Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-4199666-20140625033401

A/N: So this fic isn't really for any particular ship, but rather for a character of mine, and there's obviously gonna be influences of the ships she's a part of. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. Be warned there's a lot of mention of drugs, alcohol, death and suicide, so yeah.

No one really thinks anything’s wrong until suddenly there it is. Obviously Juliette had noticed her mother’s growing depression, but both of them had been dealing with the recent events differently, and Juliette never known her mother to get this upset. She awkwardly fumbled around the kitchen, scrambling to get a hold of a pulse or a breath before deciding to call 911. She begged and pleaded for some sign of life as she cradled her mother’s head in her lap, saying over and over that she couldn’t lose her too as if some miracle would fall out of the sky if she begged hard enough for it.

A miracle did appear, but in the form of paramedics rather than some divine entity. Juliette could feel her heart rate rising, palms shaking with nerves – every fibre of her being trying to scream out in anguish as she watched them carry her away on a stretcher. She spent the next fifteen hours in the most painful, torturous silence she’d ever endured in her life. This was worse than her father’s funeral or the days that followed that. This was sweat-inducing, nerve-wracking, spine-chilling fear that the only thing she had left in her life would be snatched out from underneath her at the age of twelve. Juliette only left her mother’s side once that night, hurrying back from the bathroom as quickly as she could manage, and she laid there underneath the blankets, hugging her mother’s limp, lifeless body.

It came as a surprise then, when she woke from her sobbing, to the gentle nudging of her mother trying to move out of her grip. Through a groggy smile, Juliette excitedly stammered out a “Mum, you’re alive” and as she tried to squeeze her mother closer, slowly realising that her mother did not share the same enthusiasm that she had, and noticing something similar to anger in her face as she frowned and cried that she was supposed to be dead.

…

Almost everything had been packed away, but she still managed to find a few empty boxes to build her fort. Being the daddy’s girl that she was, her first rule was that only dad was allowed in the fort with her while the movers were busy packing everything else. She sat up on her dad’s lap, ogling over the pages of the book – a million different thoughts zooming around in her head. If the United States was an entirely different country full of entirely different people, then what was it like in other places? Did people in Uganda have a queen too? Were there countries where kids were in charge instead of grown-ups? Everything in the book seemed as though she’d discovered a million different worlds and now she would get to visit another one, far away from her home and her grandparents now.

It had completely amazed her that the United States didn’t have a queen. She figured that at some point, she could be their first queen, and she could buy a whole lot of corgis so that they’d all like her. With a giggle and an excited squeal she started rebuilding her fort, turning it into her own throne-room while her dad helped her cut out a little paper tiara to rest on her head. She continued to giggle her way through packing as all of the movers would courteously pretend to tip their hats for her. She couldn’t get over the high that came from being adored by everyone, and in no way did she want to.

…

She built up a devilish smirk as she kicked her feet up on the dashboard of his car, waiting for his reaction, when he sighed out a tired “feet off the dashboard.” She turned her head, looking for the slight smile of amusement in his face, practically goading it out of him. He repeated himself, only using the much shorter instruction of “Feet, off,” accompanied by small hand gestures. She teasingly smiled, leaning her head over onto his shoulder as she spoke, asking what he was going to do if she didn’t move them. “Well, I could stop suddenly,” he joked, the slightest smile creeping onto his face. This didn’t go unnoticed by Juliette as she coaxed him on, betting him that he wouldn’t do that to her because he likes her too much. She’s just waiting for him to admit it, nudging him in the shoulder as she does. “I suppose you’re not the worst person in the world,” he teased, back, earning himself a kiss on the cheek.

…

“Mum,” she calls over as she gets home, pulling the yellow note out of her bag and throwing it down on the kitchen table with a pen on top, “I need you to sign this note to say that I’m failing algebra.” Juliette had become accustomed to these sorts of warnings from her teacher, but this was the first time she’d had to admit it to anyone. She looked over to her mother, so high on Xanax that her eyes couldn’t even tell her where she was sitting. “Mum,” she exclaims, louder. She snaps her fingers in front of her face and claps but her soul left her body many years ago, leaving behind a vacant shell of a mother.

