Pacifier

// Isabelle \\

It was late at night when i heard the front door slam shut downstairs. I'd locked my bedroom door when Johnny had tried to talk me out of my mood, I'd kicked up a fuss and tried to leave but he'd stood in my doorway and I knew better than to try my luck with him.

So i had slammed the door in his face and pushed my chest of drawers against it and I hadn't seen or heard from anyone since.

I'd tried to read for awhile tried to distract myself in several different ways, but my head was spinning with anxiety and upset. All these wounds I'd taken that day.

If I could have done anything I'd have phoned Della but that night a fear gripped me when i thought about her. When i remembered how no one knew where she was.
How if anything had happened to her it had happened to her instead of me.

So I'd given up trying to read, given up trying to do most things, and just laid down on my rug, starring at the cieling, trying to come to terms with that deadly look id seen flash through Van's eyes.

Just like that i was back to being scared of him again. Scared of everything again.

I wanted to leave but the fear of the night and the dark and the Reids who might be waiting around the corner held me prisoner in my bedroom. Doors baracaded on everyone I'd ever felt safe around and I felt terrible.

Camille was out there, Van and my brother, they too were brave enough to leave the Balcony without a second thought. Even Della, she too was out there now, and yet here I was, too scared, too weak too much of a child to risk climbing from my bedroom window and sneaking out to find her. I'd never felt as young and as helpless as I did in that moment. I felt a lump in my throat, my bottom lip trembling as I tried not to cry, again.

And then i caught my reflection in the mirror on the wall, my petite frame strewn across the floor like a discarded towel or the uniform I'd wriggled out of an hour before. The way my hair splayed across the rug, dark ringlets scattered. The gentle slopes of my body stretched out carelessly.

I wondered if thats what Megan had meant. When she'd said its all in the way you let them see you. Was this what she had meant.

I rolled over slowly so that i was lying on my side, one leg lazily leaning on the other, my head resting on my folded arms. In the dim light of my bedroom my eyes were wide, doe eyes so dark a shade of green I could only differentiate between my iris and my pupils when one of them caught the light.

I didn't look dark and threatening the way that my brother and his friends did, I didn't look like Camille, the kind of girl you knew could kill you with a second glance, if she could be bothered, but I did look something.
Something different to the way I felt.
Something like a little trouble, enough to make me think that maybe I was more like the girls than I'd first thought.

"Fuck it," i mumbled pushing myself up slowly, never once taking my eyes of my reflection, captivated by this moment of quiet surprise. A realisation.

On my hands and knees I crawled towards the mirror, reaching for the mascara and the clothes I'd discarded the night before. With half a smile I pulled my tshirt back over my head, wriggled into a pair of jeans and wandered hesitantly over to my bedroon window.

Outside it was raining, not heavily but just enough to wet the windowsill and leave my fingertips cold and damp. To my left the fire escape stairs glistened with puddles reflecting streetlights and the smoggy night sky and weighed up the chances of my being able to land on them without slipping to a three story drop.

They were orange and rusty and a stretch to reach, the burnt iron scratching my hands as I gripped the railings to tight.

I wasn't sure how strong I was or how strong I was going to need to be to pull myself up onto the ladder, but something inside had taken a hold of me, gripped me tight. I knew I had to try and find Della myself. Afterall it was my fault she'd even been waiting there for me in the first place.