Roofers.

8. Librarian Adderall junkie.

Scarlett POV.

See, here's the thing about having your best friend commit suicide. 

One, the world always feels like it's about to end. Two, you know that feeling when you find something out and all you wanna do is call your best friend and tell them all about it, only to remember that your best friend is dead and is most likely too busy being maggot food at that very second? Okay, maybe scrap the last part, that's just me. 

And three, no one ever let's you forget. 

Suddenly all that you are or will ever be is the girl with the best friend who committed suicide in a motel bathroom. You know, the roofer who was being abused by his domme in 401.

People forget it's insensitive or that you may still not be okay and yet, that's how they'll address you from now on. 

Whenever someone forget's my name or whenever there's a new kid at school, my distinguishing factor will be the death of someone I loved. Not the fact that my mother single-handedly built one of this city's most thriving businesses or that once, in 3rd grade, I made an entire speech about the f-word to make a statement. It won't be the fact that I was Orlando William's first girlfriend or any shit like that. Everybody knew me, not because they envied me or liked me or spoke to me, but because they pitied me and felt the need to make sure I knew that. I hated it. It had been two years, you'd think people would stop feeling the need to mention it around me but no, not in this city at least.

Sometimes, I forget who I was before he died. Remembering that was difficult too, because no one around me seemed to remember me either. The irony of it became that, in the eyes of others, I had no life outside his grave.

That's why I liked Adeline Reeds (Addy, for short) so much, because she could give two shits about how anyone felt. Including me.

That's fucked up, I know. No one wants to be treated like trash, but believe me when I tell you that being treated like nothing is worse. She reminded me that I was no different to the average person. In her eyes I may have been scum for all she cared, thrown into the exact same hole as everyone else in this forsaken city, but company was always better than being alone. It was better to be common.

Addy sat behind the counter, chewing watermelon bubblegum, blowing a bubble the size of her entire face as she read a book, her muddy combat boots propped up onto the old birch wood desk.

Addy was beautiful, not in the overdone intsa-baddie type of way but in a carefree, bare sort of way. Harbouring a perfect ensemble of fiery red hair, the colour of a raging bonfire that she tamed by wearing it in pigtails. She had bright blue eyes, that seemed to mimic medusa with her cold, icy glare that seemed to make most people tense up with a single glance, masked by a pair of specs that made her eyes seem a tad bit bigger than they really were. She had vampire-like alabaster skin abundantly decorated with dark freckles that she never cared to hide.

I'd surmised that she was, most likely, a descended of some mythical creature lost to the fleeting and incomplete knowledge of mankind. But — like any partially sane human being — she denied those claims.

People who didn't know her personally had a sour habit of assuming she was a sweet girl at first glance. Well, that was until she opened her mouth, that is. Not that it bothered her, anyway. After 5 years of practically being the local library's loan shark, she'd grown skin tougher than Nick Fury. She'd tell her boss to go fuck himself if it were the right occasion, and she wouldn't regret a syllable. She was sweet, in her own apathetic and mildly sadistic way.

"Sup, Addy," I greeted, ignoring the fact that she was obviously reading a book and that she'd hand my head to my mother on a silver platter for doing so. She didn't reply, she kept reading as if I wasn't even there.