you in my voice (bxb)

vingt et un

Vingt et un - Twenty-One

Eden had his head leaning against his locker, breathing in deeply to calm himself down. Another failed test. What did he expect? He didn't try in school anymore, so how could he hope to ever make a difference? He didn't even want to try. It wasn't like he was going  anywhere in life. He had no special talents or skills, and his grades had been pure shit all year that there was simply no chance.

Why did he ever stop trying? Eden used to excel at everything. Well, only for a few years, anyway. In that space of time between Piper's death and the end of it all, Eden spent all of his time doing schoolwork. Sometimes he even asked for extra work solely for the sake of distracting himself a little while longer. Eden supposed that it worked while it lasted.

But there he was. He didn't have to do his homework to distract himself anymore. He didn't have anything to work for. Eden had no special talents or interests. And at that rate, no college would ever accept him due to his poor grades. It just made Eden feel hopeless. On one hand, he could get his shit together and improve his work, and on the other, he could continue down the dark path. The latter sounded far more appealing, because it seemed much easier.

Eden wondered if Destiny was aware of his grades. If she kept track of just how bad he really was doing. If she did though, why wouldn't she scold him for it? That didn't make any sense to Eden. None of their dynamic really did.

In fact, the entire game of trying to adapt to a normal life didn't make sense. How was any of it meant to work? How was a child suppose to be able to change their morals and sense of self-worth so easily? It was impossible. Eden didn't believe that he was worth good grades or self-care. He believed that he wasn't worth much of anything, really.

That was what he had been taught. Piper always told him that he was just a speck in an endless universe, with no real purpose of his own other than to please God. Eden never knew why she liked to please God so much. It wasn't like they had been raised in a religious environment. Maybe she was just seeking for some sort of answer to their misery.

That house was so far from it, with all of the screaming, yelling, hurting, and that. There was nothing redeemable about it. Every second that Eden spent in there, curled up into a ball beneath his bed, pressed into the furthest corner away from all of the edges with the hopes of finally be safe from him and what he did. None of that would ever go away. It was always going to plague Eden every second of every day.

At least, that was his mindset. Eden truly believed that no amount of progress would ever help him to truly move away from it all. What made him feel even worse was the fact that he threw his body away so easily. He let pretty much anyone touch him. It was all so sick and twisted, his mind becoming a haze of pain and memories. Like a fog, it gathered around him and captured his ability to breath.

"Eden?" A hand lightly touched his shoulder, resulting in Eden spinning around and flinching back into his locker. A loud sound echoed throughout the mostly empty hallway as his back hit the metal.

He had to take a moment to regain himself. Why did he react so much? He thought that he was over that phase of flinching at any loud noise or when he was touched. Yet, he found that wasn't entirely the case.

To absolutely no one's shock, it was Fay that stood there. How did he always find Eden? It seemed that no matter where Eden was and no matter what his brain was doing to him, Fay was always there. It left Eden with mixed emotions. "Y-yeah?"

He mentally scolded himself for stuttering. He had to pause after speaking to listen to his own breathing. Whenever his mind was in such a stupor, he sometimes forgot entirely that he was free from that dirty white house.