"And lastly, that's Madison, or Mads, my little sister who is also trying to climb up the broken lifeguard tower. We're only a year apart. When she's not doing some odd job for extra cash she is on the HMS Pogue with the rest of us. Most loyal perso...
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"Jayj, there's blood on the mirror."
JJ kept playing the words over in his mind going over every possible worst case scenario each one worse than the last. He thought about where she was, Holland and Ravine, and couldn't understand why she was almost on Figure Eight. Was she headed there on purpose or just driving around? He revved the bike, his grip on the throttle tighter than it should have been, as he cut through the Montgomery's backyard. He wasn't about to waste time on trivial things like roads. His stomach flipped at the sight of her sitting on the curb, under the street light, seemingly lost in thought as her shoulders shook with muted cries.
"Maddie!" He called out, parking his bike off to the side as he jogged over to her sitting on the curb. The nervousness he was already feeling only amplified when he saw the blood rolling down her face, dripping onto her shirt. "Are you okay? Jesus," he dropped to his knees in front of her and took a bandana out of his pocket pressing it to her head. "Baby, what happened?"
Pope had left ten minutes ago with the promise that she would be fine until Kiara got there and she had meant it at the time. All things considered it wasn't the worst day. The reality of it all had finally started to set in and she started to fully believe it wasn't all some nightmare she was going to wake up from at any second. Her and JJ's argument from yesterday was still in the back of her mind. She'd have to talk to him eventually because really how much could she push him away until he didn't come back.
The house was quiet, too quiet, so much so that it was deafening. It was the first time since John B's death that she was as alone as she felt. The Chateau seemed bigger than it ever had before the wooden panels on the walls smelled almost musty from the ocean air, the hum of the refrigerator only a reminder that she had two less mouths to feed, but it was the clock sitting on the end table tick, tick, ticking away that was the last straw.
Madison didn't even know where the small round thing even came from or how it got on the table. She couldn't remember ever noticing it, she certainly never heard it before but the house had never been this quiet either, but now it was the only thing she could focus on. It was almost mocking her that time was moving forward without them, without John B, without Sarah, time was endless and they were not.
The stool she had been sitting on at the counter knocked over as she got up, nearly running to the thing that was taunting her. She snatched the clock off the table and chucked it at the wall as hard as she could, the plastic breaking and leaving a little white smudge on the wall. The ticking had stopped, the clock now in pieces on the floor, and something in Madison snapped.
Suddenly, it wasn't just the clock that was mocking her, it was the pictures on the wall, the unopened mail piled by the door, the empty liquor bottles, the lumpy cushions on the couch, the random bandana hanging from the back of the door handle. Every single thing in that house had become too much and she wasn't sure when she started, when she had decided it was okay to trash her home, the only memories of her family she had left, but she couldn't stop.
