The Signing

Tainted Pages

        After the last bell of the school day rang, I pulled out my phone to text Chris my address while walking to where Katrina picks me up at the back of the school. Chris responded, saying that he had a meeting for some club and would probably be there around 4. I figured I would be able to chill with Dez until then, since we usually carpooled. I saw her waiting on the sidewalk and walked up to her.

        "Ew," I said, giving her a disgusted face.

        "Ick," she responded, scrunching her nose and crossing her eyes, and shortly after, giggling at our ridiculousness.

        "Chris won't be over until 4 because he has some club meeting thing, so you can come over until then," I explained.

        "Okay, cool," she replied. "Oh, I have a question. Do your parents know about the cutting?"

        "Well, Katrina does, but we didn't really talk about it all that much because of my birthday and my dad going to work early this morning. We're supposed to talk about it today," I told her.

        "Oh, well if you want to vent to me or anything after you talk you know what to do," she said, smiling. I nodded and smiled back, but I really didn't want to talk about it then. I knew I had a long conversation ahead of me that I was dreading, and I just wanted to get it off my mind.

        "Do you have your notebook with you?" I asked.

        "Of course! I've been working on it periodically throughout the day. Have you done anything more with yours?" I shook my head in response. "Well, then I know what we're gonna do when we get to your place." I lightly laughed as Katrina pulled up in our silver Honda Civic and we hopped into the back seats.

        We had the usual conversation of "How was school?" and "Did you learn anything interesting?" and "Did you have any tests?" and "How did you do?" until we pulled into our garage. Dez and I got out and headed immediately inside and up to my room. Dez sighed and we both dropped our backpacks and sat down on the couch I had in my room.

        "So, you wanna work on the notebooks?" Dez asked.

        "Sure!" I got mine off of my desk while she pulled hers out of her backpack. "So how exaclty are we going to do this? Like, what do we write about?"

        "Whatever you want, I guess," she replied.

        "What are you gonna say?"

        "I don't know. I'll probably just write about myself and how I found out about them and stuff like that."

        "Okay," I said, getting a few ideas for my own notebook. Dez took out an array of gel pens and I grabbed a purple one. I debated on how to start before just going for it:

        Dear 5sos,

        Hi. I'm Violet Mitchell and I honestly don't know what I should put in this notebook, to be brutally honest. I guess I'll start with some background information because why not? I'm seventeen and my best friend is Desiree Evans, which you will probably find out more about if you read her notebook. She's great, though. She's been there for me through everything. I've had my share of shit, but everyone seems to have their stories. Here's mine:

        I was born into a unique family, but then again, who isn't? When I was nine, I started to realize that life wasn't a bunch of unicorns and rainbows as I had originally planned on it being. My mom had started seeing my dad's used-to-be best friend while they were still married. However, she did this because he was abusive to her and didn't treat her as half of a human. She fell madly in love with Mark, but this didn't sit too well with my dad once he found out. He used this as an excuse to attack my mother, which led her to her breaking point. Even though she had so much with Mark, it apparently wasn't enough. I found all of this out when I found a suicide note on the desk next to the closet where I found her hanging.