Our Broken Pasts [Editing] | #Wattys2017

Prologue (Edited)

Hailey

I lived in filth. It was the kind that went deeper than dirt on the floor and slimy countertops. That was part of it, of course, but it wasn't the whole of it. The whole of it was my mother's profession and her dirty habits. Drinking. Drugs. The drugs were the worst.

I guess I knew that things had been different once, but those days were long gone. They were part of another life, one I had lived, but now felt like a fairytale designed to keep the monsters under the bed at bay. That life was no longer real. It was myth, mystery, fable, legend. Anything but real.

The day before my life changed, I was living in the filth that I despised, but that I had duly accepted. I was "dating" the boy that would betray me, and my mother was out whoring on the streets. It was the last normal day of an abnormal life.

Not twenty-four hours later, my life would never be the same again. For better or for worse, who knew?

But the things that happened that day were supposed to stay secret. No one was supposed to find out about them, let alone a boy with dreamy eyes and a hard outside edge I had learned to fear. But that's the thing about suppositions and wishes. They hardly ever come true.

Will

I walked down the halls the day after the incident. It was middle school. Rumour had it that my girlfriend had been screwing around on my with my best friend, Tony Wyatt. The rumours were almost true. She'd been involved with him, but not romantically.

Their involvement went deeper than feeling, deeper than attachment, right down to bone and the soul. It wasn't healthy, it wasn't happy.

I'd cared about her. I'd cared and now she was gone. She moved. Her and her whole family. I wasn't oblivious to the rumours around the school. Some were off, some were close, but only I knew the truth.

I never wanted anyone to know about that day on the road. About what really happened between me and her and Tony. Why they were both gone. Why I was still here. I just wanted to be the guy that didn't care, the arrogant asshole that no one could stand to get close to. That would keep me safe. Trust a girl to bring the past into the present. Trust a girl to get past my walls.