Harrison Woods is a 17-year-old girl attending Arbor Coast High, a boarding school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her dark past including her rocky relationship with her parents and her esteemed older brother's suicide are the reasons she landed herself at...
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I breathed in the deadly air from the cigarette: the fiery sensation hitting the back of my throat, as if setting it on fire, and it hurt. But this type of self-inflicted pain felt so good compared to will-less pain caused by some sort of shitty event (I would give an example, but I think the example that comes to mind is pretty self-explanatory).
I was sitting in the tiny garden in the backyard, the only bit of the outdoors that I was actually allowed to enjoy for a long period of time. If you could even call this "outdoors". The so-called garden was practically a small square of turf surrounded entirely by concrete walls to block me in. I could look up and stare at the sky, but everything else was blocked off. And it's not like I could go anywhere. I wasn't allowed outside anywhere else in the community for over an hour. Stupid regulations.
It had been just over a month since Otto was taken away from me, handcuffed and confused beyond belief. I hadn't been prepared in the slightest for what I was getting myself into. And not just myself, but everyone else that was involved, too. Even West.
Once the police arrested Otto, I was taken in for questioning (well, after my little episode in my dorm room, that is). I was forced to tell them everything about Otto and I's relationship, and everything that I remembered from what happened on the top of Mount Huron. Luckily for the police, I remembered every vivid detail. I told them that I consented to the relationship with Otto, although that didn't make him any less guilty. I told them what I knew about Otto and his dissociative identity disorder. The one topic I stayed away from was his creepy ass book. I still kept it with me as evidence, making sure to keep it safe in preparation for the trial that was to come.
After the questioning, the police questioned West and Jason, also. They kept it short due to Jason's injuries and West's lack of involvement, then taking me and West into a supposed "sanctuary" where there were safe houses for people involved in criminal cases. It was a place for the victims to stay out of the public eye during major court cases, and it was heavily protected by the police. In my opinion, it was a little excessive.
There were endless amounts of rules to follow. We were allowed visitors into the gated community, but only 3 times a week with a two-hour time cap. We were usually not allowed to leave the house or the premises unless at least two cops escorted us. One day I had asked to go to the coffee shop, simply craving some of their signature black coffee (the roast they made was heavenly and we didn't have that kind of coffee in the safe house). I was escorted by not two, but four police officers that day. Seeing people from my school in the coffee shop was humiliating and I remember when we'd left the shop, I turned around and saw students whispering and staring at me as if I was some sort of donkey ordering a cup of black coffee, an abnormal sight to see. Assholes.
Living in the safe house wouldn't have been so unbearable if West hadn't still been mad at me, but he was. He rarely even talked to me and when he did it was minimal, and always cold. One day I was sitting in the living room smoking a joint when West walked back in the front door after visiting Jason. He rolled his eyes and took off his jacket. His appearance was more rugged than usual: his usual slicked-back and perfectly styled hair was curly and a mess, and the dark circles under his eyes were overwhelming his face. "Smoking to numb the pain?" He had asked, scoffing at the same time. "God, you're pathetic. Your fuck-buddy is, too." And then he had left the room. That was the type of conversation I received from him these days.
My fuck-buddy, as West called him, referred to Mike Kelley, AKA Big Mike.
Ever since Mike had come to my room and found me the day everything went to shit, he started caring for me. Turns out that day he had been coming to visit me so that he could apologize for getting mad at me after the party. Once I filled him in on everything that went down (and why I was such a mess), Mike didn't leave my side.
He was my perfect distraction. Mike would come over and smuggle me drugs every so often, at least once a week. Sometimes it was marijuana, sometimes just regular cigarettes, and other times he would bring random pills (mostly oxycodone). The drugs helped me forget everything momentarily and they helped numb the pain of the fucked up situation I was in. Mike also helped numb that pain. He would listen to me when I needed to talk, hold me tight when I needed to cry, and even fuck my brains out when I just needed to feel something (and he was especially good that).
I heard the door to the tiny garden creak open and without even turning around, I knew it was him. No one else came to see me. It's not like I had any friends other than West. Jason was being cared for in the special building in the sanctuary due to his injuries, and I couldn't even fathom facing him. And not to mention, my parents flipped out when they heard about what was happening, refusing to come and support me during the trial period. They'd signed all of the sheets needed since I was a minor, but they said there was no way in hell they'd come to see me. Not after the gigantic mistake I made. So quite frankly, Mike was all I had left.
"Hey," Mike said, taking a seat next to me and I put out my cigarette using the concrete wall surrounding me. "Almost out?"
I nodded. "I have two more," I said. "Kinda getting tired of cigarettes, though. They're nasty." And that was true. As much as I smoked, I never enjoyed the taste of a cigarette. It just flat-out hurt and, not to mention, was disgusting. But as I said, the pain was tolerable.
Mike nodded understandingly. "Yeah, I got something better. But you'll have to wait," He told me, and I continued to stare straight at the wall.
I waited a moment before turning and looking at Mike, his gaze meeting mine. "Can we do something fun?"
Mike smirked. "Depends on what you mean by fun."
But he knew exactly what I meant.
So I got up and led him back into the house, entering my tiny, cramped bedroom. The room was nothing if not unpleasant. An uncomfortable twin-sized bed with plain white sheets, a generic wooden desk with the most uncomfortable chair ever, and a tiny closet for the little amount of clothes I was allowed to have (not like I ever wore anything besides sweatpants). But it didn't matter, really. It had a bed, which did the job.
