ACES & SCARS ↳ shameless

one. bloody beginnings

one

" bloody beginnings "

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"Name?" the lady at the front desk asks without glancing up at me once. Her eyes are fixated on the computer screen in front of her, typing away furiously. "Vivian Gallagher," I sigh and readjust the towel in my hand that's making a bad attempt to stop the blood gushing out of my nose. The lady peers her eyes above her glasses frames at me. We make eye contact for a moment before she looks at her screen and lets out a sarcastic sounding laugh. "Another Gallagher," she mutters under her breath and shakes her head. I slide down all the way into the cushioned seat and try to bury my embarrassment in my pink blood stained sweater.

We sit in silence as she continues typing so intensely that I think her fingers are gonna fall off. I'm so focused on the way this lady is typing and how I'm going to rip the red hair right from my brother's scalp that I don't realize the blood trickling down my arm from my nose. The lady so obviously notices but pretends she doesn't. She probably doesn't want to offer any help to 'another Gallagher'. Whatever. I use the drenched towel to try and wipe it off, but it just smears more blood onto my skin. I probably would be unconscious on the floor right now from all this if I wasn't so infuriated with my brother.

The amazing, wonderful lady at the desk tells me I'm good to go and I send a quick prayer up to the heavens that I'm finally free to hunt him down. I struggle balancing to my feet with the dizziness and swing my bag over my shoulder. The towel is of no use to me at this point so I toss it on the lady's desk, a little gift for her being so incredibly helpful.

I push the school's back doors open. I want to save myself whatever dignity I have left and avoid all the crackheads and delinquents smoking out in front. Usually I take the long way home. It gives me a bit of peace from the chaos that is the Gallagher house. No long way today though, I'm taking the quickest way possible. I'm going to kill him.

The front door slams against the wall from the force I open it with. Lip sits on the couch and looks back at me startled. "What the hell Viv?" He jumps up from his seat to get a better look at my bloody face. "Ian home?" I spit back. "Upstairs, what the fuck happened?!" I don't listen to what else he has to say. I sprint upstairs and barge into his room. Ian jolts upright on his bed and his face drops immediately when he looks at mine, "holy shit, what happened to you?" I cross my arms and stare at him. I want lasers to come shooting out of my eyes and burn his little freckled face up in flames. "You wanna know what happened? Maeve Milkovich happened!"

Ian's jaw drops. He looks guilty. He looks like he knows exactly what he did to result in Maeve fucking Milkovich punching me in the fucking face. "What did she say?" he asks, shifting to the edge of his bed. He's as pale as a ghost. "She said to pass it onto my idiotic brother!" I say through gritted teeth and shove him. He puts his arms up in defense, "Mandy's telling everyone that I attacked her but I didn't! I didn't even touch her, I swear!"

I can feel my blood boil. Why the hell would he hang around Mandy Milkovich in the first place? He knows better. He's supposed to know better. In fact, he's the one that first told me to stay away from those siblings. Maeve Milkovich was right about one thing, my brother is a fucking idiot. "Why the fuck are you messing with the Milkovich's Ian?!" I have to hold myself back from shoving him again. "I wasn't! Mandy followed me home from work! She came onto me!"

That's not a good enough answer for me. I pick up his pillow and smack him with it. "What," I scream and hit him with the pillow, "the fuck," another hit, "is wrong with you!" another hit, but this time to the face. Ian is squirming in his bed as I keep bringing his pillow down on him, "Ouch! I'm sorry!"

A hand pulls my arm back and I turn to see Lip. I didn't even hear him come into the room. He takes the pillow from my hand and throws it back down onto Ian's bed, then holds out a towel. "Here. You're getting blood all over my room." I snatch it from his hand, "thanks." I hold the towel to my nose and stare down at Ian. This time the lasers are scorching his ginger hair.

Ian continues going on about how he didn't do anything and how it was all Mandy and blah blah blah. Honestly, I believe him. The Milkovich's are bad news. Like, really really bad. And even though Ian's annoying as fuck, he would never do some shit like that. That still doesn't excuse him letting Mandy into our house. I force myself not to reach for the pillow again at that thought. In my head, I'm beating Ian to a pulp.

Our neighbor Veronica ends up being brought over by Lip because according to him my nose looks like shit. Veronica tells everyone she used to be a nurse, but really she just worked housekeeping in Cook County. Bedpans and shit sheets were her specialty. Then she got fired for selling medical supplies on eBay. With that being said, she's the best we got.

"Lucky it's not broken," Veronica says, holding ice to my nose, sitting beside me on the living room couch. "I don't feel lucky," I respond, flinching when she touches my nose. Now that the adrenaline rush of wanting to murder my brother has worn off, I can feel how much my nose fucking hurts. "Never thought I'd see the day Viv Gallagher gets a beating," Kev chimes in as he runs around collecting all of the things that we 'stole' from him. Whenever there's a Veronica, there's a Kevin. They're supposed to be together, but he's more like her pet. He's like a lost dumb little puppy that she keeps around for the fun of it. I like him though, and I like her too. Our household would crumble to pieces if we didn't have the two of them. "There's a first for everything," Lip replies to Kevin's comment. He sits on the other couch in the living room across from Veronica and I. I shoot him the deadliest look I can possibly make, "shut up."

After a while of nurse Veronica checking out my nose and Kev rummaging through our whole downstairs, I tell the three of them I'm gonna go up and change. I get up to walk towards the stairs and see Ian sitting on one of the steps. He looks at me with that sad face he always makes and then looks down. I feel kind of bad I went off on him, but then again he was the one stupid enough to mess with Mandy Milkovich. Whatever, I'll deal with him later. I run up the stairs and brush past him, making my way to the bathroom.

Shit. I stare at my unrecognizable reflection in the dirty mirror. I knew I looked fucked up, but not this fucked up. There is blood literally everywhere. My favorite pink sweater is all shades of red now. 'Never thought I'd see the day Viv Gallagher gets a beating'.  Yeah, me neither Kev. In all of my fourteen years of being on this Earth, I have never gotten beat up. Not once. Which is pretty extraordinary when you look at my siblings track records.

I scrub the blood off my face, neck, my arm, and somehow my forehead too. As I'm leaving the bathroom I nearly trip over Liam's little stuffed bunny left on the floor. I catch myself before I fall face first. Wouldn't that be my luck to get my nose bashed in twice in the same day. I grab his bunny off the bathroom tile and toss it into his empty crib in our room. Him and my little sister are still out so I get the room all to myself for once. Thank god.

My blood stained sweater gets tossed on the floor, I don't have the energy to wash it now. I throw on one of Ian's old shirts I stole, a black one that reads 'HIJOS DEL DIABLOS',  and flop down onto my bed. I want to yell. I want to rip my hair out. How am I supposed to go to school tomorrow? How am I ever supposed to show my face in public again? I grab my pillow and scream bloody murder into it, kicking my legs like a little child.

High school was supposed to be a new chapter. A new beginning. This was my chance to give the Gallagher name a new meaning. I was gonna get good grades, have a decent friend group, and stay out of trouble at all costs. That's all down the fucking drain now. All because Ian had to go and mess with the Milkovich's. Thanks to him, I'm on Maeve Milkovich's radar now and for the rest of my miserable life.