Heather McKinley was addicted alright. Addicted to alcohol, nicotine, weed, cutting, you name it but she was soon to find something addicting that wasn't quite so bad for her.
Westford high school was like any other school, it was built of brick and tight parking spaces, which is why Heather parked on the side of the road by the parking lot. If someone were to door-ding her she'd murder them. It wasn't a surprise that while the first bell was ringing she was in her car lighting a cigarette.
Heather jumped as someone knocked on her window.
"What?" She spat as she rolled down the window.
"Here," Jeremiah said as he handed her a box of cigarettes and a bottle of liquor.
"And your change." He added as he dropped a five-dollar bill into her hand.
Jeremiah was a high school dropout that worked at the local grocery store. He lived with his dad still at the prime age of twenty-five and bought shit for underage kids.
"Thanks." She said and rolled her window back up.
She hid the substances under a blanket on the floor of her backseat and decided to go to class. She stepped out of the car and dropped her cigarette, crushing it beneath her old sneakers. By this time Jeremiah was long gone, and no one would see him until they needed a favor.
"What's your reason this time?" Penny asked. She was the school's secretary and her retirement was defiantly overdue.
"My pass, please." She said as she looked the other way.
I mean what was she supposed to say? Something along the line of "I was waiting for alcohol and nicotine as a seventeen-year-old just outside school grounds."?
Penny sighed and handed her the slip with her signature on it. The halls were empty and the only thing you could hear was the band kids, they always played too loud and the band room wasn't so soundproof.
She took a hard right into the English IIIA classroom, interrupting some kid's presentation. She walked in front and put the pass on the teacher's desk and made her way to the back of the class. Everyone was looking at her as always, it wasn't that she was trying to make a scene, it was that she didn't care. She was going to live the way she wanted to.
"How have you not gotten suspended yet?" Her friend Ishani asked. She was a quiet Indian girl that studied just a little too hard and just so happened to be good friends with Heather.
Heather shrugged her shoulders. I mean, it was destined to happen.
~~~
Lunch rolled around and Heather, Ishani, and Brianna sat at a table, as far away from the rest of the students as possible. Brianna was a bold girl. She had good grades, yet she still partied hard. She was beautiful and had all of the boys chasing after her, but she wouldn't dare even look at one. She hated men. Her dad wasn't around so it was just her and her sister growing up, her mom was an absolute drunk.
"This is bullshit. I turned it in on time and she marked it as late? I'm gonna rock her shit I swear." Brianna said with anger. A little vein in her forehead was popping out.
The girls were used to Brianna having a short temper, but keeping her from physically abusing people was another story.
"She does that to me all of the time, you're talking about Ms. Hiepel, I assume?" Ishana asked.
