Vanity Teens

Chapter Nine

A.N. Mentally prepare yourself for Ari's mother - I just love writing scenes with Viktoria, she's so bitchy, I just love her! I've always been drawn to raging bitches lmao.

Chapter Nine:

"I had another episode," I told my Mother, at dinner, after I rushed back home from the London Eye.

"And you didn't have the decency to change? Ariel, you know my rules. Breakfast at seven, and dinner at six, we dine together. That is all I ask of you, other than the obvious social graces expected of ones so wealthy as ourselves. I do not like that you flaunt your... current state of health to everyone who meets you."

"I have a disease, mother, not a cold, or a fucking flu!"

"Stop swearing," she ordered, standing from her end of the table, dabbing lightly at her mouth with her handkerchief, and turning to walk away. "We will resume this meal when you clean yourself up, Ariel. You are just drenched in blood, it is very off-putting."

I sniggered at her. "Sorry if my current state of health upsets you at all, Mother, but I cannot help it."

She turned back and eyed me terribly. "Your bleeding episode was obviously caused from being up so high. I knew you shouldn't have been allowed to use the Eye, why else had I forbade it when you were younger? I assumed these incessant bleeds had stopped, you haven't had one in at least a month, so I allowed you to. Well not again."

"You just didn't see the bleeds, Mother, that doesn't mean that they'd stopped," I announced, then suddenly wishing that I hadn't. I had tried so hard to keep my bleeds out of sight. Whenever I bled in my sleep, I'd wash the sheets myself. Whenever I bled in the day, I'd wash away all evidence and run away from her if I felt a bleed coming on.

"And what happened to this friend of yours, anyway?" She didn't seem at all concerned.

"I ran away."

"How mature."

"Fuck you."

"How dare you speak to me in such a way, Ariel! I am your mother!" she screamed, a vein protruding from her forehead. Her angry vein.

"Then maybe you should start acting like it, bitch!" I screamed straight back at her. She flipped her dark brown hair as flamboyantly as she could, and I flipped my invisible locks too. We both turned and walked in opposite directions, trying to be dramatic. We were so similar, it was just unreal, but because of that we were like opposing forces, enemies, the same side of a magnet. We just didn't match.

I hadn't even had time to think of the kiss. As I ran away from the Eye, I tried to cover the blood so that none of the crowds would see it. It was a failure, obviously. Eyes were all over me, all of the time, and I couldn't help but notice them.

Even a few people had asked me if I was okay, but I told them I was fine. The taxi driver asked the same as he drove me home, but I explained that it was normal. Everyone thought it was so abnormal, but not for me.

Not that many people really knew that I had von Willebrand Disease, not even Vienna. I just told her what I told Sam in the Eye: "I have high blood pressure." And she fell for it, even though I'd had a bleeding episode on numerous occasions.

At least it didn't find its way into my eyes this time, I thought. It was rare that it would, but it had happened. Most people stayed away from me after I was crying blood in Maths, a few years ago. I just told them it was nothing. Only Max knew the real story, outside Mother, the family, and Winnie the housekeeper. He was the only one that I could trust. It was my other secret. I was a chronic bleeder.