My Favorite Pouge // JJ MAYBANKS

Prolauge

🛑 TW: talks of suicidal thoughts, drug abuse/ abuse

"Pack all your shit we leave tomorrow" Ari's mom says to her as she lights the cigarette between her rotted teeth.
She lives in a sketchy town in Florida with her mother Jen short for Jennifer, Her moms newest boyfriend Rob, and her older brother Ryan who's basically her best friend, only 3 years older than she.

Now when you tend to grow up in a fucked up household you normally become close with your siblings. Which in her case was accurate.
As long as she can remember she's lived in the same house her whole life with the same mom and same brother, and all her mothers different boyfriends that would come and go. Ari's mother is a drug addict and an alcoholic, and she stopped seeing her dad after she was about 13, so her whole life Ari and Ryan have kinda been on there own, taking care of each other.

A couple things about Ari is that she doesn't like being on her own, even if she always had been.
She always needed a distraction.
What she meant by distraction was that there where things that could fill the empty feeling she always seemed to have, she would obsess over things like drugs, alcohol, or a boyfriend she normally only kept for a couple months. Her most recent distraction being all three of those things, her favorite was them all combined anyways.

She had a shitty taste in men, but she easily figured out why. She figured the reason was being that's who she attracted, and that's kinda who she was attracted too.

She figured she was attracted to them because it was something familiar to make her feel more normal and less alone.

She never really knew why she attracted them to her but shell figure it out sooner than later. Ari never meant to have to guy she picked hurt her even more than she already was but it's something that she never learned to pick up on, she would dumbly hope that they would be the one to finally give her hope and forever fill the emptiness she had in her heart. But it never was.

New start. New start. New start.

Her most recent boyfriend Noah, who to her seemed like was gonna be her first decent boyfriend she's ever had. He of course Proved her very wrong but she didn't even blame him, she more so blamed herself. Like I said before she would dumbly believe that "this" was the one to save her....

They had been dating for about 5 months it took a couple weeks before Noah finally put his hands on her. The one thing about her is she always felt like she had deserved it.

When you grow up getting abused and neglected you tend to get the same until you realize you don't deserve it. She just wasn't there yet.

Noah was originally her dealer, until she ran out of money and had nothing but herself to pay with, ever since then they started seeing each other. And Noah grew obsessive.

Ari knew she didn't really deserve the constant beatings and interrogation from him. But her whole life she's just been dealing with the same shit so she didn't mind adding extra trama as long as she got her free distractions (drugs).

Ryan never liked any of Ari's boyfriends which she never blamed him because neither did she but it was something else to focus on. Ryan was the only human being to ever care for her. When shit got super bad she would always go to Ryan for help.

But with Noah it was different he wasn't some high school bullshit boyfriend he was the 22 year old hood rat obsessive boyfriend that carried around guns and had eyes and ears everywhere. Ari desperately needed a new start.

The thing that was constant with Ari was drugs and alcohol. She doesn't remember the age she took her first sip of alcohol but it was around 6 probably, the first time she smoked weed was 9, first line? 13, pills? 13.
Ever since then the times she's high on some shit are the best of times and when shit gets extra hard all she wants is to get high. Weed was always a necessity, an every day thing if you will ;) to calm her and make shit more enjoyable mostly to help kinda forget things she didn't want to remember.

Moving on to something less depressing, school.
Surprisingly Ari was very smart she learned at a young age she was going to try and get the most out of her ghetto public school. She always thought of school as her only way out of this life she'd been born into. Almost like her only hope, plusss she never really had to try that hard to get a 90% on her exam or am A in her math class.

Ariana was naturally beautiful and slim which had there pluses but also lots of negatives throughout her childhood up to now. But she took everything she had gotten and made the best of it. She felt strong and independent and unbreakable, because she knew it couldn't get much worse, she wasn't afraid to die she was ready to. She would often drift off into her mind and think about dying and imagine leaving the earth.

She wasn't stupid, even if she played dumb half the time just to figure them out. It was one of her natural habits figuring out everybody else to avoid thinking about who she was. She enjoyed making people nervous just by looking at them in the eye.

She's kind and caring to the people that give it back.
To her she worships them because she knows it's extremely rare. And she hasn't figured out yet if it was rare because it was her and the cards she's been
Dealt or if it was rare for everyone.

This is why she needed that new start she was ready to go and there wasn't much keeping her here. She can't stop thinking about if moving will help her or make things worse. One of her worst flaws was she always had to be sure and she wasn't, that scared the living shit out of her. But she knew what she would do if this whole outer banks small town shit didn't go her way. She knew if she couldn't find something to put some life into her she wouldn't stay much longer.

__________________________________
Authors note:

Okay so hello all!!!!
I hope you enjoyed the background and I'm sorry if that shit hit a lil to close to home trust me I know.

But it's apart of Ari's character you guys had to know. Now I'm going to say it again I don't want to trigger anyone or anything so please stop reading now.

And know whatever your going through isn't forever and you won't feel empty forever. This is not glamorizing anything it's just a story please don't read if your going through drug addiction or anything like that it's not worth it beautiful you got this!!

Now this does follow the Netflix plot but there's things that scramble it up a bit. Like extra lines from characters and missing lines and maybe different opinions on characters you might develop reading my book. And this is a lot darker and more mature than the Netflix book so beware it's not only a couple kids lookin for gold?!?!?

And if anything gets confusing just ignore it, again this is all a little dark and kinda my own mind so please just don't trip yourself out on anything. This book is me just loosing my shit and deciding to write a story to distract myself and kinda write things down to know how I feel. Anyways I'll be posting chapters as soon as possible!!

Happy reading kiddos!