The Sidekick

Chapter Eight: The Room Behind the Closet

Warning: She bites herself in a not great way in this and will continue to for quite a while. Make good choices.

Bronx is distant the next day, when she gets herself breakfast from the kitchens downstairs people stare, whenever she looks up they quickly advert their eyes though. She'd calmed down a lot since last night and was distantly aware that she'd instigated both fights and was therefore probably in the wrong but honestly all she felt was numb.

It was an odd sort of numb, like she was watching the world from outside her body, not quite able to grasp at anything. Time felt like it was going too fast while she was going too slow, she was tired without needing to sleep.

Bronx ate her food without tasting anything and went back to her room, she laid down above the covers and stared at the wall. She heard a knock and the door opened, Bronx rolled over and saw her mother staring down at her frowning.

"It's two in the afternoon, were you planning on getting out of bed today?" She sounds harsh, maybe it was warranted but Bronx didn't really care. In response Bronx mustered up all her energy to roll back over and stare at the wall, she was a bit shocked to find out how late it was but everything felt to distant for her to really care.

Magda sighs and leaves the room the door clicks shut and suddenly Bronx is crying. It isn't soft, not just tears going down her cheeks, instead her body shakes with sobs and she'd practically wailing. Spit is coating her lips and mixing with snot, she keeps sucking in her bottom lip to try and calm down but it's not working, the tears keep coming and she can barely breath through the snot in her nose and throat.

Eventually her pinky finger ends up in her mouth as she's wiping tears that won't stop coming, she bites down hard and for a second there is relief. She does it again, this time biting hard on the fatty part around her thumb, once and then again. Slowly she work her way around her entire hand no finger is untouched until her hand is a mess of teeth marks and a bit of blood. 

Miraculously she stops crying and the numb feeling has receded, it might just be worse being able to feel though. Her chest feels like something has clawed out of it and her entire body aches for a hug, to bury her face in her Dads chest and not let go.

But he isn't here a voice in her head says. You drove him out because you're broken and now he hates you, she bites her forearm and grinds her teeth in, and you defiled yourself so now, no matter how much you beg he will never want you back. Her arm hurts and her head hurts and all she wants to do is go back to that numb feeling.

Bronx walks out onto the balcony, it was far too low for how far she seemed to travel every time she went u the elevator but it was a nice view of the street and surrounding buildings. She leaned against the railing and it swayed a bit sending a jolt down her body but it didn't scare her. She did it again and felt the jolt again, a little panic and a quick shot of adrenaline, she did it over and over until the jolt didn't happen again. Maybe this was why people skydived, it never made sense until then that the panic could feel good, it made you feel alive.

She leaned forward one last time, as hard as she could and there was a creak, the railing broke off a bit and this time instead of lasting for only a moment the jolt hit and stayed, Bronx felt her face light up in glee, she laughed and laughed, the world was almost manageable again.

~

Bronx wrote the conclusion to her essay on the characteristics of epic heroes. The whole time she was writing it she was thinking of the brave and indomitable Captain Man. She missed him, it'd been almost three weeks since she left and four days since she chopped her hair and was disavowed by both her parents. Her mother had been mostly absent in the days following their fight and no one from Swellview had texted her since the fight. She was lonely and sick of the never ending Harry Potter marathons and Office re-runs. She was ready to go home but that little voice in her head kept reminding her that her father didn't want her anymore.

Bored out of her mind and missing her shitty mattress and bad auto-snacker food she left her room that was almost staring to feel like a prison cell. An attendant rushed up to her but before they could ask what she wanted Bronx held up a hand and said she was going to take a walk around the building. She was well aware if she left unsupervised someone would come find her and drag her back but she didn't want to leave, just leave that room.

She stared at floor twelve, the highest the buttons went until the blue button, even though it should have been just a floor below she rushed down what had to have been at least five floors if not more. Bronx had mostly gotten used to it but it made her wonder a lot.

Floor twelve was made up of other rooms, Bronx had been told they were ones left over from when the building was a hotel, floor eleven (Which didn't rush unless you went there from the blue floor) was a bunch of apartments along with floors ten and nine; the rest of the building had been ripped out to accommodate what ever her mothers empire did.

Bronx was wandering floor five when she saw a door between two conference rooms, she opened it to reveal a simple janitorial closet, but as she was about to leave she saw a glint at the back of the closet. She goes back and sees a door handle, circular and well worn.

The room beyond the closet seems to be way to big for the space it should have, it's full of different plastic boxes, Bronx walks over and opens one, it's filled with leaves of some kind, so are a bunch of the others, she's about to pull out her phone to see if Schwoz knows what it is when she opens one to find a bunch of little bags of white powder.

Bronx gasps and stumbles back into a stack of boxes with those leaves in them, she decides to grab a few leaves and get the fuck out of there before someone finds her. She walks back to her room with the leaves stashed in her bra so no one could see them sticking out of her pockets.

~

Bronx paces back and forth, the leaves were on he bed and she sent a picture to Schwoz, and he told her they were two different species of a plant from South America called Coca. The species were Erythroxylum coca and Erythroxylum novogranatense also called E. novogranatense. In other word the two plants used to make cocaine were sitting in a secret room waiting to be turned into the drug her mother loved oh so much.

Oopsies I accidentally decided to reveal the empire, anyway sorry about the rollercoaster that was this chapter. Also I didn't edit this, I wrote it in one sitting and then posted it, I might update it later I might not.

Comments are always welcome -Lucille