Take My Picture

Chapter seventeen

"Hi Demi, I'm sending you this message because, to be honest, I'm not sure you'd answer my call if I tried to call you. I also would probably lose all confidence and just yell at you again if you did answer. But that's not the point. I'm sending you this message for one simple reason, to apologise. I am so sorry Demi. I'm sorry for being too clingy. I'm sorry for ignoring you, I'm sorry for being mad at you for reasons you didn't know about. I'm sorry for hating you for telling me the truth. I'm sorry for yelling at you. I'm sorry for whatever I did. I'm just sorry for everything for the past month. After the weekend of the trampoline warehouse and concert rehearsal, the weekend you told me you were looking into adopting me, everything changed. I know you said not to get my hopes to but I guess I did because when you couldn't talk all the time, I got hurt. Since then, I've just been lashing out because I really needed someone to talk to. I'm not trying to make excuses, I just need you to try and understand my mindset a bit better. I'm a foster kid, it's all I've ever been. I seem to have a habit of destroying the good things in my life before something else does because deep down, I don't believe I deserve to be happy. Every little thing that happened, I used as an excuse to be mad at you, to destroy this adoption before it was even a possible adoption and I'm really sorry for that. I understand if you don't want to adopt me, or it's too difficult. I'll be out of the system soon anyway. I just need you to know that your support means the world to me and I would prefer to have you in my life as a friend than not at all. Xx Harriet"

I looked up from reading the message to Aggie, my face showing every ounce of fear, and uncertainty I was feeling. "I don't know, maybe I shouldn't send a message yet. It's too soon, I'm gonna delete it." I chickened out pretty quickly. Before I moved to delete what I had written, Aggie lunged at me to grab my phone. She succeeded. "Aggie, no! Give it back." I chased after her to try and grab my phone back. It was locked so at least she couldn't accidentally send it, but she knows my password, so with enough time, she'll be able to send it. "Aggie! Please! It makes me sound so pathetic." I was running after her as she was running around the backyard and downstairs of the house.

"No it doesn't, it's really good." Aggie countered just before she managed to get inside and close the door enough to slow me down, which allowed her to lock herself in the downstairs bathroom. Damn her for being a track star.

"Aggie! Aggie! Please!" I pleaded banging on the door she was locked behind.

"GIRLS!" I stopped banging on the door and turned to look at Elise in shock. "What's this all this noise?! I expect this from the younger ones, not you. Aggie, get out here please." Aggie opened up the door slowly and handed me my phone back.

"Sorry Elise, won't happen again." Aggie apologised, not entirely sorry because she had succeeded in doing what she had planned. She had sent the message to Demi. I mumbled a 'sorry' then shoved Aggie back into the wall she was standing against as I pushed away and ran up to my room locking the door behind me.

"Come on Bub, you know you're happy it's been sent." Aggie pushed against the locked door. "Harriet? Come on." She paused again waiting to see if I'd open my door. "Look, I'm sorry about how I went about it, but I'm not sorry that I sent that message. Hopefully, you'll see I was helping you soon. I'm sorry. I love you, Bub." Aggie walked away after that.

I opened my phone, opening up the message app. When I clicked on Demi's messages my heart dropped. Read at 7:58 pm. Fuck.

Demi's POV.

Reading Harriet's message had me in tears. She's blaming herself when the truth is, it's all my fault. I'm the one that's been ignoring her after promising to always be there for her. I sniffled and quickly wiped my tears away with the back of my hand, picking up my phone to reply. I don't know what to say. Shit! How is someone supposed to reply to that over a text message? I quickly delete the few words I had typed to try and start again.