Help Me Feel

Help Me Feel - Meeting Brandon Hemings

A/N: This will most likely be a short story. Probably somewhere between twelve and fifteen chapters. Hope you like the chapter. Also, thank you all so much for the support on this! The response right now is amazing!

Chapter 1 – Meeting Brandon Hemings.

 The day I met Brandon Hemings was just another day. My jeans rubbed uncomfortably against the bandage wrapped against my upper leg, and I had to fight the urge the mess with it. It was scabbing over, and I didn't want to risk re-opening the cut. It had been longer than usual, a follow up to the particularly horrible call from my father. I could quote the entire thing, word for word. It hadn't been long, I'd been in the shower when he'd called, and the voice-mail would add to the long list of terrible things in my life.

 Right now he was somewhere in Florida, working on God knows what down there. I barely even knew what he did, but the money he sent me kept me alive so I didn't complain.

 “You're just like your mother, Andrea. Exactly like her.”

 That was it. Nine words slurred together from my father, who'd probably raided the hotel mini-fridge for every drop of alcohol it had.

 I sighed, opening my locker and collecting the books I'd need for the first half of the day. I wasn't in all advanced level classes, I wasn't amazingly talented at some sport or instrument, I just had regular classes. The first half being English, Algebra, and Physics. After lunch I had to deal with U.S. History and my only elective, Art. I'd only taken it because the teacher graded easy, and I needed it to graduate and get the hell out of school. It wasn't like I wanted, or even needed, to go to college. Why would I? What would I ever accomplish at college?

 I walked to class, looking down to avoid any stares. Everyone knew who I was somehow. They all knew about my mother from stories and what their parents told them. Hell, the school had told some people that bullying me was worse than most people because of it.

 I almost wanted to laugh at some of the things people said about it. Some went so far as to say I pulled the trigger because I didn't want to go to bed that night.

 None of them knew the truth. Not even I knew what had led to my mother's suicide. I'd never been given a reason, not that I'd had anyone to ask.

 I was minding my own business, walking down the hall paying no attention to anything when it hit me, making me drop a couple of books.

 And that's the second I met him. Brandon freaking Hemings.

 “Sorry, are you OK?” He asked me. I just shrugged, picked up my books, and made to keep walking.

 “Hey, seriously, you look kind of pale...” He said.

 I sighed, deciding now would be as good a time as any to speak. “I'm fine,”I told him, and began walking again.

 I didn't speak often. I wasn't mute or anything, I just had no reason to. I wasn't social, I didn't have friends. No one was ever home for me to talk to, and I usually let my father leave a message so I didn't have to deal with him going on and on about how similar to my mother I was; how I had the same light hair that she had, how I had the same blue eyes as she did.

 The calls had started when I was thirteen, and I'd stopped listening the day I turned fifteen, almost exactly three years ago. He'd left me a message telling me the same shit about me and my mother, and hung up when someone, clearly a bar owner, had told him to. He hadn't even remembered it was my birthday.