Tyson POV

After Tiana leaves, all of us look at her retreating back in a slight daze. What did she mean when she said we won't be seeing her again? Why did she look so sad when she said that? Why do I have a feeling that something extremely bad is going to happen?

I try ignoring the feeling that buy my uneasiness doesn't go away. Maybe its the way she smiled, like it was the last time she's ever going to see us (or anything for that matter) or maybe it was the way she walked with a sort of purpose behind it, like she's steeling herself to do something hard. Whatever it is, it has me feeling like something incredibly wrong is about to happen.

"Tyson? Tyson! Hey dumb butt!" Xavier shouts, bringing me out of my thoughts. I shake my head a little to clear it up a bit and turn to look at him.

"Were you in dreamland with a certain Tiana Collins?" Amanda asks, smirking. I don't even bother answering. I have to know what is happening. Something tells me I have to follow her and I am smart enough to follow my gut instincts.

"Something's not right. I'm gonna follow the girl home. Something doesn't feel right with me," I say, glancing at her now very distant figure.

"Stalking her is not gonna make her feel comfortable with you," Xavier shouts at I get up but I don't answer him, I just run for a bit to catch up with her but still stay far enough from her that she doesn't notice. She seems to be too lost in though to notice though. This fact somehow makes my stomach churn even more with the uneasy feeling, creating more discomfort than before.

When she reaches her house, she's so lost in thought that she forgets to close the door. This just adds to my discomfort.

I hear her footsteps going up, what I'm assuming, is the staircase. When I'm sure she isn't in the room, I enter her house.

Everything is a mess inside. Nothing seems to be where it should be. And, for some reason, there's a sofa facing away from me. Most of the furniture has some weird red sploches on it. I walk closer to get a look at what the red sploches are.

And freeze.

Blood.

The urge to check on Tiana intensifies and I walk over to the stairs. And I freeze. Again.

There's a woman lying on the sofa facing away from the door with black, glazed, eyes and Tiana's beautiful chocolate brown hair.

And she's high.

Tiana's mother is a drug addict.

She looking far off into space and it's clear as day  that she doesn't know what's happening around her. Or that's what I thought.

When I move to walk up the stairs, she stops me. When I look at her, she looks back at me with an intense look in her eye, so incredibly serious and piercing that I felt like shrinking into myself.

"Take care of her," she says, looking at me. When I nod, she giggles loudly, laughs, and goes back to looking at nothing.

Well then.

I walk up the stairs and find Tiana's room. I enter her room and look around. When I don't find her, I start panicking until I see the that bathroom light is on.

She's probably having a bath.

There's a book on the bed and, for some reason, it catches my attention. It's obviously a diary, pink and fluffy in a few places.

I think about reading her diary, about knowing what she thinks about when she's not saying anything, and the temptation is too much.

So I read it. I start from the last few pages since it probably has something nearer to when she met me. When I do, takes everything in me not to cry

She knows about the bet.

Her father is a monster.

She's never felt a comforting touch.

She's the child of a rape victim.

Her mother is a drug addict.

Oh God, no one is supposed to go through so much at her age.

And then I read the last paragraph of the last page and my whole body stiffens. My breathing becomes shallow.

No.

No no no no no....

The bathroom. The bathroom with its damn lights on. She can't. She won't.

I run towards the bathroom and open the door, hating the fact that it was open. That it wasn't locked.

And I see a sight that I know is burned into my mind, imprinted itself into my brain. A sight that will probably haunt me.

Tiana, in a tub of her own blood.

One of her hands are in the tub, mixing with the water and making it look like she's drowning in a tub full of blood. Her other hand rests on the side of the tub, her blood covering her stupid pink fluffy pen in blood. Her head hangs to the side.

I've never felt more scared in my life.

I run towards her and press my finger against her neck, checking for a pulse. I breath a huge sigh of relief when I find a pulse. It's slight, but at least it's there.

Immediately, I call 911.

They tell me not to panic, which is impossible, and to get her out of the tub and to try my best to stop the blood.

"She'll be alright, don't worry," the lady says, even though she know that telling me not to worry is like telling rain not to be wet.

As soon as I finish the call, I pull her out of the tub, I tear the towel in two pieces and tie it, hard, on her wrists, covering the wound and, hopefully, stopping the blood flow the best I can. Then I take the bathing robe and cover her with it, since she's very much naked and I it feels wrong to look at her even though I know I won't feel anything other than panic and sadness and... fear.

I then carry her downstairs and sit on the ground, placing her on my lap and leaning back against the last step even though it's uncomfortable. I know tears are falling down my eyes. I see them fall against her pale face. My tears on her cheek.

Why would you do this?

Just then, her mother, I'm assuming, walks over to us. She walks like a deer that's just born. Unsteadily and unsurely. She walks over to us and kneels in front of us, looking at Tiana with so much love and sadness and guilt and regret and fear that I have no idea if she's high or not.

"Oh my baby... my little pretty Tiara," she keeps saying, sobbing and rocking her body back and forth in her sorrow. She reaches forward to cup Tiana's cheek but I stop her.

"You don't get to touch her. You're part of the problem. You're the reason she's like this. You don't get to touch her," I say, my voice breaking repeatedly.

The lady sobs even more. But the slight glaze in her eyes show that she's high. I see a few slight marks on her arm where a needle must've poked into her skin, filling her with the fake feelings of euphoria, making her forget.

I don't look at her anymore. I look at Tiana. Everytime I close my eyes I see that damn tub full of blood, the slight tilt of her head that showed she's unconscious. Her unconcious body in the tub, covered by water that's mixed with her own blood.

Her own blood.