She throws her bag down on the table with a thud and sits down in the plastic chair, that same pleading voice she’d tried so hard to drown out returning in full swing. “Mum, can you even hear me?” Every unreturned glance and ignored word brought her closer to tears. “Mum, just look at me. For once, just look at me.” Pause. There’s silence, then nothing. Juliette staggers to her feet, grabbing the first fragile object she can find – hurling it across the room and smashing it against the wall. She watches and waits for some sort of reaction to the broken shard of glass which caught her mother’s cheek, but still there’s nothing. Not even a flinch. She lets a tear fall down her cheek, then another and another, as she takes in what she already knew – her mother died many years ago.

…

This wasn’t her first therapy session with the school counsellor, but this time she felt more nervous than anything. Every question pounded into her skull as if it were an interrogation. “Has your mother acted suicidally before?” Who knows? The more Juliette thought on it, the more her head spun. No, she thought. No, why would my mother have acted suicidally? But then, she couldn’t help but think that maybe she had and this was just the closest she got. Maybe she’d been ignoring all the signs because she’d been too wrapped up in her own grieving.

She felt selfish, and she took every question as an accusatory stab, sinking more and more into herself until she felt like nothing. Every mention of “Did you think…? Did you notice…? Did you suspect…?” made her feel all the more hopeless. She was told that suicidal people usually plan their departure for a while and there are usually signs, so she couldn’t help but feel like she’d failed for not noticing them. Hell, she didn’t even know if this started when her dad died or if it was around a lot longer than that.

…

“My name is Blue,” she said, “and my mom died three years ago.” Juliette sat there quietly as the brown-haired girl with the dimples and he bizarre name told the story of how she’d dealt with her mother’s death and how her father had blamed her for it. Every sentence she told, Juliette found herself focusing more on the contours of her face as she spoke, then the way that her Sex Pistols tee hung off her delicate chest and the way her messy bun would occasionally flop to the side as she moved her head around while speaking.

She walked over to Blue at the snack table afterwards, introducing herself with a smile and a mildly flirtatious comment, which was quickly returned by the girl in the Sex Pistols shirt. “I’ve got to ask though,” Juliette finally spoke up. “Is your name seriously Blue?”

…

Juliette stood there shaking as she witnessed the maple coloured coffin slowly being lowered into the ground. The eulogy made her heart ache - only intensified more by the fact that she knew she didn’t have her dad around to comfort her and tell her it was okay. Her mother stood fixed behind her, as still and unsettling as a mannequin, resting her arms on her shoulder, but not sharing any of the warmth or kindness that Juliette had become accustomed to with physical contact. Everyone was crying, and Juliette was too. She couldn’t even explain it or comprehend it, but crying about it made her feel better than any other attempts in the past had. No amount of “It’ll be alright” and “Things will get easier in time” could have convinced her that her life hadn’t hit rock bottom.

…

Without actually having access to a lock, Juliette had found a way to improvise a defence to keep her parents out. With her desk chair wedged firmly under the doorknob, she slumped onto her bed, letting her face sink into her pillow. She heard three taps on the door, followed by the jiggling of the doorknob as whoever was there tried to push the door open. She asserted that she didn’t want to talk about it – an argument about whether she’d been to ungrateful this Christmas – until she heard her dad’s soothing voice assure that he just came to deliver hot cocoa. For a brief moment she thought of turning it down, until she remembered the way her dad made hot cocoa taste like a cascading parade of silk across her tongue. She grumbled as she trudged over to the door, pulling her chair away and opening the door.

She reaffirmed that she still didn’t want to talk about it as he handed her the purple owl mug she’d grown to love since getting it for her eleventh birthday. She cupped it in her hands, holding it snugly as she cautiously took the first sip. “Jules,” he began, charming his way as usual, “I think you and your mother both said some unsavoury things to each other.” Juliette lifted her chin up, reciprocating the same sense of pride her mother had. “But if you want to come back out to the living room, you still have a few more presents to unwrap.” A small smile creeps up on Juliette’s face, which she tries to push away, unsuccessfully. “And an apology to your mother wouldn’t be too horrible either,” he finished, smiling as he watched Juliette reluctantly roll her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer as he shrunk down to her level. “You know your mother and I love you, very much, right, kiddo?” Juliette smiled and nodded, before returning to the Christmas presents and fireplace she’d grown to love in winter months.

