being at the top of the rumor mill, and now I'd do anything to plummet down.

I locked myself in a stall and closed the lid of one of the porcelain toilets (because even the high school had bathrooms to rival the ones in a royal kingdom) and drew my knees to my chest. I dropped my bag beside me and pulled out the package Jeremy had handed over.

"You're better than this, Perrie," Cam sing-songed from beside me, leaning against the stall and watching me with speculative, disappointed eyes.

"Maybe I'm not," I grunted as I dropped the plastic cap in the sanitary bin next to me. I pulled up my shirtsleeve to reveal a pale arm flecked with tiny needle scars.

"Here we go," she muttered, and I ignored her—mostly because I knew it was my own consciousness and not the ghost of my best friend.

I poised the long metal syringe against my skin and shut my eyes tightly, pressing it until it broke through the skin with a familiar pain that made me flinch. I breathed in long and hard as I pressed the plunger down, needing that sweet release.

I kept my legs clutched to my chest and pulled the needle out, ignoring the warning about sharps and dropping the syringe in there, anyway. I'd already broken so many other rules. What was one more?

"Well, that was ugly," she chimed in from beside me. "How do you do that all the time? It looks like it hurts."

"Not real," I whispered to myself, rocking back and forth. "Not real, not real, not real."

I heard the door open, and my head lulled forward helplessly as I heard two sets of footsteps enter. I heard the zip of a handbag and the sound of someone pulling off a lipstick cap.

"Can you believe Perrie Donovan is back?" one girl asked. In my delirium, I didn't recognize her voice.

"Oh look, bathroom gossip about you!" Camila chimed delightedly, clapping her hands together. "I love this stuff. Reminds me of the good old days. You know, when I was alive."

"Ugh, I know, right?" her other friend replied, unknowing of the drugged-out girl in the stall across from her. "They should know better than to let a supposed killer out in the school. Don't they care about the students?"

"It's like they want us to get killed. If a girl can kill her best friend, she can kill us, too."

"You really think she did it?"

"I don't know," Cam said, despite the fact no one but me could hear her. She turned on me. "What do you think, Per?"

The girl out by the basins was quiet for a second, before she let out a cackle akin to one you'd expect from a witch. "Obviously, Tiff. Haven't you read the newspapers? Though if you ask me, the bitch had it coming."

"Ouch. What a bitch," Cam observed, pressing a hand to her heart in mock hurt.

"Who, Camila?" her friend replied. I stood up silently and looked through the crack between the door and the wall to see a blonde girl slicking lip-gloss onto her lips and the other girl leaning against the wall examining her nails.

"Duh," she replied, recapping her cherry lip-gloss. "She was the Wicked Witch of Leighton Fields. I wish someone had killed her sooner."

"Now, that's just mean," Camila said, but I barely heard her as anger took over every nerve in my body, igniting them like a livewire.

I busted open the door and stood there, shaky and dizzy but fueled with an unbelievable rage. "That's my friend you're talking about!" I yelled.

She gasped and spun around, pressing against the basin. Her friend clutched her sweater, blue eyes wide with terror.

"We're just telling the truth," the blonde one said finally, regaining her composure. "She deserved to die. That's why you killed her, isn't it? Just admit it, Perrie."

"I didn't kill her!" I screamed, lurching on her.

"This is not good," Camila said, but I could barely hear her over the encroaching melee.

One of my hands tugged on her blonde extensions, and the other curled into a fist and slammed into her newly-glossed little mouth. She screamed, and I felt her friend trying desperately to hit me and pull me off, but she was nothing compared to my strength.

"Hair pulling?" Camila asked from the distance, giggling. "Catty. I like it."

"Help!" I heard her friend screaming.

Through my rage-filled, drug-addled craze, I could only form one coherent thought.

I am in so much trouble.

~ * ~

"Let me get this straight," I heard my mother say later that afternoon, crossing her hands primly on her knees. "She heard two girls gossiping about her in the bathroom and she attacked one of them? If she punched everyone in this town every time someone said something about her, there'd be a town full of black eyes. Why would she do that?"

"We suspect drugs are involved, though we can't prove it," I heard Mr. Smythe reply from behind the closed door of his office. "Unfortunately we don't know the circumstances surrounding it. One of the girl's split lips made it impossible for her to form a reply, and the other girl was too shaken up to make much sense."

"There has to be something we can do!" my mother replied, and I could hear the genuine distress in her voice.

I placed my elbows on my knees and rested my head in my hands. As if it wasn't bad enough that I was at a school that believed I was a cold-blooded killer, and as if it wasn't enough I'd just beaten up some girl in the bathroom, my mother also had to find out. She was a monster on her good days, and I knew I was in for it the minute we stepped out of the school.

"Look at the bright side," Camila observed next to me, and I turned to look at her. "If you get suspended or expelled, you'll have more time to look for my killer. Oh, happy days!"

"Wow, my consciousness is an asshole," I whispered to myself, rubbing my forehead. The effects of the drugs were wearing off, leaving me exhausted. My knuckles ached from the punches, and the girl unfortunately had gotten one good hit in, which had bruised my jawline.

