Smile For Me

~3~

A/N

^^ Damon.

Another unedited chapter... oh well. I bet you are all smart enough to notice if I've made any slip ups and just ignore them right?

~3~

Her thoughts were confirmed the next morning when she stepped in front of the mirror. She did look worse but it wasn't just her bruises that looked worse. Her face was paler that usual, eyes duller and the bags under them looked rather dark, almost bruise like. She was tired, both mentally and physically exhausted. She didn't want to face the day ahead, as soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs she knew that she would be blasted with questions from her parents. All she wanted to do was go to school which was very out of character for her. She just sighed and made her way to the bathroom, when the water was hot she sat down, letting the water blast onto her body. She thought about the previous nights events and remembered that Damon was still here when she went to sleep, so now her hopes were that he had left. She finished her shower, got changed and grabbed the entire packet of cigarettes as well as her lighter. Shoving them into her pockets she made her way downstairs, deciding not to grab any lunch, hoping that could lessen the chance of coming into contact with her family. She drew in a sharp breath actually ran to the front door and much to her surprise she managed to get out of the house without her family seeing her. She began walking, noticed Damons car still parked in the driveway, and as soon as she was off the property she reached into her pocket and retrieved the cigarrettes and lit one up, thankfully taking a long drag from it. And there it is again, the instant calm. She closed my eyes and stopped walking, this cigarette, this death stick seemed to be the only thing to really make her feel okay lately. Then her short moment of bliss ended as she heard a car beep and pull up beside her.

"Maggie, are you... smoking?" Her brother asked disbelievingly.

Then she did something once again completely out of the ordinary she laughed without any humour and spoke in a way that made Damons spine crawl "Yea? And what are you going to do about it hero? Go run off and tell on me? Fuck off Damon" She continued walking and he drove slowly next to her.

"How long have you been doing this for?"

She ignored him and kept walking and smoking like she normally would. Damon tried to talk to her a few more times before giving up and speeding away, she mentally congradulated herself, she didn't cave in, didn't give him what he wanted. She was getting stronger.

*

When she entered Science, the class she shared with Phoenix and Harrison she tried not to draw attention to herself and beelined straight to her seat at the back of the class. But her attempts failed, she was the first thing they noticed and their eyes were locked on her. How long until the entire school knows about what happened? She thought, its a surprise that its not the trending gossip subject already. Should she ask them to keep it quiet or will that just make the attention worse if she talks to them with everybody watching? She decided to just act normal and sat in her seat, staring at the front of the class where the teacher was waiting for the last few students to shut up. She saw Harrison and Phoenix take brief and often glances over their shoulder to look at her but tried to pretend like she didn't notice. Once the teacher had assigned them some work to do in a textbook she began working, hoping that the task could be a distraction. Then she heard footsteps and a person sat down next to her, she quickly looked over at the person out of curiosity and was surprised to see Phoenix sitting next to her.

"What do you want?" She hissed.

Phoenix looked nervous and awkward as he thought of something to say "I just want you to know that I am not like Chase"