↹ HEARTBREAK // M C U ↹ DISCONTINUED

0.6

Jet used to love winter. When she was younger, her mother and her spent a few years in the South, mostly Texas. She was around six or seven when she first saw snow and it was just about the most amazing thing she'd ever experienced. She loved making snow angels and breaking icicles off the roof to chew on (even if she realized later on how gross the ice probably was). Even though she hated how much faster it became night and was always left shivering when she went to sleep, it used to be worth it to her.

In Alaska, the sun never really came out, not as far north as she was. She slept at odd times, so even if there was a few hours of daylight, she didn't see it. Jet was never scared of the dark, but once she was alone in the woods, she learned to be afraid. The cabin creaked as the wind howled, branches knocking on all sides and animals sounding like men as they walked closer and closer.

Mom left her plenty of supplies. Originally, she'd said it would be for a couple of weeks, but after seeing just how much there was, Jet realized it'd be much longer. She was constantly cold the first few weeks. Mother had spent the whole day with her, shown her where to find the sugar and the poles for fishing and the shotgun and its shells under the bed. The ax to chop wood from the tree she felled that morning when they arrived. Together, they sawed the trunk into logs small enough that Jet's twelve-year-old arms could chop through them. Mother unpacked a whole box of books onto a rickety shelf by the door. She was supposed to study while mom was gone and she was leaving a lot, so she wouldn't get bored.

When Jet woke up the next morning, mom was gone, back to work. She was a big girl by then, almost thirteen. Jet convinced herself that if she was really good, mom might throw her a birthday party.

The party never happened. She didn't even notice her birthday had passed until two weeks into January. She read all the books, finished all the homeschooling. Redid it all, twice. She cleaned the cabin and then trashed it so she could clean it again. She chopped all of the wood, using the lamp to see where she was swinging.

It was cold. Lonely. Isolating.

She killed a bear, from the roof of her cabin. It had gotten into the barrel of trash she'd failed to burn the night before, then broken down the door looking for more food. She'd shoved the box of shells into her pants, grabbed the gun, and climbed out the window, up the brick chimney. It managed to cut the back of her calf with its claws, but she made it up. Shot it five times, then six. The kickback nearly knocked her off the roof. Tears froze on her face, turning her eyelashes into blurry little icicles.

Mom came back for her two weeks later. The bear had rotted outside the cabin. The door was held in the frame with duct tape and the medical-grade staples from the first aid kit. She'd used them on her leg too, before wrapping it in gauze. Crying, screaming, begging for help the whole time. But, nobody was there.

They left Alaska after that. Went to Denver. Jet's only souvenir was the two long scars on the back of her leg.

She dreamed of Alaska for a long time. Every time she woke up and it was still dark out, she felt the heart-stopping dread. The awful ache in her gut, telling her she had to get the gun, get on the roof. Telling her she was alone and that she wasn't safe.

They got less frequent as time went on, but the memories lingered in the back of her head. She usually craved cigarettes the next day.

It was after Alaska that Jet first got high. She was fourteen, enrolled as a freshman at a local high school. It didn't matter that she knew all of the subject matter or that she was unused to being around people after so long in isolation. It was easy to end up in a situation where she could get high. And after that, she kept doing it; pain relief, simple as that. When she couldn't sleep, when she couldn't stop thinking. It made things easier to handle and with her mom gone as much as she was, it was easy to hide. And it made sitting through classes a lot easier. She was good at handling it, at keeping that fuzzy tint hidden.