"Don't let go"

1- a day that changed everything

With her mom in the hospital, her dad in jail for reasons Betty refused to talk about, and her sister who was still a teenager, a mother of two and living on some weird cult farm, Betty had no where to go.

Cancer sucked, and having a mother who was dying of it hurt even more than anything Betty could imagine. Some days she would lay in bed and wish it was her, in the place of her mother. She so desperately wished her mother would live, to see her grow, watch her have kids, get married, even scold her one more time for the pettiest of reasons.

But, of course, life isn't fair and everything happens for a reason. So Betty had been told. She was waiting in the hospital. What was she waiting for? Her mom to die. The doctors had called her and told her to come, say her last goodbyes, because Alice, well, she wouldn't make it through the night.

Betty had sat there countless days, watching her mother sleep, when she's asleep she's not in pain and Betty would only ever cry when she was asleep. Her hair had been shaved, she had lost some much weight, the bags under her eyes sunk into her head and she almost looked like a skeleton.

"Don't worry baby, y-you will have somewhere to go" Alice croaked stuttering and struggling to get her words out.

"Shhh, mom, don't worry about me okay, you need your rest" Betty cried putting her hand over her moms and stroking it lightly.

"M-my friend from high school will take you in, he's a good man, he might n-not do good things, but he is good" Alice said her voice now a mere whisper.

Alice began to choke and splutter and wheeze causing Betty's eyes to fill up, she knew that this was her mother time to join the angels. Because that's what she was, an angel.

Doctors rushed in, and told Betty to go outside, but Betty didn't move, her legs went like jelly and she fell to the floor, tears streaming her face. It felt like her heart had been ripped out of her chest, no worse. It felt like her soul had been taken away from her. Losing your mother is an indescribable pain that Betty certainly wouldn't wish on anyone, not even her worst enemy, not even her father, and her father really is a shitty human being.

And just like that, every memory of her and her mother, at pops, at ballet, playing in the garden, vacations, going to the beach, the zoo rushed through her mind, only adding to how harsh the gut wrenching reality of losing her mother forever is.

All of a sudden a tall male figure came out of the shadows, well everything was a blur so it really is hard to tell where he came from wrapped his arms around Betty and pulled her into a separate room and sat her down on a bed.

"Your okay, okay, just breathe" he said, his voice was calm, gravelly, deep. Betty closed her eyes and whimpered even more, the weeps just radiates from in her and before she knew it she was pressed against his chest. He smelt like cigarettes disguised with cologne and for some reason to Betty, it was calming. She sniffed and continued to sob for hours. In the arms of some stranger, who's face she was still yet to see.

"It's all going to be okay" he continued to soothe her and gently sway her side to side causing her to drift to sleep in his arms, soon he too was asleep, they were wrapped up in each other and neither of them cared. Asleep on a hospital bed, only steps away from where her mother had just died.

That night Betty dreamed it was all a lie. That her mom was back, they were in their home, making pancakes and dancing around the kitchen to a Bon jovi song from the 80's and celebrating she wasn't sure what. Until it went dark, the lights went off in the house and then pitch black, out side it had turned to night, her mother's smile began-to fade and her hair started coming out. Betty panicked and held on to her mother tight whispering how much she loves her in her ear. And then she was gone. Betty's eyes fluttered open to see morning light shine through the hospital blinds and a leather jacket, with a peculiar snake on the back of it walk out of the room.

She gathered her scattered thoughts and ran to the door, wanting to thank the boy for staying with her. Calming her down and staying with her. But as she approached the door she looked left and right and the the leather jacket with the snake was no where to be seen.

"Are you Elizabeth cooper?" A woman in a boring plaid suit and librarian glasses said distracting Betty.

"Uh yeah" Betty croaked her voice so strained from the tears last night.

"I'm Wendy Walter from child services, your mother has arranged for you to go and live with a friend of hers, on the south side, which means you'll be in a different school district, I know your going through a tough time but I am here to help you get settled in with a new family" she was saying but it was all a blur to Betty, her voice faded out and Betty's eyes scattered the halls to find the boy, but she didn't see him.

Before she knew it she was in a car with this woman called Wendy, crossing the bridge to the south side and entering territory she'd never been in.

Her head leaned against the window, watching the white picket fences turn into trash cans and trailer parks.

It didn't look like her pink sweaters and bubblegum personality was going to cut it here, nope.