Chapter 33
Nathan flinched, as if my words hurt more than any slap ever could.
Scarlett looked sad, but not surprised.
Liam stumbled towards me, his arms reaching out, trying to comfort me since he knew no words could be able to make me feel better.
But I stepped backwards, away from him and the band. I felt like I couldn't breathe. I needed to get away.
"I'm sorry." I muttered, trying not to look at the hurt expressions on their faces.
Then I turned and walked away from the boy who broke me and the boy that was trying to fix me.
Nobody followed me.
The memories that I had been successfully repressing for the past few months, started to flash before my eyes.
They were of the days before I had made any friends after Nathan left, the days I spent being bullied in school and the days I would come back home and play music as loud as I could before my parents came back, just to drown out my thoughts.
Have you ever heard people say that music saved their lives? Well, it actually did save mine. Music, or more precisely the absence of it, saved me.
I thought back to the day I had decided to take my own life.
I had been having a really bad week when a few popular kids decided to shove me into a locker at the beginning of a school day and just leave me there for the rest of the day.
I had tried to plead with them at first. The only response my I got was the sound of their departing footsteps. Then I started to pound my fists on the door, hoping that somebody would be walking outside instead of being in class.
Eventually, I had given up and stood leaning against the door, crying. There wasn't enough space in the locker to stretch, which was the reason why I had to stand in the same position for a few hours until someone finally heard my desperate cries for help over the noise made by the crowd of kids heading to their next class.
When the door opened, I had stumbled out and nearly started to cry again, this time from relief. My savior was a boy who looked at me for a second, before shrugging and walking away.
There were still a few classes to go before the end of the day, so I went to the room I had my next class in and sunk into a chair.
Unfortunately, I shared the class with a few of the people who had enjoyed leaving me trapped in a locker.
"How did you get out?" Aiden, the boy who had been the one to slam the door in my face asked me.
I didn't respond.
"Lost your voice, have you? Good. That means we don't have to listen to it anymore." He sounded cheerful, like it didn't even matter that I had just had one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.
While he continued taunting me, I stayed quiet for the rest of the class. In fact, I did not say another word the whole day.
When I reached home, I did not start to play music right away. I just sat on my bed and stared at the wall. The silence was overwhelming. I kept going back to the time I had spent in that dark place, wishing that someone would save me, wishing that I had a friend (which made me think of Nathan not wanting anything to do with me anymore) and finally, wishing that I didn't exist.
The thought of not existing seemed to strike me as a tempting one.
As if in a trance, I went to my bathroom and started to fill the sink with water. My eyes fell on the drawer that kept a razor. In a few seconds, I was holding it in my hand and standing in front of the sink.
I hadn't heard the sound of the front door opening because of the running water.
I took a deep breath and just as I had started to bring the blade down on my wrist, my bedroom door swung open.
"Lexa..?" Jake had asked, looking at the empty room.
I gasped and he followed the sound to where I was standing.
The hand holding the razor had started to slow down, but managed to cut into my skin. My blood started to mix with the water.
"No!" He had yelled and rushed to me, pushing the razor out of my hand, stopping it from causing any more damage.
Everything else seemed to be a blur.
I was pulled out of the room, made to sit down and watch my brother clean up my hand and cover it with a bandage. Then he asked me what was wrong and I couldn't do anything but cry into his shoulder.
The reason my brother had come to check on me was because he was so used to coming home to music. The silence had warned him.
A few days after the incident (which he promised not to tell our parents about), he gifted me the alarm clock. I knew that he wanted to make sure that I would wake up everyday, and to the one thing that could bring a smile to my face.
I didn't realize that I had stopped walking and was staring at a few people sitting on the pavement and rapping, until one of them spotted me.
"Hey Red. What are you looking at?" The girl with dreadlocks asked.
"You." I blurted out. "I mean, I was listening to you. You rap really well."
"Thanks." She grinned. "Why don't you join us?"
"I can't rap." I confessed.
"Anyone can rap. Come on, I'll teach you."
Since I was scared of offending her, I joined the group of people sitting around her. I was the target of a few curious stares and smiles.
"Let's start off easy. I'll give you a line, then you reply with a rhyming one."
"I guess I can do that." I replied slowly.
"When I slammed that door, I said I was never coming back."
"And no, I'm not leaving town with somebody called Jack...?"
"That's not bad."
"I'm not going to be able to say it at once, if that's what you're going to tell me to do next."
"I'm sure you'll do fine. I'll give you a beat." She snapped her fingers at one of her friends who started to beat-box.
I attempted it and failed miserably.
"I told you so." I sighed.
"I'm sure you'll be able to do it with practice. In fact, it'll be easy for you since you're a singer."
"How did you know?" I felt my eyes widen in shock.
"That's a secret." She smiled in a mischievious manner. "So, do you have a band?"
I thought of the band and how I had walked away from them, leaving them with Nathan. I thought about how they hadn't been angry after realising that I had been hiding something from them, especially when they had trusted me with their biggest secrets. I thought about how they had given me space and most likely, made sure that Nathan had done the same.
"Yes I do." I told her. "In fact, I think I need to go meet them now."
My new friends waved goodbye to me as I got up and started to walk back to the group of people who I knew I couldn't stay away from.
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This chapter was so hard to write. >.
I hope you liked it though.
Tell me your thoughts. :)
