lucidity | shyland ✓

twenty

chapter twenty

i've been sleeping. not in the good way, though. i stole my mother's sleeping pills after she had screamed all evening. the first night was... awful, to say the least. my dad didn't hit me this time, i wouldn't let him. i stood with my back pressed against the wall and listened to them lecture me about all the ways we could solve this "problem", as they put it.

they gave me several options. the first was to get back with loren or start dating another girl, the second was going to a boarding school for mentally ill people, and the third was that all my credit cards would be cut off, i would be grounded and my car would be taken away. the minute i turned eighteen – a year and a half away – i would have to leave and never be in contact with them again. of course, i chose the latter.

i was clever about my next moves, though. i set up a depop account and sold at least seven hundred dollars worth of the designer clothes i never wear anymore, and then ordered some simple skinny jeans, shorts, t shirts and sweaters from online, only costing me sixty dollars in total. all of the big-name-brand products didn't really matter to me anymore... as long as i liked the way they looked, then it was fine. i didn't need a label to define me.

the thing was, despite my three nights of sleeping, shane wasn't there. not because he had gone away – i don't think that was it – but because the slumber that these goddamn pills sent me into was so deep and heavy that i couldn't even dream at all. i woke up with a groggy head and blurry eyes, but it didn't last that long.

morgan was being extremely quiet. she hadn't left her bedroom much, although i had seen andrew climbing up the drainpipe late last night, so evidently she wasn't in the mood for going out the house.

neither was i, but plans had already been made. today was my appointment at the psychiatric ward, and i was seeing a dream specialist at 11am. one hour from now. i was anxious, my stomach filled with bubbles of nerves as i tugged on my black ripped skinny jeans, my toes catching on the threads. i huffed in annoyance, doing up the buttons and grabbing a harry styles tour t shirt.

i caught my reflection in the mirror and still flinched slightly at my hair. i wasn't used to it, but i loved it. it was different, it shaped my face and sharpened my bone structure. morgan was obsessed with it, she'd told me that when she had crept into my room after my father had screamed at me. they didn't like my hair; it was too different, i looked like i'd been in juvenile detention or been at an army camp.

my phone vibrated, interrupting my thoughts.

gare bear: i'm outside x

i screwed my eyes shut, fingers trembling a little as i tugged on my checkerboard vans and rolled up the cuffs of my jeans. i spritzed on the aftershave – the one like shane's – and inhaled slightly, heading downstairs. morgan peered our her bedroom door as i left mine, her blonde hair a haphazard mess.

'good luck today.' she whispered, wrapping her arms around my neck and pressing her face into my shoulder. 'love you.'

i gulped. i was still getting used to the fact that morgan knew. garrett had sat them down and explained after i had... gotten upset with him that night. my heart hurt, he had told them, and that it was making my brain confused. that was a simple way of putting it, i suppose.

i murmured my thanks as she pulled away. my feet padded down the stairs, slightly shaky. stood at the door, my father raised his eyebrows at me.