Pursued (Completed) ✔️

Chapter 1 Her life

Just another day in teenage hell.

There are days when the mind numbing grind of school is better than the responsibilities that life dishes out when you are too young to want to deal with them.

My dad is awesome he understands that I don't want the responsibilities, he lets me do track to make up for the responsibilities that he needs to give me. He knows I've always loved to run. And I've know for as long as I can remember that I need to help him if we are to keep our family together. Our family, dad, me and my little brother. He is a twin but my other little brother is in hospital, in a coma. Has been ever since my useless mother decided to drive after drinking, drinking lots, with two little boys in the car. After it became clear that Eddy wasn't likely to wake up she packed her bags and left.

We haven't heard from her since.

That was over two years ago. Two years in which I became an outcast because of what my my mother did to us. The only reason dads business didn't go under is because he employs a heap of teenagers at harvest season and at least two or three people in the paddocks the rest of the time. His business is mainly vegetables. We have a little shop in the shed that I run, everything is always fresh. We supply our own town and a few others in the district, we also sell eggs and our own honey and I bake for the shop in the weekends. It's not a bad life but it's exhausting. The towns rallied for dad, to help him and us kids. At least we don't have to worry about hospital bills thanks to the hospital board and some anonymous donor but teenagers are monsters.
The people I'd thought were my friends dropped me in a flash, people I'd grown up with in our small town. People that had come to our farm loads of time, we'd shared birthdays and heartaches and gossip. Now I was the gossip and I decided it was easier to pull away before I got hurt any more. My best friend since we were in diapers was the last straw. She'd yelled that she didn't want to be friends with someone that could turn out like her mother. A drunk kid killer.

Eddy wasn't even dead.

Thankfully the younger kids, and their mothers, at Harry's school were good to us.

I dropped him and his best friends Annie, Rosie and Dirk off at school. I was on drop off one week, pick up the next and then I had two weeks were the other parents did the school run. They lived on farms near our road and it made my life a lot easier. On the days I had track, if I was on drop off after school, they would walk over to the high school and watch me from the bleachers.

If it was one of the weeks I was on drop off so I was actually looking forward to the loud comments from the bleachers as my little brother and his friends gave their opinion on everybody on the field. Nobody was safe from the criticism, not the football team, not the cheerleaders and certainly not the other track athletes, nobody 'cept for me. They knew how people treated me and didn't like it. They also disagreed with my keeping quiet so they had two alternate weeks a month were they sat in the bleachers at the high school and verbally took everyone down. The other week they were in the bleachers was when Mr. Johnson, Annie's dad, was on drop off. He was the coach of the football team. His silent protest was that he had benched the players that had initially complained about their antics instead of pulling the loud little buggers up or sending them away during practice.

School dragged its lazy ass through the day at the speed of a cat with one leg. I ignored the looks, I ignored eye contact in general as I made my way to the other end where I could just put my brain on zero, forget about the world and run.

The only person that made this hell manageable during the day was Adrian. His family lived on the other side of town, near the forest at the foot of the hills. He had befriended me that dreadful day my best friend in forever had so publicly humiliated me. He had come out of nowhere, wrapped a steadying arm around my waist and spoken in a clear strong voice.

He had defended me and made it clear that if anyone spoke to me like that again he would beat them up. Susan had laughed and told him he couldn't beat up a girl. He had smiled coldly and told her that he wouldn't have to because his sister would take that honor.

Adrien French was part of the rulers. They didn't really rule anything but they walked like they owned the world. They never interacted with the other kids, just their own crew. Seven families, eighteen kids that were all around my age and six that were my brothers's age. Some of the parents actually did run the town council but they mostly kept to themselves. Nobody really knew who was related to whom or what family and I didn't care. Since that day, if Adrian was in school, he stayed by my side and if it wasn't him it was his sister Camille or one of three others, David, Otto or Bobby. I liked Camille a lot but she talked, all the time, non stop and she didn't mind that I didn't reply to much, she said all that mattered was that she knew I listened. And I did, I always listened, I always remembered and sometimes I asked her to clear something up but most of the time I remained quiet. On the days they were absent people still mostly ignored me, afraid I would tell if they bothered me.

He wasn't there. And like I said the 'one legged cat speed of the day' was doing my head in, who cared about the stuff they tried to teach, surely there were more important things could be taught, more interesting things.

By the time I could change into my tracksuit I was ready to run. Coach gave us all our drills and I caught a small smile as the potato gallery started their comment session. I love my baby brother dearly and I loved it even more that I was never at the receiving end of their sharp tongues.

It was the second week that Adrien and all them hadn't been at school and Susan had notched up the bullying, getting comfortable in their prolonged absence. So I ran, I ran it all from my mind and by the time it was time to take the potato gallery home I felt a bit better.