Things had changed. Her mother was no longer the strong, unyielding figure she had been. She was drawing baths and making mac and cheese. Her father sat in an armchair beside her, reading a book. He was pretending to read it, at least. Shelby knew he was just using it as an excuse to be in the living room with her. She was never alone.
They were watching her. Perhaps because they wanted to soak up all the lost years. But mostly because she was sure they were waiting for something. For her to crack. But if she actually cracked, they’d shatter. She’d never been good at reading people. She said the wrong things at the wrong times, even before The Cell. And that stunted whatever social skills she might’ve had.
But she wasn’t an idiot. She saw it. That her parents wouldn’t be able to handle her doing what she wanted to do. Tear her hair out. Drink an entire bottle of that Fireball April had given her. Smash every mirror in the house so she didn’t have to look at herself. Tear apart the room that was no longer hers—it belonged to a Shelby long lost, long dead, her corpse in The Cell, in a house of horrors. She ached to tear the posters off the walls, set her flowered comforter on fire, and murder all of the soft toys her mother arranged artfully on her bed.
But, of course, she didn’t do that.
She ate mac and cheese. Had baths. Pretended to watch stupid movies her mother put on.
And felt herself slowly going insane.
Sometime later, when she felt as if the armor was seconds from peeling away, her rage a bomb, mid-explosion, she began to write, and she kept writing and writing and writing until she filled a quarter of a spiral notebook. She’d later determine most of it to be utter garbage, but she found some gems too. She couldn’t deny feeling better.
There was so much to catch up on.
So much to eat, to watch, to read, to drink . . . to inject.
She hadn’t planned on it.
Jaclyn didn’t think anyone planned on becoming addicted to things. They were just looking for cures in the wrong places. Looking for quiet in the storm. Escape. Whatever. She just wanted it all to stop for a moment. She wanted to escape her body. Her mind. Past. Future. Present. All that crap.
At first, she wanted to try it. Because she wanted to try everything. She wasn’t used to having control over herself, her environment, her body. And that returned control made saying no to anything new, anything a little bit dangerous, that much more difficult.
For years, her body was not her own. Others ruined it. Scarred it. Stained it.
Jaclyn didn’t want to fix it. She wanted to ruin it in her own way. She wanted to finish the job they had started, but on her own damn terms.
She started with the drinking. She knew Orion blamed April for that, but it wasn’t April. It wasn’t the booze manufacturers. It wasn’t her piss poor genetics. The fact of the matter is, she liked it. Not the hangovers, of course. They were brutal and nothing like she remembered when she was younger. The hangovers eventually led her to weed. That was better. Easy to get, with a quick call to one of April’s seedier friends. Easy to handle. It made her want to laugh, the way things had changed. This world looked the same at first glance. She might be fooled if glancing is all she did. But if she looked closer, she’d see how many things she’d missed out on. How lost she was. It was comical, a reason to want to laugh.
The weed was good.
April was right. Food tasted better. Movies were funnier—holy shit all the movies. She couldn’t believe how many there were, and how good they had gotten. On weed, life was lighter, her problems dissipated. Eventually, the high wasn’t all that special anymore, and Jaclyn went looking for something different, something stronger.
Granted, it was harder since she didn’t have connections. But it wasn’t that hard. April’s weed buddy led her to his coke buddy, and so on and so forth, and she melted into the underworld with ease. Too much ease, probably. She felt comfortable there amongst the heathens and degenerates. They never fucked with her, they were too shit-faced most of the time to attempt it, and she felt at home in their world of ignored problems and synthetic solutions. With the criminals and the addicts, the walking dead, she felt alive.
But she was only used to damnation, so she preferred this ugly, honest world of addicts, whores, and murderers. Somehow, she felt safer there.
Jaclyn was sure their shrink would have a fucking field day with that. What her past had been before she was taken—all the lurid little details. Parents who loved drugs and beating on each other, and not much else. Derelicts in and out of the house. Living on tinned spaghetti and cold hot dogs. Dodging the wandering hands of all her “uncles.”