A Private Life

Part 1

Nothing was ever easy. Life was hard. Even when they were sipping margaritas by the pool . There was always an underlying tension of unease. Topics to steer clear of and thoughts to ignore.

"Welp I'm Out," Daisy sighs, placing the empty glass on the table beside her. Daisy smiled at the familiar buzz that was racing through her after just two drinks. She tips her head back to enjoy the late August breeze cutting through the bright room. Vacation, just the word had Daisy smiling, had the weight lifting off her shoulders. It was the only week where she could let go, where she didn't need to be worried about anything else going on in her life. This was the one week all about her.

"Make another," Olivia says, her blue eyes flicking towards the kitchen counter. The large bottle of rum was already halfway gone. They had picked it up when they got to the island, yesterday morning, and the four of them had already drank most of it. Daisy had waited in the car when they were buying the alcohol, flashbacks from four years ago plaguing her. Back then was the first of many wake up calls Daisy would have. She had watched from the car as Olivia was escorted out of the liquor store. At sixteen the four of them were pretty stupid and even though they were all twenty-one now Daisy still jumps when driving past Al's Spirits.

"Nah," Daisy says, pushing up from the large dark wood table, shaking away thoughts of the troublesome past they all shared. They four of them used to joke that their life should have been filmed. That all the drama they dealt with would have made for a great show. The show would have been a warning to teenagers about the thrills of being a hoodlum and just how far one could fall, no matter the safety net they had.

"Where are you going?" Ella asks, Daisy stares at her, Ella's blonde hair fluttering softly in the summer breeze. They had been friends for eighteen years; Daisy had watched as Ella struggled over the years, offering her a shoulder to cry on or an alibi for her disinterested parents, on the off chance they decided to care about Ella.

"To shower," Daisy offers, with an amused smirk. "What? Did you wanna join?" The sarcastic comment rolled off her tongue with a wiggle of her eyebrows. Ella rolls her eyes and scoffs, looking back to her phone in her hand. Olivia giggles and stares down at her phone nursing her mojito. Daisy knew there was no fighting it as races down the stairs, her mind began to wander back to high school. To their junior year of high school, when all they should have been worrying about was getting a good score on the SAT's, what the prom theme was going to be, and whether their boyfriends loved them or not.

* * *

Daisy skipped up the stairs of her small private school, her lips pursed as she made her way to the fourth floor for Spanish. She was sweltering in the overheated old mansion. "Holy crap I'm outta shape," Daisy said, as she spotted her friend.

"You're late," Ella quipped, her full lips pulled back into a smile on her square face. Ella linked her arms with Daisy's dragging her down the hall towards their classroom.

"What else is new?" Daisy said, dropping her lime green backpack on the wooden table in the back of the small room. "Guess what I tried last night," she said with a mischievous twinkle in her honey brown eyes. "Cocaine." Daisy giggled, as Ella dropped the textbook she was pulling out of her backpack, a few others turning to look at the pair.

"What?" Ella gaped, from her seat next to Daisy. "How? Where? What? When? What happened?" Ella whispered, as the teacher started class. Daisy grabbed a strand of her long dark brown hair and twirled it around her finger, a nervous habit she's had since she was little.

"Aiden called me at like, eleven last night. I don't know why he didn't just walk up the two flights of stairs," she rambled, another nervous habit. "He told me to come downstairs, I obviously did. He had lines of cocaine on his iPad and offered me some. He told me that I should try at least one line. He said that it wouldn't affect me and that I should try it with him there," she said. "So I did and it was gross but at the same time kind of interesting," she said, remembering the disgusting taste the white powder left in her mouth coating the back of her throat.

"Why didn't you say no?"

"Because I'm a pushover and I can't say no," Daisy offered, with a questioning tone, as if she was asking Ella if that was why. Daisy's brother, Aiden, would ask her for money, to use her car, and to keep secrets from their parents. It was only last summer, after Daisy tried weed for the first time that he started to call her down to smoke with him, or to take a shot of tequila. Daisy never wanted to. She wished she could tell her brother no, but he was family and she felt that refusing him would be a betrayal of sorts or that he would push her away like he had done with their parents.

"Are you going to do it again?" Daisy paused. She hadn't given it much thought, last night after she had done the line she had gone back up to her room. She had sat back down at her desk and worked on homework until she finished everything that was due in the coming week. It had made her focus more. It had made her wide awake when she had been falling asleep, she felt like she dancing around her room.

"I don't know. I won't go out looking for it but if someone offers I don't think I'll say no," Daisy said, her eyes flicking from the whiteboard to her notebook as she tried to copy what the teacher had written.

"What was is like?"

"I just gave me more energy, made me more focused and awake. I stayed up talking to Ethan and Monica for hours. I was just more social."

"Where did Aiden get it from?" Daisy flinched slightly at the question. She didn't like thinking about where her brother got the drug from. She didn't like to think about the type of people he hung out with.

"I don't know. Probably one of his sketchy ass friends over in Po-town," Daisy said, resting her cheek on her hand thinking of the type of people her older brother hung out with. Aiden was a high school dropout who wanted to be a famous DJ. He barely worked installing wood stoves into houses and played at the local festival circuit in the summer. Even when Aiden was in high school he had been hanging out with the wrong crowd, the type of people who fed his addictive personality with drugs and who nurtured the lies he alway told. It didn't help that Daisy only wanted to think the best of her brother. She wanted to believe what he told her, even thought she knew better.

"Daze, It could have been laced with something," Ella sighed. Daisy smiled at her friend, knowing that she only wanted Daisy to be safe. Ella knew that Daisy was always worried about becoming addicted to something like her brother was. Daisy talked about it sometimes, when her friends asked her why she waited so long to drink, to smoke weed, why she was always so hesitant to smoke during their lunch breaks. Addiction ran in Daisy's family, both her grandfathers couldn't give up smoking and ended up dying from it, now her brother was dealing with the same addiction, but Daisy didn't seem to have any problems yet. She didn't feel the 'itch' Aiden always talked about, she could go weeks without a cigarette and be just fine. "It's highly addictive,"Ella added, almost as an afterthought even though Daisy knew it had been the first thing that came to mind when Daisy confessed to her.

"You won't let me go down that road." Daisy trusted her friends with her life. She knew they always had her back. Daisy knew that out of all of them Ella wouldn't be afraid to sit her down and tell her the truth. Ella would be the one to keep Daisy from following down the same path as her brother.

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-Bee <3

P.S. There is always a reason to smile.