Broken Minds

Chapter 1: Sadness Chills The Heart

This is a story about a 15-year-old girl named Rebecca, the story starts off in the room like any other story, but unlike most stories, this one starts with a sad twist. She is crying in the corner of her room holding onto her favourite stuffed bear. She has just found out that her aunt was in an accident, a car was speeding and hit the bus her aunt was on. The cruel thing was that her uncle Pete had been looking around for an hour trying to find her as she had wandered out of the house on her own. This may seem okay until you realise that she was suffering from Alzheimer's which meant that she had no clue what she was doing at the time or even who she was. Rebecca's uncle had been driving around for the past two hours trying to find her. When the ambulance arrived at the scene it turned out that her uncle was the person driving the car.

Rebecca had been crying for what seemed like all day. She wiped the tears from her eyes and looked at her clock, the blue numbers flashed through blurred tear ridden eyes. She squinted and just made out it was 4 o'clock. She sat up and wiped her eyes again. This was the fifth day running she had cried till the afternoon sun. Recently her mother went to see how her brother in law was, when she returned home she didn't say a word, but it was obvious she had wept on the way home. As Rebecca started to walk downstairs she heard her mum and dad talking quietly to each other. She sat down on the middle step and waited trying to hear what they were saying. 

"She's been up there for nearly a week now, we have to do something!" she hear her mum say softly. 

"Maybe we need to see a doctor or psychiatrist" her dad mumbled in a saddened tone. Rebecca sighed softly, maybe they're right, maybe I do need to talk to someone she thought silently to herself. She walked the rest of the way down the stairs and into the kitchen. She looked at her parents and nodded her head. 

"I think you're right dad, I need help." She said grabbing a packet of crisps from the basket. 

"Oh... You heard our conversation then sweetie, I didn't mean it in a bad way, it's just you've been up in your room for five days crying." her dad said looking at her with a sad expression. 

"I know dad, and I think you're right, maybe they'll put me on pills or something and I'll be good as new." She said faking a smile. Her dad looked back at her blankly while her mother looked off into the distance. 

"Would you like to talk about anything dear?" Her mother said looking back at her. 

"No thanks." She replied emotionless seeping out of her voice, she grabbed a coke from the fridge and started to walk back upstairs.

During her conversation with her parents something in her mind had snapped. She felt she could no longer cry anymore, as if all the tears for her aunt and uncle she had cried had dried her eyes and soul. She sat down and turned on her laptop, as it loaded up she opened up Facebook and stared at the screen she sat there reading those four words. 'What's on your mind?' She sat there thinking for a moment, what is on my mind she thought. Before long her fingers started to write the words for her until she put that final word. She clicked the post button without thought. She read her post back in her mind welling up at just a few words glowing in front of her on a screen. It read: 'I know what's on my mind, I'm scared... I'm scared that I will too one day end up getting Alzheimer's and not being able to know my own name, I'm scared that at some point I will look back at my life and cry, I will cry at how much I have failed and hurt everyone around me, and I'm scared that I'm alone, that I want to reach out my hand hoping someone will catch me and hold me close making me feel like I mean something but I just reach out and there is no hand there so I just keep falling into an ever darkening abyss.' She sat there hovering her hands over her keyboard. She had just called out a plea for help. She must have sat there for an hour or so just staring at her screen, the comment section empty. Thoughts trapped inside her skull rattling around like a locked chest full of demons.

"Dinner is ready!" She heard her dad shout up the stairs. She must have fallen asleep since her clock read 8:00pm. 

"I'm coming." Rebecca shouts getting off of her bed and running downstairs, in her rush she didn't see the one message that was flashing on her screen waiting to be read. As she reached the dinner table she sat down silently and ate her dinner. Her parents just sat there looking at her while she kept eating. 

"What?" she said glancing up at them. 

"Well...we've decided to book you an appointment for Friday to see a doctor, I would have booked tomorrow but I thought I might give you a day to see if it's just a phase you're going through." Her mum said with sorrow in her voice. 

"Yeah sure, that's fine by me." Rebecca said briefly before eating again. After she had finished her dinner she ran upstairs to her room again, on the way up she heard her parents talking quietly again. 

"She needs to fix herself rather than rely on some pills!" Her mother sobbed. Rebecca kept running up the stairs and into her room, closing the door behind her. She ran over to her bed and picked her laptop up, her eyes glazed over the flashing message. As she saw who it was her heart fluttered. It was her ex-boyfriend who had messaged her, she scrolled up checking the long paragraph he had wrote, he had said about even though times are tough people do heal over time and how he wished he didn't do the things he did to upset her. Rebecca sat there with tears welling up in her eyes, her hands hovering over her keys as she read the last seven words. 'Would you go out with me again?' She pondered for a second before typing, her fingers doing the talking for her. As she placed her finger over the enter button she thought about her life and how it would change, she then clicked the enter key. The word yes popped up on her side followed by a smiley face from him. She smiled a little feeling like she had done the right thing.

All through the night, she talked to him, they talked for hours about what they had been up too in the past 3 years, what they were inspiring to be. How they had changed, then her ex-asked one very deep question. 

"What went wrong?" This sparked a long conversation about how each other was to blame and ended with how life for her had just lost meaning and how she could hardly have the motivation to get up. So much so she had spent days on end just crying in bed. He then made a promise to her, "whenever you feel sad just reach out and I'll catch you." This hit Rebecca hard, this is what she had wanted all this time, not pills or therapy, she wanted someone to be there, someone she could reach out to when she was falling into that dark unknown. She cried a little out of joy, she had finally got a reason to live again. She walked away from her laptop for a moment and looked out of her window as the sun rose from behind a hill, she sighed quietly hearing another message ring from her bed. She walked over to her bed reading his message. "Do you want to meet up today? Could grab a bite to eat and roam around the park?" she perked up, even more, reading this. 

"Sure, I haven't been out of the house for a week now, so I'd love to!" She wrote smiling to herself like an over-excited dog seeing its human arrive from work.

"Will 2 o'clock be okay with you?" She replied with a yes before walking back over to her window and putting her earphones in, she sat there listening to some soothing music sticking her head out of the window feeling the cool breeze flow against her face.