When the ambulance comes, it brings noise and colour and lights with it. But I don't see or hear any of it. All I can see is Tiana's limp body. All I can feel is her slight pulse. All I can hear is her slowly reducing breathes.

And then they take her away from me.

They place her in a medical bed, checking her pulse and hovering around her. They check her blood group, A+, and they inject an IV into her. They then remove the towel that I wrapped around her wrist and I panic and they wrap an actual bandage around her wrist and I calm down. They then place her in the ambulance.

I look down at my empty lap.

"Hey kid, do you want to ride in the ambulance with her? Her mother isn't... in the state required to ride with her," a nurse says and when I look up at her, she smiles at me. I nod numbly. I sit at the back with about two more nurses.

I take her bandaged hand in mine and feel how cold her hands are. It scares me.

Sitting here and holding her hands, I let myself, even for a moment, pretend that I can have this. That I can hold her hand and that she'll thread her finger through mine, and that she'll smile at me, her whole face brightening and her green eyes glowing and radiating with happiness.

It's a beautiful thought.

But it's an impossible thought.

The thing is, even if I've been trying to deny it, I know I have feelings for her. I know I haven't felt something like this for any other girl. I know it hurt me badly when she pretended not to see me at school today. I know it hurt me when I saw the bruise on her face. I know that when she smiled at me on our date, my heart had never beat that fast in my life.

And, with as much surety as I know I have feeling for her, I know I would never let her live the way she has been living all this time.

I'll won't let her get beaten and touched by that monster, I won't let her stay numb, I won't let her cut herself, I won't let her hurt herself.

I won't let her live her life without affection.

The ambulance stopped. We reached the hospital.

The walk from the ambulance to the waiting was just a blur of motion to me. People shouting and people checking her and people asking if I was okay and then I'm sitting in a waiting room, being informed that I won't be able to see her while they prode and check her for other injuries and then stitch the nasty cut on her wrist close.

I sit there in the waiting room, too numb to feel anything much. Not knowing what to feel since I didn't know for that long but still feeling too much.

And then my phone rings.

It's Xavier. I pick it up.

"Hey man, how's the stalking going?" He asks and I know that he's smirking.

I don't reply.

"What it is? What happened?" Xavier asks and silent tears spill from my eyes and  down my cheeks.

"She tried to kill herself. She tried to kill herself! My Kitty tried to kill herself," I say, a little hysterically.

"Shit. Where are you?"

"The waiting room. They...they won't let me see her while they stitch her up." I say, getting angry with hospital because I don't know who to be angry with. Maybe myself for not seeing this coming.

"Which hospital are you in?" he asks softly.

"No please don't come. I don't think Tiana would like it if she saw you guys," I say.

"Okay man," he says softly.

"She knew. She knew about the bet," I say miserably.

"Shit," he says again. I know he's just trying to make me talk. I know he knows that I just need to let it all out.

"But the thing is that she's not just a bet to me. I actually feel things for her. It scares me sometimes, my feelings, but it's a good type of scary. Y-you don't know the shit she has been through. I feel horrible adding to it. Oh God, I'm a horrible person," I say, my voice in hysterics.

"What did she go through?" He asks gently. I shake my head, even though he can't see me.

"H-her life, her secrets. N-not mine," I say. Tears continue to spill from my eyes. Little drops against my cheek.

"Hey man, it's okay. It's going to be okay," he says. I don't know if he's right but I hope he is.

"She cut her wrists in the bathtub man. It was like the tub was filled with her blood. God, I'll never get that image out of my head. Ever," I say miserably. My head starts aching and I grip my hair.

The image immediately makes me want to throw up and I squeeze out a "Call you later," before I run to the bathroom and puke my guts out. I walk back to the waiting room, feeling weak and powerless and scared.

After a few hours of waiting, I hear  a "Are you here for Tiana Collins?" I look up to see a nurse walking towards me.

"Yeah," I say. I'm nervous. I want to run. I want to hide. I want to see her.

"Please. Please tell me she's okay," I say, pleading. I don't care about the redness in my eyes or the desperation in my voice. I need to know if she's okay.

"She's fine, though I'm glad you called when you did. There was a lot of blood loss. And then there was the fact that she was in water, she would have bled out. If you were five minutes late, I would have to tell you something else all together. But she's fine. She recovering well, though I would suggest she go to a therapist. You can see her if you want," the nurse says, smiling.

I nod and get up, my legs feeling like jelly. I walk over to her room and just stand in the doorway for a bit, watching her.

She's lying on a medical bed in a hopital gown. She's pale, almost white. Her lips are dry. Her eyes are closed. But her chest is moving.

Her chest is moving.

She's alive.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding and walk over to her, pulling a chair to the side of the bed and sitting next to her, holding her hand to make sure she's tangible. Real. Alive.

"She's been sleeping for a few hours now. Sorry for not calling you here but she needed to rest. There are a few cuts on her thighs that opened up but they weren't as deep as the ones one her wrist. All in all, she's well and good, physically," the nurse says. I nod, not looking at the nurse. My eyes only for the unconcious girl in front of me.

"I'll leave you alone for a bit," she says and walks out the door. I don't say anything, just look at Tiana.

I stay there for who knows how long, just staring at her. She seems so small.

And then, I feel movement. My heart beats faster as I see the rustle of her sheets. Her eyes squeeze shut even though it's already closed.

And then her eyes open.

Green.
_________

Sorry for not updating. My phone got lost and then the laptop charger decided to be useless....

My poor poor phone....

So... Tiana's awake!!!
And Tyson... well...

Btw,
Vote and Comment!!!

*Waves*
Bye:)