Ashley ✓

Nineteen | High

SOTC: Revival by Selena Gomez

(Ashley's Memory)

My initial high had worn off quicker than I thought.

That electrical, bubbling euphoria that had coarse through my veins after knocking over a vase had been intense. Every spark of the feeling induced me to dance around my room and laugh like an idiot when dear father banished me in there to contemplate my actions, for someone noticed me.

I was actually alive.

But after Father and Chasity barged in and verbally attacked me for the final time, Father screaming about how the vase was a reminder of his greatest stock investment and Chasity about how it was her favorite hiding spot for the good flour, it had worn off.

Just like that, my cherished, initial high was dust.

I couldn't understand.

I didn't want to understand.

I couldn't and didn't want to fathom what sin I committed to have my one shred of happiness torn away from me in the viciousness of a heart from its life-giving veins. Like a child from their mother.

A week later, I had once again mourned the loss of my little flicker of hope during Lunch. I had cracked my knuckles quietly, trying not to draw attention to myself as I continued suffocating in sorrow.

Then it happened.

"Literally move!" Lindsay Alan, the most fawned over cheerleader, screeched as she drove her shoulder into mine. This caused me to stumble as she proceeded to get in front of me in the linch line with her friends.

But instead of escaping my spot to bawl my eyes out in the bathroom like I would've, something started.

Those whispers started.

One by one, mental whispers penetrated through the cracks of the labyrinth constructing my brain in tongues. Sharp, hoarse tongues that must've resembled Eve's before her teeth kissed the abundant juices of the forbidden fruit, ones that told me:

Punch Lindsay.

A gasp exited my lips upon the aggressive nature of the words echoing in my head.

Punch Lindsay!

I looked at Lindsay Alan. Her hot pink acrylic graced one of the soccer boy's chest in sickening patterns. Her friends had squealed over the lunchline how cute her and Soccer Boy were to a crescendo where a sum of Eigth graders shouted, "Shut up!"

Punch Lindsay!

PUNCH LINDSAY!

And suddenly, I had clasped Lindsay's shoulder and spun her around.

"Literally, what the fre—" she stared.

Her poor sentence, for it had ended as my knuckles contacted her nose.

Hard.

Lindsay's hand had smacked her own face as her ass crashed on the floor. I could still remember how she scuttled backwards, shrieking, "OH MY GOD— OH MY GOD, YOU HIT ME! SHE HIT ME!"

Everyone in the lunchroom had lost it.

Screams erupted from every corner of the cafeteria as my fist lowered and my body paralyzed. A nerd dropped her books in the force of an atomic bomb next to me. The class president had a full-blown seizure as teachers swarmed me, they too losing their heads as they had seized my arms and dragged me away from the scene.

But the whole time, I had been possessed in a daze higher than white vapor, sparks electrifying my chest.

Because suddenly my high was back.

<><><>

"Ashley, you awake?"

"Yeah, I'm awake," I whispered, snapping out of the memory and sitting up in my bed Friday evening. I turned to the clock on the vanity, which read the lovely 11:00 P.M. "Did something happen?"

Sienna exhaled. "I know this is sudden, but I'm sneaking out to this rager and..." Her voice trailed off.

"Yeah?"

"I was wondering if you wanna roll with me there. My crush is going and I really wanna go. Francesca's coming, too, but she's going to meet with some other friends. So... you down to come with?"

I blinked.

Sienna's silhouette turned her head left to the window, the moonlight accenting her jaw. "You don't gotta. I don't wanna pressure you to do anything," she assured me as I rubbed in inner corners of my eyes.

If I already know I'm not going to sleep, though...

"Yeah, sure," I finally answered her after a pause. "Sure, I'll go with you."

Buckle up. Things are about to get really messy in these next chapters.