"If it isn't Donovan the Boxer," someone said from in front of me, and I looked up to see Zach standing before me with a light smile on his face. "Started training for the fighting club yet? I hear you're supposed to use punching-bags, not teenage girls' faces."

"Never did follow the rules much, did I?" I replied.

Zach took a seat beside me, where Cam had been only seconds ago. Now she was gone.

"Why'd you do it?" Zach asked, watching me intently. "I'm keeping my composure. Where's yours?"

"I thought I had it," I told him honestly. "But it got too much. They... they said that I killed her. Said she deserved it and she should've died sooner. I had to do something."

"You know what the worst part is?"

"What?"

"Those girls aren't going to receive any punishment besides your wrath. You're going to be the bad guy in this scenario."

"Aren't I always?" I muttered, rubbing my temples and trying to block out the conversation my mother was currently having with my principal.

"I'm a suspect, too, you know," he replied. "In this school, there are some people who think you did it. And some people who think I did."

"The best friend and the boyfriend. The two people who really loved her," I replied. "Why are we suspects?"

He shrugged. "Because life is cruel and doesn't want us to be happy ever?"

"Amen to that."

The door opened, and Mr. Smythe stood before me, looking extremely old and unimpressed. "Perrie. Would you please come inside?"

"That's my cue," I told Zach, standing up and brushing off my jeans. "I'll see you later."

Mr. Smythe shut the door resolutely behind me, and gestured for me to take a seat next to my mother. I slouched back and crossed my arms over my chest.

"I'm not gonna apologize for what I did," I told him, feeling I should get out my emotions off the bat. "The girl deserved it. She can press charges all she wants. I'll plead self defense."

"Why'd you do it, Per?" my mother replied, and not in the maternal voice of someone who cares.

"She said something bad about Cam. About me. I was just defending our honor."

"Through violence?" she replied tiredly. "Perrie, you're better than this."

"How the hell do you know?" I replied, turning on her with an accusation in my eyes. "You don't know me at all, Mom. Dad knows me even less. I'm not better than this. Stop pretending like you care."

"Perrie," my mother whispered, appalled. "What has gotten into you?"

"In case you haven't noticed, my best friend is dead," I replied. "Or did that escape your attention, too?"

"Your mother and I have been talking, and we think it's best that you spend some time away from the school—two weeks, maybe. We're going to try to stop Bridget from pressing charges for the attack, but you're on thin ice now. Mrs. Castle has offered to do some therapy sessions with you twice a week, and your mother and I agree it's a good idea."

"Maybe having someone to talk to will help," my mother offered.

"Considering I don't have anyone at home, it would be a refreshing change of pace," I replied. "But I'm not going."

"Perrie, you need a—"

"I don't need a shrink that will sprout some self-help crap and put me on meds, I need someone to find Cam's killer!" I yelled.

"Perrie, keep your voice down," my mother hissed, flushing in embarrassment.

"Sorry, Mother. I wouldn't want to taint your god-like image," I replied, standing up. "You know what? Suspend me, throw me into counseling; I don't care anymore. I've got nothing left, anyway."

I turned around and stormed out of the office, slamming it closed behind me with a colossal bang. No one dared stop me as I walked out, and I was thankful for the fact everyone was in class when I made my way into the playground. I walked toward the parking-lot and located my car. I leaned against it and rubbed my eyes, needing a moment to think and breathe.

I stood there for a few minutes, forcing myself to calm down and think rationally. The sound of heels slapping onto concrete woke me from my reverie, and I looked up to see my mother making her way towards me, looking as polished and pristine as ever.

"Done having your temper tantrum yet?" she asked me, adjusting her handbag on her shoulder.

"You don't get it, do you?" I whispered, shaking my head. "You'll never understand what I'm feeling right now. For someone who claims to be all about her children, you really have no idea how to love one, do you?"

"I do love you," she replied, sounding shocked.

"Funny way of showing it."

She sighed and ran a hand through her straight platinum hair. "All I've ever tried to do is love and support you. I give you everything you want; money, cars, shoes.... What more do I have to do?"

"I don't care about that!" I replied, throwing my hands into the air in exasperation. "Don't you get it? I don't want materialistic things! I want affection. I want to know I can come home and have someone to talk to."

"I know you're hurting," she told me.

"But you don't, Mom." I shook my head. "You think you know, but you don't. How I feel right now... I feel like my world is ending. I can't go anywhere without feeling hated and ridiculed. I see the way the town looks at me; I can hear what they say about me. The way I feel right now...you can't imagine the pain." I wiped away the tears that spilled out and shook my head. "You'll never understand that."

"Then make me understand."

"How?" I yelled. "Take away your best friend? Make you feel hated and worthless? Make you feel like you want to die? Make you feel like you have nothing left?"

She shook her head. "You know, sometimes I feel like you want me to be just as unhappy as you are."

"I would never wish that on anyone," I replied. "According to the world, I'm guilty of my best friend's murder. The only thing you're guilty of is being a terrible mother."

I opened the door and hopped into the car, and my mother, too breathless and crestfallen to reply, did nothing as I shoved my key into the ignition and drove out of the school's parking-lot, heaving sobs every step of the way.