…

While she hadn’t actually intended on visiting her newly-acquainted friend that day, she found herself victim to two opportunities – boredom and coincidence. She walked right up to the front counter of the theatre, pulling herself up onto the counter top in front of Adrian, with a friendly greeting, followed by his assertion that as much as he enjoyed seeing her up on the counter, he highly doubted his boss would share that same regard. Juliette laughed a little as she slid back down; opting instead to lean across the counter while the theatre remained empty. They spent the better half of an hour making playful conversation about movies, and work, and all the reasons why people might pay to sit in a dark room with a romantic movie playing until eventually Adrian finished his shift.

Instead of going home, Juliette opted to spend the time more productively, leading her dark-haired friend down to the beach, then to an abandoned beach shack she’d known about for a couple of years. She felt herself lusting for more with each kiss, and eager to feel more of his skin pressed up against hers. There was no denying that she wouldn’t have had him right there if she’d come prepared for that sort of scenario, but instead they just kissed, letting their lips press against each other’s skin, exploring every rise and fall.

…

“I’d like to ask you a question, for a change.” Juliette spoke, interrupting her counsellor’s usual diagnostic questions. Her counsellor nodded, lifting her glasses as she looked up to face Juliette square on. “Why do you still bother with me?” She noticed how the counsellor’s brow seemed to furrow with that interrogation. “Everyone else has given up on me – my mum, my math teacher, my economics teacher – Hell, I can’t even keep a relationship. I’ve been dumped four times in two months. I just want to know why you’re still here. Is it just because you’re paid to be here?” Juliette’s questioned appeared to take the lovely and ever-charming Mrs. Brown off guard, as she remained speechless, trying to come up with an answer. Juliette frowned at the lack of sound coming from the lady she’d spoken to every week for the past eight months.

Finally, Mrs. Brown spoke up, recounting the story of a time earlier that year when she was offered another job, in another city with a fatter paycheck. She recounted her word for word rebuttal as she told them that she could not leave her students after working so hard to develop their trust. Juliette’s confidence in Mrs. Brown returned and she allowed her counsellor to return to her original role, suggesting that perhaps Juliette was clinging to the slightest signs of affection to fill a void inside her. Juliette could not admit to herself that she was, but doubts plagued through her mind all the time.

…

Blue’s first thought after getting out of the taxi was an exclamation about how she was never going home again – followed shortly after by the realisation that maybe she shouldn’t have packed so many books in her bags as she struggles to carry them. Juliette runs outside and throws her arms around her, squeezing her as tight as she can muscle, letting go when she hears Blue complain the disjointed “Jules, bags, heavy.” Juliette laughs a little as they try to make light-hearted conversation of the unfortunate circumstances which led them here. Juliette recounts some of the other people she’s met – one girl with a baby on the way that she didn’t already know about, one girl carting around a permanent oxygen tank – both of them grieving their dearly departed friend who lived in the dorm room before Juliette and Blue had even thought of moving in. Juliette does her best to motivate Blue into unpacking her room while carrying most of the conversation from her spot on her bed.

…

Of all the dumb ideas she’d ever let her friends talk her into; this one probably took the cake. It’s not that she’d never been drunk before, or that she couldn’t take her alcohol well, but rather, because she’d never been home while angry and drunk. Add that with her mother’s new crack-dealer of a boyfriend and she’d created a recipe for disaster by asking them to take her back home that night. She staggered in, holding herself up against the wall for support. She noticed her mother, smiling for the first time in three years, and barely looking over to her.

“Hello, mother,” Juliette announced, waving her arms out to the side as she tripped over her own feet. “Do you remember me? It’s your daughter, Juliette.” Juliette spat the words out with a venom she’d never felt before. “Do you fucking see me now?” Juliette frowns as her mother gets up to place a consoling hand on her shoulder, knocking the hand away instead. “Don’t touch me,” she screeched, pushing herself further away from the two strangers in the living room. “Don’t ever touch me again,” she warned, picking up a family photo frame off the TV cabinet. She weakly points over to Dustin over on the couch, “You – you’re not my father! And you,” she continues, turning her finger to point it right at her mother, “you are not my mother!” Juliette runs her fingers hopelessly across the photo, before holding it up so her mother can see it, then throwing it across at the wall away from everyone and shuddering as she hears the glass shatter and fall.

