a star, a nightmare and the night of my life | adopted by heathers fic

CHAPTER 5

Hey violetttttt!! You're still coming to the theatre today right?

A text from Barrett popped up on my phone. I smiled, sitting up on my bed. My room was an absolute mess. There were clothes, books and blankets absolutely everywhere, but other than the theatre, it was my closest thing to a safe space.

Yeah suree <33 what time do u want me to get there?

I typed back and waited for a response, still buried in my blankets. My bed was honestly more of a nest than a bed.

Uhhhhhh idk

I giggled slightly, though Barrett eventually came through with an answer. It turned out that I had several hours to chill. Rather than staying under the covers, I decided to drag myself out of my nest. Luckily, I had heard my dad slink out of the house yesterday. He returned early in the morning, but his snores had filled the house ever since.

I chucked on a black hoodie and white jeans then rushed to the bathroom. I examined my reflection in the mirror and applied makeup where I could. I didn't own much, and the few products I had were all drugstore. Cheap, yet effective.

Anyways, there was... A lot to cover up today. My face was littered in seemingly millions of tiny cuts. I sighed as deeply as physically possible once I finished my makeup and got to rearranging my black hair over my face.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite cover enough. I couldn't just lie and say it was a school thing or something. It was clearly injuries from glass; injuries that had taken me ages to clean out. I wasn't convinced that Alice could not put two and two together. Same with Katie - there was  also an assortment of fresh cuts on my wrist.

To do list: fix my face with makeup (work in progress), buy some bandages, not get killed, have no one at the theatre notice and or find out about anything whatsoever.

...

Holding a coffee in one hand and a spare bag of makeup and bandages in the other, I set off to the theatre. Luckily, it wasn't too far away from the coffee shop I had stopped at.

"Violet!"

When I heard someone shout my name, I flinched automatically. The memory of my dad screeching my name was one uncomfortably fresh. When he would shout my name, something bad would happen. It took me a second to pinpoint who the voice belonged to, but once I did, I plastered a smile on my face and turned around gingerly.

"Hey Jon," I grinned as he ran up beside me and switched his pace to match mine, "How are you?"

"Good, thanks," Jon returned my smile, "And you, midget?"

I gasped, "I am not a midget! I am of a perfectly normal height, thank you very much."

"You're shorter than all of us, Violet," Jon deadpanned, "Even Elle."

"Okay, maybe I'm a little short," I shrugged awkwardly, taking another sip of my coffee as we settled into silence. I squashed down any anxious thoughts of 'what if he just hates me and thinks I'm annoying', and told myself that Jon was just tired. I was too.

"Did you get some sleep midget?" Jon asked, to which I nodded, "How many hours?"

After sighing at the nickname, I lied straight into his face, "I don't know, like 7?"

"Aren't kids supposed to get 8 or more hours of sleep though?" Jon questioned sceptically.

"Well, I got more sleep than usual, so," I mumbled.

"How many hours do you usually sleep?" Whoops. I had seemed to not realise I was speaking aloud. The mistakes we make when we are sleep-deprived, right? Well, I'm technically always sleep-deprived, but I really did sleep more than usual last night. Fainted and or collapsed on my bathroom floor, then woke up an hour or two later to my dad leaving the house. After scrolling for another hour, I slept some more until I inevitably woke up far too early for a non-school day.