*1st news report*
At six pm on Monday, there was a hit and run just outside the Split-River High-School. Josephine Finnes was killed by a hit and run, while crossing the street to get to her car, after her after school book club. Josephine was seven...
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Warnings - this chapter has darker, intense themes. Along with some inappropriate language and talk on addiction and substance abuse. Please be advised. - m
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Jonah Finnes was trying. Trying to face everyday with a missing piece of himself. Growing up he and his sister had been close but as time passed and adulthood began they drifted. He always knew he was a bit of a handful, for lack of a better word. He needed things to do, sports, debate, parties. All of it cultivate into something to wake up for..for awhile. Anxiety built up and told him that he wasn't worth time, patience or even the breath to let him know that people where glad he was there. Everyday his mind rambled on and on that his friends might not like him, that his family worried and pitied him, that he would never live up to the expectation that his own self had made. Then one party, when his mind scream havoc, a friend offered him a joint. 'hey man, take a load off, forget your troubles' That was the start. Like all things Jonah couldn't simply have just weed, just beer. It turned to vodka joined soon by snow. To everyone else, Jonah Finnes was on the top of the world, handsome, fit and a champion at everything he put his mind too and on the road to securing a scholarship to play college football. Then his sister died. What he do, when she sat waiting for him once again? Got high and crashed a friends car. Responsibility at it's finest. Josephine had died, alone and feeling unloved; Just as he had lived. When he jumped back into the car they shared and left the school they had been to together, he decided then and there that for her, he would do better. He would try and keep trying.
It had been a year since the death of his sister. Within that time he had gotten sober, told his parents about his issues and turned to them for help, pulling them tighter as a family as they had ever been. They would always be a Josephine size piece missing in their lives but he'd be damned to keep disappointing her. So he got clean, finished up his education in a new school and got his scholarship. Now before leaving for college, not completely new but as someone who tries, he had one last thing to do.
He parked the car in the empty parking lot of the school, as the heat of the day cooled and sky turned a delicious shade of pink. Memories flooding his mind of him and Jo starting their day together, listening to music and grabbing coffee. Of her quiet singing to the radio, the sun bouncing off her oversized glasses that he always got a giggle from. To her frowns, crinkly brows when he was taking too long to leave school and she was stuck waiting on him to say goodbye to his friends. To her quiet days, when she spoke no words all day and hid in a hoodie. To the days were she never shut up, making joke after joke till he laughed so hard his sides hurt. They had, had every second of existence together, from the womb to the school. Birthdays were two cakes were placed in front of them, money to split, names to be muddled and the car to share. There was always someone to talk to, to argue with, to laugh with. Someone who just, understood in a glance. Till there wasn't.