…

“I don’t believe Romeo and Juliet is supposed to be a love story,” Juliette speaks up, interrupting the previous comment about how the other issues of the book somehow pale in comparison to the overarching theme that true love is stronger than anything. Juliette’s comment immediately draws in some complaints amongst the lovesick puppies inhabiting her classroom, but as she proceeds to explain her opinion more, she finds herself cut off by some overly-smug, arrogant jock who had once managed to convince Juliette that he was anything other than a dick by nature.

“Juliette’s just pissed because her idea of ‘true love’ is having sex with the football team behind the bleachers.” Laughter and oohs and ahhs ensue from the rest of her juvenile-minded class. Mr. Barker doesn’t hesitate to tell them to knock it off, before Juliette can retaliate. She holds it in for another use, which doesn’t take long. “Maybe Juliette would like the characters more if the other Juliet had sex with both Prince and Romeo. Maybe Juliet should just sleep with all of the men like the slut that she is.” Juliette felt the metaphorical strings of her patience snap and she turned around to punch him in the face, successfully making his nose bleed in the fallout, but unsuccessfully landing herself an afterschool detention as well. All she could do was regret the day that she had agreed to have sex with him behind the bleachers.

…

She’d been sitting out on the front steps all afternoon, tracing circles around in the sand, leaning up against the doorframe as she took in another drag of her cigarette. She’d managed to smoke close to half of her packet while trying to put off going home or being around people. She looked up as she noticed the shadow of a person sweeping across the beach, looking back to see Adrian. “I asked where you were and none of your roommates seemed to know,” he said, holding her phone out. “You’ve got a few missed calls.” Juliette tried to decide whether she should be happy that he cared enough to come find her or annoyed that he interrupted her time alone. She chose the latter, allowing the slightest inkling of a smile creep across her lips. “Don’t worry, I haven’t come out here to drag you back home,” he assured her as he walked closer. He sat down on the step next to her, resting his hand on her knee and picking the lit cigarette out from her fingers.

“You know these things will kill you, right?” he teased, before taking in a drag himself and giving it back to her. She let out an unenthused ‘ha.’ He moved his hand from her knee to her shoulder, pulling her delicate frame closer into his defined chest. She let her head sink into him, finding comfort in the rise and fall of his breathing, or the gentle rhythm of his heartbeat. She laced her fingers through his other hand, taking in the warmth which had vacated her own fingers, then tilted her head up slightly, noticing how his eyes seemed so soothing and sensitive and sweet. She took in another drag, holding the smoke in her mouth before slowly breathing it out. “July twenty-third, right?” he asks, trying to assure himself that he’d worked out why she was here. “I think you mentioned it once.” Juliette’s smile fell and she tried to break eye contact with him. He didn’t force the issue or try to get her to speak. He just stayed there with her, holding her close and letting her cry it out.

…

By this point, arguments had become a regular occurrence, but this time, Juliette felt like a majority of the blame was on her. Mrs. Brown had even suggested that she could make her mother a peace offering to ease the tension and say she was sorry, which is what Juliette did. She took three attempts to cook the scrambled eggs well enough that they didn’t smell of smoke. She carried the decently cooked eggs and her toast and cup of tea and carried them as best as she could into her mother’s room, placing them down on the bedside table as she attempted to gently wake up her mother. When her mother eventually did stir from her sleep, the reaction to being awoken by Juliette was not a positive one.

“What do you want?” she spat out. Juliette tried her best to maintain her composure, telling her that she’d made her breakfast. “I’ll eat it later,” she grumbled, rolling back over and burying her face in the blankets. Juliette decided to leave her as is; going out to spend the day with her girlfriend like she’d already planned. Even though she’d expected it, she felt a bit heartbroken when she came home to find the plate still sitting there untouched.

…

Juliette hopelessly wiped away at the tears, reaching out for another tissue, covering it in makeup as she dabbed away at her puffy eyes. “I don’t understand it,” she explained, “It’s like I shouldn’t be getting upset about being called a slut when I know it’s true, but it still hurts and it’s stupid.” She could feel herself shaking in her skin, and the increasing itch to get out of that room and take a cigarette break. If she had anywhere to go she wouldn’t even bother coming back to this school. It’s not that she didn’t like learning or miss the surge of happiness she got from passing a test – she truly missed those endeavours. She just couldn’t stand the constant slurs, the indignant whispers as she walked past friends of exes, the ridicule directed towards her.

