Billie's POV
4 days later...
"Christ it's fucking cold..." I muttered to myself, shoving my hands in my pockets as I trudged down the empty street. It was probably past midnight, the streetlights flickering and my breath catching in the air. I had run out after another fight with Brad. I couldn't help it. I had to leave, just for maybe a few hours, just in the same town. Rodeo. Goddamn Rodeo. I couldn't escape it anywhere I went or looked.
I went to Christie Road. There was nowhere else for me then. I sat on the tracks, part of me hoping a train wouldn't come, another part, the small, pathetic but somehow unavoidable part wishing one would.
16. What an age to be alive. What an age to cease living. Nobody would miss me, would they?
My head was swimming, anxiety constricting my throat as every notion of the future and past and present crashed against each other, and I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe. I felt my hand rummage through a jean pocket and retrieve a few pills. I promised I wouldn't. I couldn't help it. I closed my eyes.
"Billie! Oh fuck Billie..."
I felt a pair of cold hands touch the sides of my face, brushing the hair away. On my shoulders, shaking me. They sounded far away as if underwater, or maybe that was me drowning under the waves.
"Billie, Billie please tell me you can hear me..."
Groggily, I opened my eyes. I was met by the frantic sapphire gaze of Annabel Winters. I blinked at her in bewilderment. She let out a gasp of relief and suddenly threw her arms around me, pressing her face into my chest, tumbling onto the ground. Her eyes screwed shut.
"Oh God Billie..."
She got off me then, her brows furrowed in determination, her fingers quickly moving through my jacket pockets, my jean pockets. Her eyes widened as she pulled a familiar little white pill out, grasping in between her thumb and index finger. She looked at it, tossing it aside before her hand was back in my pocket, retrieving a small packet. Her lips moved silently, reading, before she looked to me in realisation.
"Ritalin? Billie for fuck's sake..." Her voice was still so shrill, sending my head into a series of throbbing aches. Only one question surfaced.
"How did you find me?"
"You have some good friends Billie."
She slumped beside me then as I sat up, both on the train tracks, as if we were both waiting for a train. To take us somewhere, another stop or another life. I looked at her. She was wearing a coat that looked too big for her. Her nose was red from the cold and her eyes from lack of sleep. I wondered if she ever slept.
We sat in silence for a moment or two. I felt utterly pathetic, and as I started to gain some consciousness I felt stabbing embarrassment and shame of what just happened. I watched her bring her knees up to hug in the corner in my eye. I didn't want to say anything in case it was stupid and shattered the moment, making her leave. Maybe she wasn't really here at all. I reached out and put my hand on her slim shoulder. She watched me. She was here alright.
"What?" I asked her quietly in the end. What did she want? Why had she found me, dying in the cold?
She shrugged heavily, and we both looked up at the sky. The cosmos gleamed back at us, temptingly out of reach. She brought out a pack of cigarettes as an offer. I shook my head. She put it away.
"I'm sorry Billie." She said eventually, her voice soft but her eyes somewhere very lonely.
I wrapped my arms around her in an embrace. She stiffened, tugging away, and I snapped. Her skin was pale in the moonlight and I knew she knew I could see the scars, not just on her collarbone but around her delicate fingers on her left hand and around her right wrist. I knew she knew that I already knew, I already knew someone had hurt her. I knew she knew that all I wanted was for her to just let me in.
"Annabel what the fuck can I do? What the fuck do you want?" I yelled at her then, standing up, swaying dangerously, snarling like the fucking dog I was underneath it all. Her eyes were wide and her mouth opened, lips trembling.
"Billie, please listen to me..."
"No, no you fucking listen for once! I care about you Annabel Winters, whether you believe that or not I have no goddamn clue, but it's true. And you just cut me out as if nothing had ever happened! As if you never bummed a smoke from me on a roof and rode home with me on my bike or went and got burritos and danced with me at Gilman or kissed me on a beach. Christ, you haven't spoken a word to me or even looked at me in months! I don't know what you fucking want from me!"
Tears began to well in her eyes as she stood up, her hand reaching out, "Billie..."
"No! Don't fucking do that! Tell me what you want from me! What do you want from me Annabel? What do you fucking want?"
I grasped her hard by the shoulders then, shaking her, forcing her to look at me. I felt nothing but anger and anguish, felt nothing but wanted her to feel something, I wanted to her to hurt, like she had hurt me.
"Stop...stop..." She whimpered, hiding from me from behind her hair, but I only gripped her harder.
"What sweetheart? You just want to hide from me like you hide from the rest of the fucking universe?"
Her eyes met mine as soon as I spat the pet name. They vibrated with something beyond fear, beyond hurt or anger. They flashed as if they belonged to someone about to die.
I should have stopped then. I should have stopped.
"Sweetheart? He called you that, didn't he? Did he call you that when he fucked you?"
My fingers dug into her arms, our eyes boring into each other's. I was snarling and spitting but I could feel the open wounds underneath it all, the ones she had caused me and the ones I had caused myself.
"Stop...stop..." She was begging me, thrashing in my vice-like grip.
"Hold still!" I barked finally, and then she went still, my last two words trembling in the air.
Hold still...
Her eyes brimmed with something that shook me cold, shook me from whatever stupor humiliation and pain had submerged me in. She raised her arm and hit me hard, right across the face.
"STOP!"
Everything froze then. All I could hear was our breathing. I let go.
I looked at her, my hand grasping my cheek. I saw in her eyes I had done irreversible damage. There was nothing but hatred and fear, not for or of the world, like it had always been. No, fear and hatred of me. Then she turned and began to run.
"Annabel..." My heart pounded in horror in what I had just done, in what had just happened. I couldn't do anything but run after her. I caught her easily, trying to take her hand, trying to tell her how fucking sorry I was, wanting her to forgive something that was unforgivable. She screamed at me through the tears, ripping her arm away, telling me to leave her alone.
"Annabel please, please oh God please..." I wrapped my arms around her, burying my face into her shoulder in pain as I heard her sob and scream, clawing at me, trying to get loose. I held her fast and tight, feeling her then just slump against me, her knees buckling from pure exhaustion and we both slumped to the ground.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry oh fuck I'm sorry..." My voice was strained with regret, feeling her relax against me, continuing to cry, continuing to whimper "why Billie, why..."
I stroked her hair, breathing in her forever scent. Cinnamon and vanilla.
She finally turned to me, allowing me to hold her, her hands gripping my jacket. She had stopped crying, her breath shallow and hard. I wondered if she had just grown used to the tears.
"Tell me it wasn't my fault Billie, please tell me it wasn't my fault..."
"What Annabel?" I whispered softly, my chest still aching with the memory of what I had done to her.
"Tell me my sister isn't dead because of me."
.....
A/N hey! just got a random burst of willingness to write this since the last one was pretty short. sorry everything's so intense. thanks for reading!
