Starlight

Chapter 4: Jake

Graduating early definitely had some pros and cons.

Pro: Getting the hell alway from my toxic mother.

Con: Apartment hunting.

Pro: Getting to control my mental health and medication.

Con: Feeling foggy, dizzy, and nauseous all at once.

Pro: Having my own space.

Con: Reading really creepy Craigslist Roommate ads...

I sat back, pushing the Mac Book Pro off my lap and onto the metal bleacher beside me. Maybe Jake was right. It wasn't like I had to live off campus, and I could easily afford to have a single. And if I ended up going insane, well, someone would probably notice sooner on campus than off. But at the same time, I felt like dorm life would be too stifling, and my mother could probably find ways to keep tabs on me. And that was the number one pro on my list.

When my father has passed away, a trust had been created in my name for college with plenty of money (and then some) to get me through four years of college living off or on campus. There was no age limit, only that it had to be used for my education first, and once I completed at least four years of college, the rest was for me to do with as I pleased. The best part? My mother was only the beneficiary. She had no control of it.

So if I wanted to go to college early, live off campus, and off her radar? The most she could do was yank my medical insurance out from under me.

If she even still wanted that control. When I had told her I was going off my meds and graduating early, she had barely looked up from the book she was reading, but her body had relaxed. The burden of having a crazy child that she HAD to care for, lest she lose her mother of the year crown with her widow friends, had led her to seek out Dr. Skinner. But now I was an adult, sooner than she had expected. Of course she had, thrown in a few quips about "mental illness and school" and how if I went "crazy" she wasn't going to bail me out because of my poor decisions.

I paused, running my hand through my curls, my fingers getting caught in the knots. A part of me still feared it was a mistake. I mean, crazy people never thought they were truly crazy. But if I was crazy, then the fact that I still experienced delusions regardless of the medication was only further proof that the medication wasn't working.

No. I had made a decision to stop it. To see what life was like without the constant fog hanging over my brain. To really understand if I was as crazy as my mom thought I was.

Yeah, you made a decision to stop it and now you are seeing weird men that no one else can see, my inner voice chastised me and sounded oddly like my mother.

True, I countered, but I also didn't have any proof that no one else saw him. Maybe they just didn't notice him. Maybe if I had said "Hey, anyone else see the strange man over there?" I would have been answered with, "Uh, did he yeah, and did he just disappear into thin air?"

Great... now I was carrying on conversations with myself. I really was nuts.

My vision went suddenly dark as firm hands slipped over my eyes. The familiar warmth of them, and the fact that I had been expecting Jake, relaxed me as my face broke into a true smile. "Hey Jake."

The hands slipped away as he sat down heavily on the bench besides me, the metal creaking with the sudden force of his full weight.

"Found any Craigslist gold?" He beamed at me, his perfect teeth straight and white.

"Um, like, all of it?" I waived my hand at the computer and sank back against the metal bleacher behind me. "At least two ads are dudes saying I can live there for free as long as I do certain things. One of them I'm pretty sure they were looking for a sex slave while the other I may just have to be the cleaning bitch." And I was definitely not respond to either of THOSE posts.