Almost everyone was aware of her reputation, including a number of teachers. One teacher had even made a formal complaint to have her removed from his class so she would stop distracting the other students. Her voice cracked as she continued. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I hate it.” She looked up to Mrs. Brown as she confessed her actual feelings. In the two years she’d been seeing her, she had never known her to present herself as anything other than clinical. There was no ‘How does that make you feel’ and the notebook went down on the table as she spoke, every syllable sounding more and more convincing than the next. Juliette listed in awe as she heard for the first time in two years, someone telling her that she was going places and someone saying they had faith in her.

…

“Cigarettes?” he exclaimed, the disappointment ripe in his voice. He threw the box down on the desk and Juliette shuddered at the thud of her almost full packet hitting the table. She’d only bought them that morning, just after they went up another two dollars, digging into funds that she didn’t have. “Where does a fifteen year old even get cigarettes?” Juliette tried to scramble together some sort of weak apology while she listened to the principal rave on and on about how they were going to kill her and asking her what her parents would think. She made a point to remind him of how it was just one parent, hoping that he might ease up on the punishment as he had tended to do so in the past. Without a second thought, she blurted out something even she wasn’t expecting herself to say – that her mother bought them for her and that she was trying to quit by weaning herself off them. She knew it was absolute bull, but she was hoping that he wouldn’t.

It’s not that she didn’t want her mother to know. She’d been stealing her mother’s cigarettes since she was almost fourteen, hiding out the back of their house and trying to cover the smell with old perfumes that her late grandmother had left them in her will. After a while she realised her mother didn’t even care and at one point, Juliette found herself asking her mother for a lighter. The reason Juliette didn’t want her mother involved was because she was almost positive that her mother had already fixed herself up with a high, and bringing her into the matter would only make things worse. Juliette pleaded with them to speak to Mrs. Brown about it, and while she wasn’t expecting the packet back, she wasn’t exactly thrilled when she was sent away without them, spending the rest of the afternoon itching for her nicotine hit.

…

“So it’s sort of like moving into my own dorm, but the rent is only if you can afford it, but it’s run by these really rich foster carers who wanted to help out screw up kids like me…or us,” she explained, gesturing outwards to her girlfriend. She hadn’t known about the boarding house before this point, but the more she learnt about it, the more she wished she’d known about it years earlier. “Plus, Mrs. Brown is organising to get me an attorney so that mum can’t leave Dustin in charge of me.” Juliette clapped her hands together, feeling, for the first time in forever, as though everything was finally clicking back into place.

She stood up off her bed, throwing the small pile of clothes she had left into a luggage bag, while Blue folded it, scrunched it and went out of her way to make it all fit in. She breathed in a sigh of relief as she fell back onto her bed, one of the only things left in this vacant room. “I can’t believe I’m finally getting out of this hellhole,” she beamed. Words couldn’t describe the feeling of pure, unadulterated excitement she felt in her stomach. As she let her mind wander of, she turned on her side so she could face Blue, clearly unimpressed with the fact that she was left to pack everything in. “And it’s nice, you know? You could come and visit whenever. If you really wanted to, you could probably move in.” Blue light-heartedly laughed as she threw a shirt across at Juliette’s face, and suggested that maybe then Juliette could actually help with the packing. A devilish smile crept across Juliette’s face as she moved closer to her girlfriend, slowly pressing a soft kiss to her lips. “Or…” she purred, as she teasingly held her lips just off Blue’s, “I could do that.”

…

“You’re being awfully quiet,” he commented as he pulled her feet back down off the dashboard of his car. “Something I never thought I’d say.” Juliette smirked, but continued to ignore him as she ran over the numbers in her head. Eventually Adrian gave up waiting and caved in to asking her. “What’s going on in that head of yours?” he asked, adoring the way that she took all of her concentration and both of her hands to think through math. Juliette remained silent for another brief moment, before kicking her feet back up and earning a head shake from Adrian as she told him what she’d been processing.

She explained with a sense of amazement that her second longest relationship lasted four months and six days, and how they had almost doubled that. Adrian couldn’t help but let out a slight laugh that of all things, that was the problem she’d spent the whole car trip trying to solve. “Well,” he joked, “I guess I’m just trying to make things harder for the next person to beat.” Juliette smiled as she leaned in to kiss him. For some reason she couldn’t actually imagine Adrian leaving, and if she could have, it would have been the last thing on her mind. She joked about how he was probably stuck with her for life as they pulled away from their kiss and he laughed a little. “If you want me to stick around; you better stop putting your feet up on my dashboard,” he said, pushing her feet down once again as Juliette deviously smiled back at him, enjoying the way she could get on his nerves so easily.

