Suck It And See | A. Turner

[Chapter 24]

Jade had made it through the next three days running on a total of twelve hours of sleep. She was miserable, tired, and a tad paranoid. Like every other morning, she rolled out of bed, combed her hair, put on her uniform, and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She couldn't help but look into the trash can every morning, sometimes finding balled up, used tissues; other times she would find tear-stained wads of toilet paper along side a soiled skin wipe.

When she came down to catch the bus, Aunt Joy had prepped a light breakfast for her children as usual, usually consisting of half a crumpet, some jam and butter, with a choice of coffee or orange juice. Jade took the hot coffee as usual, but it never felt like it was doing it's job.

At school, she did her very best to keep up with her teachers and their exercises, despite drooping eyelids and lack of attention. Instead, her fingers would tap nervously against her notebooks, or she'd doodle mindlessly in her papers as oppose to doing her math problems. Slowly, Jade was becoming more and more distant from her friends, and her depression began to settle in. She was nervous all the time, jumpy at most. Her work was lagging, as was her dedication to band practice. As for her art, it dwindled into mindless charcoal scribbles on a white sheet of paper, dirty, musty, and chilling.

Later one afternoon, she came home from school late due to her study session in the library. Jade was doing all she could to try to keep up with the class. But as she entered her bedroom, ready to rip off her uniform and get some sleep, she stopped dead when she saw a plastic bag sitting atop her duvet. She was nervous because she had locked her door before she had left that morning.

Jade approached it with caution, the distance between the bed and her door seemed to get longer with every step she took. There was no note attached to it, but it was tied loosely. She pulled the plastic ends apart and looked inside, and to her surprise, she found a pair of rubber bra stuffers.

She whipped around as a creak of wood echoed down the hall, but nobody made a sound. Jade picked up one of the implants, it was cold and slippery, like a vacuum-packed chicken breast. On the back of it, she found a bright pink sticky note with cursive writing on it.

Don't let him see these

➿➿➿

"Summat's wrong wif Jade's family," Sasha boasted. Alex, Matt, Glyn, Jamie, and Andy all looked up at her with surprise, more at the fact that she had barged in on their library study time than anything. Matt shrugged nonchalantly.

"Which side of the family?" he asked, "The snooty, nose-up-the-arse family or the family that may as well 'ave been blown up by Chernobyl?"

"That ain't clever, Matthew," Sasha said. She grabbed the seat between Jamie and Alex and plopped down, "I'm telling yeh, though. Jade's in some sort o' deep shite and she ain't telling me wha' it is,"

"Whatcha' fink's wrong?" Andy asked.

"That family she's staying wif, fer one!" Sasha exclaimed just a tad too loudly. The librarian glared at the back of her raven-black hair and shushed her. Sasha just waved her off.

"I don' know wha' to tell yeh, Sash," Alex said, "If there's summat going on, Jade won't talk about it,"

"That's exactly the problem," Sasha said, "Yeh fucks weren't 'ere when it 'appened, but yeh prolly' 'eard about Flora's meltdown over the Christmas break,"

"Yeah, I told 'em about it," Glyn said, "Wha's that gotta do wif Jade?"

Sasha looked around nervously before ducking her head low, whispering so no other students could hear, "Well, she ain't sure, but she finks tha' brother, the oldest, is 'urting Flo,"