Keep Your Head ↠ IANOWT ² [O.H.]

v. back to the old house

CHAPTER FIVE
❛ back to the old house. ❜

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S Y D N E Y
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THEMES:
back to the old house — the smiths

DEAR DIARY, currently lost in oblivion...

It has been four, maybe five days since that Homecoming night. I don't know anymore. I kind of feel like I'm... floating? I don't know where, but all I know is that I don't feel like I belong anywhere now. Except maybe hell. But there is no way I can go home. Not after this.

But I was also running out of options. When I woke up this morning, throbbing from lying on a stiff park bench, I knew I needed a solution. I felt like shit — I hadn't eaten anything more substantial than snack food in days, my hair was greasy and still coarse with dried blood, and the gut-wrenching feeling of being directionless gnawed away at me. I was alone, and vulnerable. If I had learned anything about my powers, it was that that was not a good way to be; raw.

It was while I was nauseated, slowly eating stolen potato chips, that I told myself I couldn't live like this anymore. I had a decision to make: go home and face the music, or run away for good.

     Either way, it looked like I was going to have to journey back home.

     I started going back in the early morning, when I knew Liam was at school and Mom was at work. Retracing my steps felt like treading on eggshells — I was so terrified someone would spot me, would somehow see right through me and know what I did. Then I'd really be done for. But in the effort to push those nerves away, I just focused on the clunk, clunk, clunk of my worn Doc Martens against the sidewalk... each tedious step bringing me closer to home.

     The familiar neighbourhood started materialising around me. For one thing, I passed Stan's house with a few blocks to go, and stopped for a minute. His house still looked like a pigsty on the outside — all sorts of scraps and junk bundled up in front of the porch, neglected and hoarded over years and years. I knew I was messy, but I still didn't know how he could live in that place, and not least because of his shitty dad. Still, seeing his house gave me some strange comfort. It took me back to just a week ago, when he'd caught me on my way home from school, high as a kite and barefoot (still don't get what the fuck that was about...):

     "So, Bloodwitch, am I right?"

     "What?"