…

“What the hell,” Juliette murmured as she walked into the principal’s office crowded with more people than Juliette thought it was designed to fit. Over in the corner she could see Mrs. Brown trying to forward on a comforting glance, obviously unsettled by their current scenario. It’s not like she hadn’t been pulled out of class before, but this was the first time she’d seen this many people, or even the first time she’d seen police officers while she’d been taken in. She shot a glance over to Mrs. Brown, pleading for some sort of explanation before being told that she should probably sit down. She sat in shock as the account of her mother’s arrest was recounted to her. The more she heard, the more she wished she hadn’t, and the more parts of her wished that her mother had succeeded in what she wanted several years ago. At least then, she thought, she could have got some sympathy.

Mrs. Brown seemed to be the least surprised out of the room when Juliette simply requested to go back to her class and carry on with her day. Unfortunately, bureaucracy dictated that she had more urgent matters to attend to, and she found herself being dragged into Barfield police station for questioning, while her new dress sat idly by in her textiles class, awaiting her return and its eventual completion. Even though some weak sense of loyalty tried to convince her that she shouldn’t completely give her mother up, she kept finding it overridden by the image of her mother holding a gun to someone’s head and screaming for them to give her some money. Past months filled with disappearing objects around the house had proven to her that her mother was slowly running out of money to spend on drugs, and she had figured that at some point it would probably reach a new low. She just hadn’t counted on this. …

“You need more cigarettes?” he shouted, disbelievingly and a bit angrily. The last thing Juliette wanted to do was push him, but she didn’t have the money after losing her last ones and every fibre of her being ached for a nicotine fix. “You bought a packet yesterday. I don’t have an infinite supply.” Juliette pleaded with him, tired and worn down from her two days of trying to ignore her craving. Just as he seemed to be on the verge of cracking, she let it slip that she didn’t have the money then, but she’d pay him back double as soon as she got the money. “That’s a load of shit,” he spat back.

He pulled out a cigarette and lit it while Juliette hopelessly tried to inhale as much of the second hand smoke as she could, barely managing to even slightly quench her craving. He sneered sinisterly as he saw the look of desperation in Juliette’s eyes. “Maybe,” he proposed, running his hand down her left cheek and across her neck, resting his fingers on a freshly made hickey, “you could come up with a way to convince me otherwise.” He brushed the hair back behind her shoulder and she tried not to shudder at the chill she felt from his touch. “What do you say, Jules?” He took in a drag and held it in while leaning in closer to her. He slowly exhaled as he moved closer to her lips, smiling wickedly as he forced his lips up against hers.

…

Adrian walked up to the passenger side, throwing the packet through the window and onto Juliette’s lap, ignoring the position of her feet, as he had been for the past few months. At least this time she actually had an excuse to keep her leg elevated; she had made it perfectly clear that she intended to use her broken ankle as an excuse to keep her foot up on the dashboard for as long as she could, not that Adrian would have invested energy into arguing that with her anyway. He’d grown to love the way she always baited him, waiting for him to tell her to move them away so that she could eventually have her way anyway. Juliette pulled a cigarette as Adrian got into the driver’s seat, and then held out the packet for him, playfully trying to snatch it away as he reached for one.

“I can’t wait until next month, when you can buy your own damn cigarettes and stop stealing all of mine,” he said as he lit up his cigarette, grabbing the empty packet off Juliette and stowing it away in his pocket. He handed the lighter over to Juliette, and took in a long drag before starting up the car. “So,” he began as they started driving off again, “now that I’ve spent all of my money on gas and cigarettes, I don’t still have to get you something for our anniversary, do I?” Juliette pouted while taking in a drag of her cigarette, jokingly complaining about how he spends more money on his car than on her as she pulled a bouncy ball out of her pocket and held it out for him, proudly announcing that she thought he might like it. He couldn’t help but let out a half-hearted laugh as she leaned across and kissed him on the cheek.

