Please Don't Go (The Story of Us Book 3)

Chapter 14- Contribution Not Cause

TW:Mention/ description of depression and mentions of suicidal thoughts and ideations.

Have you ever woken up and asked yourself if things would be easier if you just closed your eyes and never woke up? That's how Amanda feels most mornings, ever since she heard her team confirm her worst fears, that she was a monster. Of course, they weren't the cause of her depression or the severity of it, they simply contributed to it. That's how depression is, after all. It's not one singular event, big or small, it's all the events added together.

Amanda used to wonder, when she was young and assumed everyone had bad thoughts and just pushed them away, why such small things could have such a big effect on her. She could take the physical and mental abuse of her own father but whenever one of her brothers turned their backs on her, her mind told her it was her fault. That she was worthless and they knew it. That everyone but her knew the truth.

Those are the thoughts that plague her mind at most hours as she lays in her bed. She couldn't tell you how long she's been laying down, only moving to use the bathroom or shower on a far less-than-needed schedule. Or when Spencer moved her.

Spencer. He was the only one that cut through the bad thoughts. She wanted to get better for him but she didn't know how. Well, that's not technically true. She knew that she should get on anti-depressants but she feared that would make things worse. Exercise would help as well. That was what she wanted to do but she couldn't seem to find the strength of will to do so. Had she been her normal self, she would've snorted at the very idea of not having a strong enough will to do something. Now she couldn't even bring herself to stand.

Right now, Amanda was laying in her bed in one of the bedrooms on the first floor of her house. This is because despite no longer needing a cane, Spencer had trouble carrying his own weight on his knee let alone her weight as well. So he and Kristen had set up one of the downstairs guest rooms. The two of them were in the living room, talking about her 'condition' as they called it and Amanda was once again staring at a wall and hating herself even more for hurting the people she loved and listening to her brain tell her that everyone would be better off if she were dead and no longer a burden.

Or at least that's what she was doing until she heard the sound of the window open. Had she been herself she would've assumed it was a robber and grabbed whatever she could to fend them off. As it is, she could barely focus on the fact that the window opened, let alone think about why it happened, when she hears a familiar voice. "Amanda?" Derek asks and Amanda finds herself frowning as she turns over to face him.

Derek didn't know what to expect when he managed to vault himself over Amanda's fence and into her backyard to sneak into the room that he suspected housed Amanda since it was the only one with a light on when Spencer got home the night before, not realizing his friend had followed him. That's not true, he knew exactly what he thought he would see. Amanda, the one he knew, turning to look at him. He knew that she was depressed, had heard Kristen say she hadn't been out of bed in months but his mind just couldn't picture her like that.

Now it could and he wished that it hadn't. The first thing he noticed was her pallor. The only light was what was coming from the window that he had come in through and it was clear that Amanda hadn't been in the sun for a while. Her usual tan skin looked pale as moonlight and accentuated the gauntness of her face. Amanda was already a skinny girl but she was very toned and the muscle filled out her body nicely but now, laying in bed and barely facing him, she looked like she were on her death bed.

It was clear the blonde hadn't eaten in a while both by her appearance and the plates of untouched food in the room. He clocked the untouched glass of water on the bed and tried to recall how long it took someone to die of thirst and hunger. He finally pulls his eyes away from the room and focuses his gaze back on her to find her looking at him. When she first glanced at him, there seemed to be a sort of fog covering her eyes as if she saw him didn't register him.