Chapter 1
Do you ever feel like going off to some unknown place? New name, new place, new view, a new you? Maybe not. But with a life like mine, running away and wanting to start over are very tempting options. One's if not for the responsibilities I have, I would have chosen without a second thought.
Lydia Carlton a.k.a the town's black sheep a.k.a me. At one point in my 17 year old life, I had it all and the possibility of me being stripped off everything was a faraway thought. But it happened. One night and it was all gone. One night and one wrong decision and poof. I was in the middle of nowhere, trying to gather what fell apart. Trying to make sense of what happened and drawing a blank.
After that fateful night, my life took a turn for the worst and it's been a year in hell and counting.
Waking up from a recurring nightmare, i checked the time on the clock on the nightstand. It was 4 in the morning. I had three hours to get up and get ready for school also known as the safe haven for devil incarnates. I saw no point in trying to go back to sleep. It was pointless. I knew I wouldn't be able to. I wiped the sheen of sweat on my forehead, gathered my self and got out of bed. My head was hurting. What a way to start my first day of high-school. Sighing I made my way downstairs for some coffee to fully wake myself and get me in better spirits.
The house was quiet as usual. I was not even worried anymore. I knew where my mom went every night. I was the one in high school now and she seemed to enjoying the whore life of the bimbos in high school. It disgusted me to think she sold her body to pay our bills. I just couldn't believe there weren't other decent jobs she could have taken up. But then, maybe she was a good for nothing who got stuck with a child she had to feed and using her body was the only way she could raise a life.
If only, dad was here. We would have been in a much better place.
Shaking my head to dispel that thought out of my system, I frowned. My mood was in dumps already and now I was thinking of impossible and depressing things.
Giving the empty living area a sad look, I went back upstairs to my room to get ready for school.
Hell, here I come.
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Walking the school corridors as a senior now should have been a different feeling. But you get that if you have friends with whom you can plan weekends, make stupid bucket lists with or just plain talk about which college you wanna join. But I didn't even have acquaintances now, let alone friends to wave a hello to. I was what you could call a social pariah or an outcast. A misfit. Or a pity case whose life got torn apart in pieces. No matter how long, I just couldn't get used to the stares I got when I walked by. It was humiliating.
In my usual 'ward off evil spirits' Yankee outfit, I walked towards my locker. But apart from the whispers circling around me, there were whispers of a new guy. A transfer student.
A transfer student? Why in the world would someone shift here of all places?
As per habit, I started contemplating various scenarios in my head and forgot about the whispers. You can say it was my defense mechanism. But no brain wracking could have prepared me for what came next. When I reached in the vicinity of my locker, I saw a huge crowd gathered around it. This cound'nt be good. This was never good. Huge crowds like these could be seen around two kind of things. Something so good it left people in awe or something so bad that it was hilarious how pathetic it was. Since I was no diva or anything near the awe-inspiring personality, it must be the latter. I don't know why but tears had already springed to my eyes as mini flashbacks started appearing before them. Mustering up courage and resolve I pushed through the crowd and got in the middle of it only to regret my decision heavily. My locker was vandalised. It was destroyed. The locker door had been ripped off its hinges and inside everything was sprayed with red paint. Or I thought it was red paint. The rotten fish smell said otherwise. The ripped door was kept beside the disaster of my locker like some comments box. The things sprayed on it are really not worth repeating or mentioning but they were enough to kill a person over and over. They were 'words' after all.
The springed tears were a river now and I hated it. I hated the fact that they saw how weak I was at that moment. And they were enjoying it. They were enjoying at the expence of my humiliation. And I hated it. Fisting my hands and I dashed from there. The snickers and whispers were getting too much. I ran and ran and ended up in the skool backyard. It was empty leave for the few birds here and there. After making sure no one was there and that I wasn't followed, I leaned against the concrete wall and slid down. Staying stood up was tiring. Slowly, all the pent up emotions from this morning and now, the river which stopped started again and this time harder. I had to stifle my cries for how they loud they were but the sobbing wouldn't stop. I couldn't stop myself. I had been holding everything inside for too long. I should have known the dam would break someday. But right in school in front of everyone was neither foreseen or expected.
After about a good thirty minutes my sobs turned to sniffles and I felt a bit light and tired. There was no point in going to class now. I missed half of it anyway. Bunking and getting in trouble for that was still better that facing everyone in class. Battling that stares was not that hard but some days I just didn't have the strength to ignore them and keep moving.
While sitting there in a peaceful quiet, I thought about various things. Number one was what was I going to do about my locker. That locker turned a blood field was unusable and will be for a while and a locker was something I needed. I would have to ask the school office to look into it. I sighed. I had to ask the school office. Meant I would have to explain what happened. Meant I would have to spell out what they did to me. Putting that problem aside for now, my thoughts drifted to the new boy. What did he look like? Was he nice? Or just like everyone else. Good thing was he didn't know who I was or what my past was. But it would only be a matter of time before he got a whiff of the rumors and their version of the entore thing. And then maybe he would join them or maybe, just maybe try to get my side of the story.
I realised the baseless hope I was counting on and scoffed at the thought. My life would never be that miraculous. I had to endure it all and then get out of here. That was the only thing keeping me going. This will all come to an end and I would be free. I just had to stay strong till then.
Bunking school would have been nice if I had somewhere I wanted to go. But I hated every inch of this town. For a moment, spending the entire day here seemed like a good idea until I heard footsteps. Whoever it was, was annoyingly dragging their feet on the ground. I almost revealed myself to scold them for doing that but caught myself. I had no right. And if it was one the bullies then that would have been a really bad idea. I stayed out. I had nowhere I could hide anyway. So I took out a book from my bag and pretended to read. When the pair of feet came in my sideways view and stopped, I did not look up and waited for the guy to say something. But he didn't so I had to look up to check if he was alive or died of shock of seeing a girl sitting on the ground. So shocking. Right?
It was a face I hadn't seen before. He was the new guy. So breathtakingly beautiful. I dispensed all the thoughts of him being like them for a moment because the warmth in his hazel eyes couldn't be of a person who would hurt others. I was so used to the cold judging stares in school that the warmth in his stare made me want to bawl my eyes out. With Brunette hair and hazel brown eyes and face to kill for, this guy was the definition of handsome and hot. And with a figure of a model, if he said he was a Greek God, I would have believed him without question.
I hadn't realised I was staring so bad I might as well have been checking him out. Well technically I was checking him out. But that's not the point. I looked down in my book again. Why wasn't he saying anything? He kept staring at me like I was a piece of an alien puzzle he was trying to solve. This went on for a annoying few seconds more before I cleared my throat and said in a low, unintentionally cold voice.
"Do you want something?" I looked up to meet his stare only to realise he wasn't staring anymore but looking somewhere far off.
Damn, his side profile was even more killing.
'Shut up Lydia.' My inner voice reprimanded me.
Seeing he was not going to say anything anytime in this century, I asked again and this time louder. "What do you want?"
He looked at me again and this time there was pain in his hazel eyes. He had a little crease between his brows. He took a step forward and crouched down in from of him. I followed his movements and now we were face to face. Shock must have been evident in my face. My blue orbs held nothing but skepticism and doubt for the genuine pain filled eyes in front of me. But I was not to blame.
A deep, heavily accented British voice spoke and it was his lips doing the speaking. And as much as I wanted to appreciate his intense, deep and soft voice, I was already crying by what he said.
"What?" the wary part of me asked again to make sure I wasn't dreaming or hallucinating.
Although it was pointless to ask again but maybe he understood how much I wanted him to ask again.
"Were you crying?"
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