…

“Four months.” Juliette announced, sighing as she flopped down on the couch, throwing her bag down in front of her. Mrs. Brown looked up, inquisitively. She’d known Juliette for five years, but still didn’t know what to expect of their sessions together. Sometimes it was a happy recount, reminiscing on nostalgia of her favourite memories with her parents, other times it was melancholic and stark silence. “I was with her for four months. That’s a new record right?” Mrs. Brown quickly clued into what Juliette was referring to, but allowed Juliette to continue. “You know, I thought…” Juliette paused as she tried to think through the thoughts she was about to spill and how she was going to formulate them into a sentence. “I thought that after like four months, isn’t there some psychology or something that if a crush on someone lasts for more than four months then it means you love them?”

Mrs. Brown sat up in her seat, her glasses teetering on the bridge of her nose. She pushed the box of tissues ever so slightly closer to Juliette as she noticed tears welling in her eyes as she spoke. “You know, I actually thought she was different. I thought, ‘oh this is the one. She wouldn’t leave me. She knows how much it hurt me the last time someone left.’ I loved her.” Juliette spat the words out like poison, as if the words felt vile on her tongue. “And she was a liar. She was a filthy fucking liar.” She could feel her heart pounding out of her chest as she let the anger surge through her, bubbling up to the surface, until suddenly, all she felt was an overwhelming cloud of depression hanging over her head. “I’m so stupid,” she sobbed, “I should have been paying more attention and I didn’t.”

…

She quickly flinched away at the feeling of a foreign hand on her forearm as she was walking, turning around and noticing someone she’d seen around, but didn’t make a note of recognising. “Oh, uh hey…” he stammered out, his awkward words sounding strangled under his heavy varsity jacket, “Juliette, right?” Juliette nodded, asserting that she didn’t know his name. This boy looked the part of school jock, but his trembling frame, and awkward need to push his chest outwards said otherwise. “It’s Derek,” he introduced himself. “I was uh…I was wondering if you wanted to go on a date later?” At first, Juliette stared at him disbelievingly – she tried to feel flattered, but she had no idea of anything to do with this guy. She made a note to tell him that she felt flattered, and as she went to continue on, she found herself cut off, by him pulling out a packet of Marlboro lights. He must’ve been a senior, she thought.

“It doesn’t have to be a date if you don’t date people or anything,” he continued, trying to recover. Of course that’s what this was about, she thought. His nervous demeanour made a lot of sense. Juliette just stared at him blankly, waiting for him to excuse himself. He didn’t. “I mean, we could just go out behind the bleachers if you don’t want to come over to my house.” Juliette felt the anger inside growing and festering, as she yanked her arm away and declared “I’m not some prostitute who can be bought.” She suddenly noticed a change in Derek’s attitude. Suddenly he didn’t look like the sheepish, quiet virgin she’d initially taken him to be. She would have walked away right then and there if it weren’t for his final comment of “So what, you’re just a slut then?” which prompted her to swing her right arm at him, connecting her hand hard against his face. She smiled proudly as she walked away to her next class, leaving him there to wallow in his pain and humiliation.

…

Juliette had woken up a few times without the company of her roommate, so it didn’t make sense for her to worry when she woke up alone, once again. For all she knew, Blue was out in the kitchen making breakfast for the two of them. It did, however, become slightly concerning when Juliette realised she wasn’t in fact in the kitchen, nor was she in the living room or anywhere else that she could think of. Upon questioning, no one else in the house seemed to have any idea where she was either, one kid going as far as telling her that he’d never even heard of Blue. The more she asked around, the more she began to panic, before returning to her room, hoping for some form of sign or a note or anything of value.

Drawers were empty, her trunk was gone and sitting on the edge of her bedside table was a little piece of paper, likely pulled out of some notebook. Blue’s delicate handwriting looked rushed and shaken, and Juliette found it hard to read – I need some space. I’m sorry. – B. Juliette threw it back down at first. She didn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe it. Why would Blue have left without telling her? Why wouldn’t Blue have mentioned it? And who did she need space from? If it was from Juliette, she’d certainly managed to keep her distance. She sat back down with the note in her hand, trying to go over every possible meaning it could have, and every outcome, but as seconds ticked over into minutes, and continued into hours, she noticed that every scenario only made it hurt that much more. Blue was gone. She didn’t know where and she didn’t know why.

