Rejects | | a.u

1.3

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

   The doctors said I would have been dead if it wasn't for the puffy old winter jacket I borrowed from my mother I was wearing the night of the crash. I guess my sweater mixed with the jacket and a scarf along with the airbag had created enough protection to keep my lungs from being attacked by A) the impact, and B) and my brother being flung towards me. 
  The drunk driver had struck our vehicle head on, also skidding itself roughly into the driver’s side. My father died instantly. His last words were yelling and telling my family he loved us. He knew it was coming. My brother and I were too dumb to stop fighting for at least ten minutes. I remember my mother gripping my father’s hand telling Josh and I to sleep, it was getting late. But in reality, she wanted us to die peacefully. 
  There was physically no way my dad could have avoided this driver unless he wanted to drive off the bridge into the water and die a slow painful death. So in his defense, he took the fast and less painful way out. Or so he thought. 
  With a minor concussion and a few bumps and bruises I made it out alive. And here I am today at seventeen years old, living a slow and painful death. 
  I have hardly any contact with my other family members since. The only person who ever bothered to visit me while I was in the hospital was my uncle Garrett, my father’s younger brother. He had told me my grandmother was in no state to visit her only living grandchild. 
  Garret and my father are my grandmothers only children, Garret being the only one left. He's twenty-five and has no ambition to settle down, as he's more interested in traveling than love.
Janet's mother Eden has been more of a grandmother to me than my own and I thank her for that every day. 
  The day we're born is the day we start to die. It's ironic because it's the day we are supposed to start living our life is the day it slowly starts to decay away into nothing but a box full of pictures and a lifetime full of memories that aren't even remembered in the process. 
  Eden has always said I'm like a misguided ghost. I'm always traveling somewhere and running from nothing without any direction. She's always been trying to convince me I need someone to keep me grounded and have them there when I need them. I mean I have Asami but Asami is like a sister who I spend half my time fighting with. I try my hardest not to due to past events with Josh but it's a challenge with her. 
  Eden's been praying for the day when I come running home screaming 'I'm in love!' I mean it's sweet of her for believing so strongly in it but honestly, love just isn't for me.    The day I actually find love is probably another downfall in the making. I know you’re not supposed to rely on someone for your happiness but Colton fucking ruined me. He was my first everything. He saw me in my most vulnerable times. He saw me when I was weak and when I was strong. He’s visited my parent’s grave for crying out loud. He was that one little bit of happiness I needed in my life. My best friend was and still is a struggling alcoholic. My adoptive sister was working two jobs and trying to apply for college. Janet was and still is a full time nurse working her ass off for me to go to college. I’m not even her blood daughter.   No one had time for me and my problems but he’d take time out of his day to be there and one day he just left. He picked the worst day to do it also.   It was the seventh year anniversary of my parents the day he decided to walk out. I was already a wreck that day and suicidal thoughts were being pushed over the edge.   I clearly remember pacing around the room waiting for him to come over. I remember thinking it should have been me dead. It should have been me and everyone else should have been alive.   When he walked through the door I put a big smile on my face and pretended everything was alright.     “Hey Beth, how are you doing princess?” Colton says, brushing my head out of my eyes placing a small kiss on my forehead.   “I’m alright, I’ve been better.” I admit, smiling sadly. Colton sighs as he pulls me into his arms, resting his chin on my head. He rocks me back in forth as I try my hardest to hold back tears.  “It’s alright to cry, shh.” He says quietly. “It’s alright. I know it’s hard but you’ll be okay.”   He bends down and kisses the tears away from my cheeks. An innocent gesture that means more then he’ll ever know.     If you were a bystander in that moment you’d assume the couple was helplessly in love – head over heels, together forever. But clearly that wasn’t the case. I liked to pretend Colton and I were alright but after the day he came to the graveyard to lay out new flowers on my parents and brothers tomb stones with me it was obvious it wasn’t okay.   My mother hated roses and always loved purple petunias. She always said roses were just something dumb and cliché and for boring people so every Valentine’s Day my father bought her a bouquet of purple petunias even though they were never in bloom. The catch to their little petunia inside joke was that they were always fake flowers. My father explained to me what had to be a billion times that their love would never ever die with fake flowers because fake flowers never died. They would just sit in a vase where you could admire them and they’d never be taken away from you.      Colton and I walk hand in hand up the cobblestone steps leading through the black gates into the graveyard where my family is buried. I clutch the bouquets of flowers with my free hand. Today is the day I wished would never happen every year but it always did.   The anniversary of the car crash and the deaths of my family happened every March 18th. Every damn year I was reminded of the horrid events that took place when I was eight years old, hardly old enough to remember my home phone number. It was the day where I suddenly grew up, no childhood in sight. I was an orphan, a helpless child with no family.   We reach the three graves lined up perfectly side by side. I smile sadly at my fathers. There was a small picture on the top of it of him and me during Christmas when I was six. They have this thing at the mall during Christmas time when you can go take a picture with Santa. I refused to sit on the strangers lap unless he did it too.   I set down a small pile of roses on his grave then take a step to the right to my mothers. Her grave also had a picture but it was the four of us. I set down purple petunias and let go of Colton’s hand to wipe a tear away from my cheek.   Josh hated flowers, he always said he’d much rather his grave filled with dinky cars and little army men than flowers. I swear he was mentally seven. I laugh as I set down a red car by his grave next to a yellow one and a blue one from previous years that haven’t disappeared with the blanket of snow that’s slowly melting.     That day Colton and I went to the graveyard he seemed really antsy and eager to leave and do other things. He kept telling me I needed to get my mind off stuff and just relax. He would kiss my neck and whisper in my ear even though I had clearly stated I wasn’t in the mood nor was I ready.   Later that day I ended up giving in and loosing the one thing my mom told me to keep as long as I could, my virginity. I felt like a complete and utter mess at first afterwards but then I felt alright. The tension in the air seemed a little off though. Almost like Colton had gotten what he wanted and now he was done.     He traces his finger along the lines of my naked back, humming something into my neck. I shiver at his touch. Something just felt wrong. Suddenly Colton’s phone buzzes and he sighs, leaning over to grab it.   “I gotta go babe, I’ll see you tomorrow.”   “Okay,” I give him a small smile. “I love you.”   “I’ll see you later.”He grabs his shirt from the floor, pulling it over his head. He pulls on his jeans and grabs his jacket, walking out the door. I lay here with the blankets still covering me.   All my ‘I love you’s’ feel wasted. It feels like they’ve been thrown around and not cared for. Colton is the only person I’ve ever said and meant “I love you” too, but I guess to him it’s just another three words.   I stare at the familiar bottle of pills on my nightstand and a stupid idea pops into my head.   “What if.” I say to myself. I grab my oversized t-shirt from the floor and pull it over my head. Throwing my hair up in a bun and putting on the rest of my clothes I grab the bottles and quietly walk across the hall to the bathroom.   I bite my lip as I stare at my reflection in the mirror. My mascara is a mess and stray hairs are sticking up in a bunch of directions. I am a mess. I sigh and adjust my shirt. I grab a towel from the drawer and wipe away the mascara and eyeliner from under my eye.   If I was going to die I might as well die pretty.    Colton came back later that night looking kind of upset. It was the night he told me he was leaving for Florida.      Colton came back around three hours later, fiddling with his phone as I opened the door smiling at him. We hung out on the couch for a little bit just hanging around. He looked like something was bugging him.