How to Save a Life

Chapter 1

"Where did I go wrong."

Louis' POV

F*****

Worthless

Idiot

Clueless

Disgusting

Stupid

Fat

Cocksucker

The words swirled around in Louis' brain as he starred down at the icy river below him, that swirled around widely, just like the terrible words that tore more and more holes into his already broken heart. The cold wind pushed gently at his back but he had a firm grip on the bridge so he only swayed lightly where he sat on the bridge railing.

It was ironic, his firm grip on the bridge, considering his grip on life had slipped long ago.

His freezing hands were almost white looking, the knuckles even paler, the loss of blood because of his grip. All of a sudden he felt a warm trickling on his freezing cold hands and he looked down to see his own blood. Only an hour before, he had slashed up the soft skin on the underside of his wrists, worse than he had ever done before. He put a bandage on it so he wouldn't bleed all over the sidewalk on his long walk to the bridge from his house. Somewhere along the way the bandage had fallen off and the terrible cuts were open to the harsh winter cold. He couldn't really call his house a home, he had wanted to leave the hellhole since he was 7 years old.

Looking down at his torn up skin he could see the dark bruises and the teeth marks from when he had dug his teeth into his arm to keep from screaming as his mother screamed profanities at him or his dad shoved him down onto the dirty tile floor and whipped him with his belt buckle.

You could say Louis didn't have a good relationship with his parents. Actually that was an understatement. They were the main reason Louis sat on top of that bridge that one freezing night late into the December dark. He couldn't even call them his parents. What kind of parents, whipped their child until he was passed out from pain and blood loss? What kind of parents make their child feel as if he nobody loved him? That nobody even wanted him there? But that was true. And they didn't even know he was gay. But the kids at school did.

Louis' heart let out a harsh pang at the thought of it. Ashton Irwin, the main fuckboy at Louis' high school who Louis had liked forever. When he looks back on it he couldn't think why he had liked the boy, he had seen him flirting shamelessly in the hallways with multiple girls a day. He heard about the sex rumors and how he never went on dates but had sex with girls in the janitors closets and the stories the heartbroken girls who he had played with and broken, told, were terrible. But still Louis fell for his light brown curls and pretty smile and gorgeous eyes.

Until that day.

Louis was stripping to his boxers after P.E. class, out of the sweaty basketball shorts and grey top that they were all regulated to wear, his lower lip between his teeth, scared that someone would notice the bruises his step father had left from his belt buckle the night prior. He was tugging his skinny jeans on when someone grabbed him and pulled him by his arm, which hurt, into one of the showers. Louis didn't know what was happening at first, he had seen people being beaten up in the halls but it had never happened to him. He was he loner type with only one friend, Luke Hemmings. More on him later. He kept his head down and kept his grades up, nobody really knew he existed.