Our last year of high school is never easy but Maddison's might be the worse. Dealing with an abusive boyfriend, a busy schedule, and a difficult friendship, Maddison starts to feel overwhelmed. Drowned in anxiety, she doesn't know how to come back...
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"I'm coming!" I yell from my room while putting my socks on and running down the stairs, my heavy backpack hanging from my shoulders. My mom has been waiting for me downstairs for a solid 10 minutes since she has to drive me to school on her way to work. When I finally get to the kitchen, she hands me a banana and fixes my collar.
"Are you ready? You look beautiful," she says in a soft voice, trying to calm me down. She must've seen the panic in my eyes since the minute I woke up.
"Thank you and not really but I'm really going to be late if we don't leave now," I tell my mom, trying to get us out of the house before it's too late. Once my brand new school shoes are on my feet, I run to the car and anxiously buckle my seatbelt while my mother starts the car. As soon as the car stops, I jump out, say bye to my mom and walk around, hoping to find the girl I've been waiting to see for weeks now.
I hear a voice behind me. "Maddie?" I turn around to see Sophia. With her usual bright smile, she opens her arms to me so I run straight to her. We haven't seen each other since my mom 'kidnapped' me to go on a camping trip two weeks ago.
"I missed you! And oh my god, I feel like you've changed so much in two weeks!" I tell her with an abnormally high voice, excitement taking over. I have to say, she really had a glow-up this summer. She changed her hair, to compliment her perfect chocolate skin, and gained a little weight, just enough to define her beautiful curves. I've always been jealous of her, she's always been a better student than me and now she looks prettier than me. Even if I sometimes envy her, she's still the most precious person I know.
"Girl, your skirt is so short I bet everyone can see your butt cheeks," Sof adds with a chuckle, making me blush.
"I know! We ordered new uniforms since I outgrew the ones from last year but we haven't received them yet. Until then, I have to wear this skirt..." I add, complaining about my uniform. I feel like everyone's eyes are on me and I absolutely hate it. Honestly, I feel naked. However, I totally forget about it when I see him sitting on a bench, a few meters away from me.
"Oh, look, Liam's sitt-"
"Let's go in by the secondary entrance," I cut her in the middle of her sentence, not waiting for an answer. I start to walk to the side of the building, doing my best to not get noticed by Liam. The last thing I want to do is talk to him or even see him. We get to a spot where no one can see us from the main entrance and, luckily, since we're the only ones here, no one can hear Sophia when she asks me what's wrong.
"N-nothing, I'm fine," I respond with a lie as I hurriedly start walking towards the door. I haven't even done three steps when Sophia grabs my wrist and stops me from going further.
"You're clearly avoiding Liam. What happened? Did you guys fight again?" she genuinely asks, her tone being careful and gentle, trying to get me to talk to her. I definitely don't want to tell her what happened. I don't want to relive it.
"It's nothing Sof', don't worry about it. We really need to go now, we're going to be late," I mutter.
"I really don't care if we're late, especially when you're not okay. Please talk to me, I know that you're hiding something," she tells me desperately. I can see that she really wants to help so maybe I should tell her... She's been my best friend for years and, as far as I know, we've never kept things from each other so what I'm doing right now is a total b*tch move. I really should tell her.
"You need to promise me that this is going to stay between us. I'm serious, don't tell this to anyone," I say, and she answers with a quiet "yes", so I go on.
"L-Liam, he... he..." I continue hesitantly. Sophia is now standing close to me, a reassuring hand on my forearm. She's patiently waiting for me to finish my sentence, calming me down. I take a deep breath in and mentally prepare myself for what I'm about to say.
"He... he hurt me..." I whisper, barely loud enough for Sophia to hear. I feel her hand slide down from my forearm to my hand and squeeze my palm.
"A-are you serious?" she asks, probably feeling very confused. I simply nod, finding it hard to find the right words to answer her. Saying what happened out loud makes me feel horrible. My heart starts to beat faster, my hands get sweaty and start to shake. Memories that I had pushed away flood back from the darkest corner of my mind.
"What did you do?! Are you serious!? How stupid can you be?!" he screams at me. I keep apologizing for my mistake, feeling terrible. I still find it weird that Liam's getting so worked up just because I accidentally dropped a vase. He never gets this angry at me.
"Babe, it's just a vase. I'll buy you another one, I promise," I say, trying to calm him down. I see something in his eyes change. He slowly walks closer to me and roughly grabs my wrist.
"Ouch, Liam, stop! You're hurting me!" I shout in pain. Liam's looking at me with pure hatred, only hatred. He looks dangerous at this instant and that's why I flinch when he raises his hand. Instead of slapping me in the face, like I thought he was about to do, he brings his face closer to mine.
"You better clean that up, you stupid b*tch, or I'll make you," he lowly growls, sending shivers of fear down my spine. I frightfully nod, starting to understand the severity of the situation. He yanks my wrist down, sending a wave of pain from my hand to my neck. My body follows the shock so I land on my knees between the remains of the glass vase. I suddenly feel the piercing pain of the sharp glass fragments cutting the skin of my palms and knees. I involuntarily whimper in pain but still manage to pick up a few larger pieces of the debris. On my left, from the corner of my eye, I see Liam stomping out of the room and locking himself in the nearest bathroom.
Sophia brings me back to earth by engulfing me in one of her sweet hugs. She rubs my back and whispers to me a few "it's going to be fine" and "you'll get through this". Her words feel boring to me. I've been telling myself these same words for the past eight days so I'm mostly numb to them by now. However, I love how Sophia doesn't ask any questions. She just always knows how to deal with me.
"Do you want to talk about it or is it better if we wait a little bit?" Sophia asks out of kindness.
"Let's just go to class," I say. Sophia nods and walks with me to the entry. We have to separate at some point since, for the second year in a row, we aren't in the same class. I walk as slowly as possible to the classroom. When I get there, I stand in front of the closed door for a good 2 minutes before finally being ready to face my math teacher, M. John. He's probably the strictest teacher I've ever encountered so the first thing I hear as I set foot into the classroom is a welcoming 'Oh, so you finally decided to show up, miss Jones. I thought we wouldn't have the chance to see you today.' followed by the laughs of a few students. I apologize for being late and go sit at my assigned seat, sighing as I get my notebook out of my bag. What a great way to start this amazing school year, doing algebra. This is definitely going to be the worst year of my life...
