Sixty-six

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I listen for a long time. She doesn't speak to fill the time but because I appear interested, being interested in the movie.

In a long silence, she looks away from the tv screen on mute, and looks at my leg.

"Lin doesn't like doing it and Vanessa is terrified of losing your trust and doesn't want to." I sigh and push down one side of leggings enough to show some old scars but she spots something else. Her eyes widen in fear. "Kelsey!" She I pull it back up, realizing she's been able to see the ones peaking from beneath my underwear on the side, near my hip.

I shrug, not knowing what to do.

"I don't get it! If you had just asked for help in the beginning, none of this would have happened? Why can't you just ask for help?" She snaps. I know it's not meant to make me feel the way I do, but I lock all my feelings and thoughts up like a kid would with all their toys when their upset, and shrug again, meekly, pulling my legs up to my chest and hoping sleep with consume me.

Lin's POV
I rub my tired eyes, trudging into the room as they adjust to only being able to see by the moonlight.

"Who was at the door?" I ask, startling the figure knelt in front of it who is clearly not going to answer me in the form of words coming from her mouth. She rises to her feet, hiding something from my site. What seemed like an envelope.

She shrugs as if she hadn't even checked, despite being fully awake and having been kneeling right in front of it.

"No one?" She nods, walking off from it. I peak out of it and then follow her to her room where the lamp is on.

"Why are you working? It's three in the morning Kels." I say, shutting her book. When I look back at her, she has nothing in her hands and goes to close her school things with me. She's in a black tank too and grey leggings. I'm frustrated that she's falling back into her old eating habits. I'm not telling Tommy about that but he probably sees it himself. This time though, It's not to lose weight. It's just that she won't eat.

Carleigh told me what she's walked in on and I'm a little shocked though I probably shouldn't be. Vanessa's reminders of her age no longer help me to control my constant want and need to protect this girl who is in a thousand broken pieces right now. And recently cut herself again. She hurries and doesn't look at me. I look back at her one last time before leaving and she's standing there, staring at the ground, her hands fiddling.

"Who was at the goddamn door, Kelsey?" She shrugs and I walk away, for the first time I can think of, genuinely mad at her. At Kelsey. Who I thought I could never be mad at.
-
I wake up to ringing. I groan and turn over to my phone, surprised it isn't my alarm but glad it's not, until I see Kelsey's name. At first fire flashes through me. I can't forgive her for what she does to herself until she stops. But it's quickly followed by worry when I see that it's two in the morning. And the fact that she would call me if she still can't speak.

"Kelsey?" I say, putting my phone to my ear, hearing Vanessa move beside me.

"It's Jessica. Kelsey left."

"What?"

"I thought she was asleep and I woke up and she's not here."

"Fuck." I mumble.

"What?" Asks Vanessa.

"Kelsey ran off." I tell her.

"From Jessica's?" I nod.

"She took the wrong phone." Jessica explains.

"So an iPhone. So apple."

"Yeah?"

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