Breathe

Chapter One

I wish I could say I expected any of it. I knew it was coming; I did. But all the time I spent thinking about it, didn't make up for the one second that my world came crashing down at me like a meteor. I spent so much time preparing for it, that I never really foresaw it actually happening.

And of all the things I could have done differently; I would say I would have done exactly that.

Because there I stood, staring at the same white door with the same three-digit number on. I sat in the same chair, with the same people around me, and with the same useless, and hopeless feeling drowning me.

I wanted it all to stop. To just take a pause and let the world around me give me a break for once in my life.

But that never happened; because life moved on.

It always moved on; and I was so fucking sick of it.

*

When I met Ivory for the first time, we were just kids. My father had taken me out to the playground; my six-year-old legs working their way aiming straight for the big slide. My father sat down on the bench beside another man who greeted him politely, but I didn't have enough interest back then to keep watching him, so I all but ran for the child-friendly climbing robes to get up to the top of the slide.

There was a brunette standing there. Her hair went all the way down to her hips, and she had tucked half of it behind her ear. Her hand was placed in front of her mouth, and I was pretty sure she was biting her nails while standing there nervously at the top of the slide. She looked down; her icy blue eyes processing the wide and long slide in front of her.

And that was when she noticed me.

I walked up to her, and looked down at it with her. "Do you want to take it with me?" I had asked, and extended my right hand out for her to grab it.

She just looked at me for a while, and then back at my hand, and then right down the slide once more. She sighed heavily and nodded her head before grabbing my hand shakily. "I've never taken it before," she said, and her trembling hands had told me so, too.

I just shrugged my shoulders and smiled. "It's fun," I told her, and I tugged her hand closer to it. She followed me with nervous and reluctant eyes. I sat down on my butt, and looked up at her while still tugging at her with my petite hands. She carefully sat down; her knees pushed all the way up to her chest, and her hand clenching mine like there was no tomorrow.

Considering I was six, I made sure to tell her "Ouch," because I wasn't at all discreet back then. I also showed her that she couldn't have her knees all the way up like that; she'd fall and hurt herself. She had immediately straightened them out. "And once we start sliding, we can lay down on our backs, and it will go by so quick you won't notice it happened."

And then we slid down; her, nervously clutching my hand like it was a stressball, and me; trying not to cringe in the way she was hurting me.

And then it was done. Ivory had closed her eyes, and when I nudged her, she opened them and looked back at the open slide behind us; a look of achievement entering her features. Her face broke into a grin, and she hugged me suddenly. Then, just as quick as she had done it, she was out of my grip and running towards the bench my father and the other man were sitting at.

She jumped up to the foreign man beside my dad, and yelled repeatedly: "I did it daddy! I did it!" I got up from the end of the slide and ran to my dad, too. He smiled proudly at me, and ruffled my hair before pushing me towards the playground once more with Ivory following closely behind.

"My name is Ivory, what is your name?" She had said when we were, once again, back at the top of the slide.

"I'm Elizabeth," I answered, and I remember her scrunching her nose at my name.

"That is a very long name," she had said, and then said it slowly. "Elizabeth."

I just shrugged. "I know, but that was my grandmother's name, too."

"Can I call you Libby? It's easier," she giggled, her hands covering her mouth while her hair fell in front of her eyes.

I just nodded. "Yeah, but only you can call me that. Other people call me Beth or Betty, but I like Libby."

And that was how we then became best friends. She had been in another school, but my father, and her father also became quick friends that one day in the park; and they arranged for us to play together at least once or twice every week. In the holidays, we would sleep over for several days, up until the point where we would get sick of each other.

I also knew Harriet back then, but she was a year older, and being that young she always thought she could boss me around whenever our parents weren't around. So I preferred to hang around Ivory, because in many aspects of life, we were alike, but at others, we were so different.

Like how she would always eat eggs, while I couldn't even stomach the smell of it. Or how she could walk around shopping for hours and not get tired, while I could barely think of the mall and not think it was some foreign place. Or how she could watch Netflix all day and still say that she is exhausted, while I would work out for hours and feel more refreshed.

But where we were alike; we were really, really alike. Her parents were filthy rich; almost as rich as mine. She knew how I felt about being around my mother, and I knew how she felt being around her older sister. It was all the same.

I was an only child, but Ivory was the third child of the family. She had an older sister who was five years older, and an older brother who was only two years older than her. I remember I used to think he was so weird because he was always so quiet when I was around. I used to have the biggest crush on him, Timothy Adams, but he never seemed to bat an eyelash in my direction whenever I was there.

Or at least, that was what I always thought. It was never the actual truth.

Timmy seemed to always notice the small things; like how I would play with my hands whenever I was nervous, or how I would bite my lip if I didn't know what to say, or if I was turned on. He would never pick them out one by one, but he would always tell me he appreciated them. They made me, me.

And the same went with him. How his eyebrows creased on the top of his head when he was confused, or how he would look up at the ceiling when he was deep in thought. He was always there for everyone, but he never told me about anything and I think that was part of the reason to why it all ended the way it did.

But looking back, I didn't want to change any of it. Not one single bit. Because if I did, the outcome would have been different, and that was something I wouldn't have been able to trade for anything else in the entire world.

I would never trade him for anything in the entire world.

~

Hi everyone who might and might not have read this.

I am a very new and not so experienced writer, and hope that this story might take my writing skills somewhere. Please tell me what you think after you read this?

Thank you for reading if you are down here, and i hope you will keep reading!

What do you think of the first chapter?

Good stuff?

Bad stuff?

Thanks anyways, and I will tell you already now. Hailee is not my real name, but I'll use it kind of as a coverage? So yeahh, call me Hailee because that is such a pretty name.

-Adios from your very own Hailee