…

“Where’s my little monkey?” she shouted, smiling jubilantly as her little toddler clapped her arms together, just above her father’s head. “I have got something you’re going to love,” she announced, breaking off a chunk of blue cotton candy and holding it up just high enough for Juliette to reach. At first Juliette had no idea what to do with the wad of fluff in her hand which slowly melted as it stayed in contact with her hand. “You pop it in your mouth,” she explained, demonstrating with her own handful of cotton candy. Juliette looked at in amazement for a second before trying to shove all of it into her mouth, and excitedly squealing when it started to melt in her mouth. She clamped and unclamped her fingers as she reached down for more of the sweet fluff she’d suddenly developed a craving for. “Not yet. The Queen’s coming past now.”

Juliette looked around from her perch up on her father’s shoulder, taking in the view of everyone getting ecstatic and waving tiny flags and banners around. She’d been dressed in her union jack dress – something her parents thought would make for a colourful memory. Juliette couldn’t even remember how many other people were there. Her dad had said thousands, but to her, it looked like even more. She began waving as soon as she saw the others, then pausing when she noticed a newspaper photographer stopping to take a photo, directing her attention to him instead. She blew him a kiss, promptly landing her photo on the fourth page of the newspaper – a picture which she carried around for weeks after cutting it out of the newspaper.

…

“No one will shut up about prom,” she complained as she climbed into the passenger side, sighing heavily. “It’s as if they’ve never heard of prom before this year.” Adrian laughed, mockingly as she complained, pointing out how before that month, she was just as annoying about getting him to go. Juliette frowned a little bit. “Well, Mister Smarty-Pants,” she teased, “I’m not bothering you about it anymore, am I? I’m not even going.”

Adrian seemed kind of thrown off about her sudden change of heart, asking her if she would still go if he went with her. Juliette smirked, deciding to call his bluff. “If you were to ask me to the prom, then yes, I would go.” What she wasn’t expecting, was his previously made plans to ask her to prom as he explained with elaborate detail about how he was going to hire some skywriter to write it in the sky so that every couple who was looking up at the sky would think it was for them, and then he was going to show up at her doorstep with a bouquet of flowers and surprise her. Juliette just laughed, smiling as he carried on. “You were really going to do all of that?” she asked when he finished.

“Yeah,” he answered, “but now I guess this will have to do.”

…

“Mum,” she began; her hand pressed up against the glass which separated them, “I promised myself that I wouldn’t come out to see you.” She had been planning this trip for a few weeks, completely in secret. Even Adrian didn’t know where she was. “But,” she continued, “I got your letter, and I thought I would come see if it was really true. Is it?” Juliette looked over to her mother, unsure who was more nervous to see the other. She nodded. Juliette smiled a little, moving her hand so that she could trace shapes on the window with her finger. “I miss you too.” Juliette felt a heavy weight lifted off her shoulders as she spoke. All that anger and hatred had subsided as she looked over at her mother – the same caring face she’d missed all these years.

“Congratulations mum,” Juliette announced. “I was going to get you a card that says ‘Congratulations on being sober for a year’ but they’re really hard to find.” Juliette’s mother laughed delicately, she cooed about how much Juliette had grown and how sorry she felt for missing so much of her life and not being there for her, and Juliette was brought to tears, slowly letting them well up in her eyes. “It’s okay, mum,” she excused, “but thank you.”

…

“You, my dear, are an idiot,” he announced as he walked into the hospital room, bearing gifts in the form of flowers and a small teddy bear, newly picked out from the hospital gift shop. Juliette smiled groggily as she tried to wake up through the haze of both anaesthesia and her alcohol wearing off. “How do you feel?” he asked when he was certain she was awake enough. Juliette tried to sit upright but found her head spinning until Adrian gently pushed her back down, pressing the button to tilt her bed up instead. “Okay, better question. What hurts more, foot or head?” Juliette gently laughed as she corrected him – it was her ankle that was broken. Too much moonshine and faith in her abilities to dance on stairs while drunk had come back to haunt her, but at this point in time, she was too numb on painkillers to tell.

He leaned down to kiss her on the head, as he tucked the teddy bear under her arm. “By the way, I got rid of your stash.” Juliette suddenly snapped into consciousness, and Adrian smiled as he saw her eyes widen. “All of it, down the drain.” He continued smiling as Juliette rambled on about how she was going to get more and how she knows people, and he kissed her again, reassuring her that he’d just pour that down the drain too. Juliette frowned, pursing her lips into an obvious pout. “It’s only because I love you,” he reassured, laughing as Juliette’s dopey grin returned to her face. She couldn’t find the words to say it just then, but she loved him too. 