Taste for Trouble

chapter 3

So, here is the next chapter. Comment and vote please.

I woke to the sound of a fire truck racing by my house, wailing obnoxiously as if it owned the world. The late afternoon sun was pouring in through the windows, casting shadows all over my room and giving everything a too cheery feel. Stupid sun, didn't it know I needed some sleep? As if responding to the thought the sun broke through the clouds and I glared at the window. Me and the sun never seemed to get along; I burned super easily because of my Irish skin, so I always seemed to avoid any unnecessary confrontations with the sunlight.

I pulled myself up on my good arm and glowered at my pillow case which was covered in my dry blood. I hadn't realized my wounds opened once or twice during the night and now I was going to have to get rid of the pillow case. And I liked it! A friend of mine and I had made matching tie died ones at a sleepover. Stupid blood.

I slowly got up, my legs were stiff from the lack of movement and it was a relief for my toes to sink into the warm dark blue carpeting. The carpeting that my mother had changed for the first time in years two months ago during Christmas break. I wandered over to my closet and grabbed a tank top and some sweats. I gasped when I suddenly realized that my shoulder was working and I was able to reach up into the closet with little to no pain.

It barely hurt. Just the dim pain of a recovering sprained muscle...not nearly as bad as it had been or should be. But turning my head and checking where the bite mark was; it was nothing but a purple bruise. Maybe I had had a nightmare? A very realistic, very frightening nightmare...and had beaten myself  up in the middle of the night too?

Maybe I HAD been drunk, I thought to myself. I crossed the hallway to the bathroom and quickly locked the door. I undressed and surveyed myself in the mirror. My long brown hair was really dirty; you couldn't even see the natural red highlights in it at all. The highlights that, in fact, drove me crazy because the rest of the school considered it to be enough to consider me a ginger. My skin was naturally pale, and my eyes had always been an unusual shade of green-gold. They looked almost orange today. My perfect lips were forming a frown at the moment, and I knew I was in a bad mood. Even my pillow case had made me irritated. My body was slightly uncentered from the different areas of pain. I was going to cut my hair, I decided. After it being a major draw back last night, I think it would be best if I didn't have too much of it to worry about.

I hobbled into the shower. The warm water poured onto my head as I watched the water around my feet goes from black, to red, to brown. The water seemed to clear my head...and I KNEW that something had happened last night...something that I could never repeat to anyone...ever. Even my best friends wouldn't believe me...they would tease me and I guarantee that they would spread rumors about me. The names already rang in my head, "psycho" and "crazy" seemed to be in the lead of the list.

I spent an entire hour just rinsing off before I shampooed and conditioned my hair, then scrubbed my body clean.

When I got out, I felt a lot better. Ready to live again. Okay that was a lie. I was a 17 year old girl. I was never ready to live again. But I was tired now that the warmth had soaked into my blood. I wrapped myself in a towel and sat on the toilet lid to begin raking through my hair. My mom knocked on the door and called, "Claire? May I come in and have a word with you?"

"Whatever mom." I replied, slightly angered that she decided that right after I woke up was the best time for an interrogation. I frowned as the door opened. I had to remember that locking that stupid door was pointless. That it didn't lock if you put a million pounds on one side of it.

She came in with some new towels to hang on the racks. She was about 35. Way too young to have a 17 almost 18 year old daughter living in the house. (Being adopted explained that) And she was perfectly primmed to a peak. My dad had poured every dime he had into making sure his wife was the perfect storybook woman he wanted. She had had so many surgeries in the last few years to get rid of any imperfections, I wouldn't doubt it if she was 100 percent plastic.

But before she had had the surgeries, she could have passed for my older sister. She enjoyed acting like my sister much more than she enjoyed playing mom. Whether it made her feel old, or she was still a teenager at heart was besides the point.

"So...honey...what really did happen the other night?" She asked. Straight to the point. She had worry lines around her eyes.

"I...I don't really remember." I muttered looking at my feet. Not the truth; don't let her guilt me into telling her the truth. I distantly warned myself. She was very good at making me guilty to the point I would tell her what it was she wanted to hear, even if it wasn't the truth. She just always seemed too fragile and innocent to me.

"That boy that dropped you off...you guys didn't..." she began, setting the towels down on the antique marble counter. An even more worried look on her face.

"No, mother. We did not. I had just met him. He brought me home when I got injured. He told you the truth." It was true, just leaving out any details. I didn't like talking to people, my mom included. I was much more wittier and social in my imagination, but in front of other people, I was about as entertaining as a block of wood.

"'Kay...he WAS kind of cute...he would make a good boyfriend I would think...bringing you home like that...he seemed like a nice kid.." She said, probably just for the sake of conversation.

"Yeah. That's what I think." I muttered. she didn't know that I already had a boyfriend, and wanted to keep it that way.

"Okay...just...Claire...tell me if you're doing anything illegal and I can get you help, okay?" She said, hanging a towel on the rack above the toilet.

"M'kay." I said. getting up and slipping out of the door, grabbing my clothing on the way out.

That night went by pretty quickly; more interrogations from mom, razored my hair into a short choppy looking haircut that made my shoulders look much wider than they actually are. I had eaten my dinner, not really tasting it, as it made my stomach feel weird. I didn't bother catching up on my homework for that day. Tomorrow was Thursday and I stayed after school on Thursday to do my homework, or just to flirt around with the after school clubs, which was normally the football team.