butterflies rising | ✓

2: highs and lows

It has been a week since Temperance's first day at North Hallow High School. She hadn't met anyone new, nor did she really want to. She has friends. They're just in Portland. But they're still her friends nonetheless.

She had(or in her terms, HAS) a small group of 3 friends. The first was Avery Johnson, who she'd met in kindergarten. The first time they spoke they were fighting over scissors, both wanting the blue ones. Her and Avery became best friends almost immediately. They told each other everything. When Temperance told Avery she was moving away he cried for days, begged her to stay and told her she could move in with his family.

The second friend Temperance made was Beatrice West, a bright young girl with perfect blonde hair. At first Temperance hated Beatrice, envying her wits and ability to turn boy's heads when she walked down the halls. But Temperance soon came to love Beatrice, they spent nearly every weekend together watching movies or gossiping.

The third friend Temperance had made was Carmen Keane. She's tall and athletic, runs track and plays volleyball. Temperance first noticed Carmen's beautiful black curls when they'd met in middle school. They eventually became friends after being forced to work together on a school project.

Other than that Temperance only had acquaintances, people she could have a quick conversation with in periods where she didn't have one of her other friends in.

She'd dated a boy in freshman year, but it wasn't ever a friendship before a relationship. His name was Andrew Micheals. He was taller than Temperance, heavier than her and no doubt stronger. His hair was always a little greasy and a dark brown shade, skin a soft cream color. His wasn't perfect, but then again who was. He wasn't like Temperance, he hated the rain, heavy eye makeup, everything spiritual. Andrew had told Temperance he'd only date her if she acted and dressed the way he saw fit. No makeup, nothing too revealing, nothing too flashy or different. Temperance simply obeyed, because she really liked Andrew.

In the morning Temperance wakes up to the smell of eggs filling her bedroom. She wants nothing more than to fall right back asleep where she was, but she has school and doesn't want to fall in the habit of skipping just because.

She pulls herself out of bed and walks into the tiny guest bathroom beside her room in the attic, which her grandmother had deemed Temperance's. She studies her reflection in the oval mirror above the pedestal sink. She looks at her nearly white skin, wishing it could retain more color. She runs her cold fingers along her defined cheekbones, wishing they were so defined. She thinks they make her look sickly. She stares into the blue eyes she'd inherited from her father, catching a glimpse of his as she does. She runs a cold finger across her collar bones that poke out farther than they used too.

Temperance reaches into the small travel bag of her toiletries below the pedestal sink that she had yet to unpack. She unzips it and pulls out a small bag of white powder she'd bought off a kid back home in Portland. It's heroin, the same thing she'd been using since the night of her dad's funeral.

Temperance tries her best not to spill any powder on the floor when pouring it out onto the toilet cover, though she knows her grandmother would never see it. She squats on the floor, pulling her hair back with one hand and plugging one of her nostrils with the other. She then swiftly takes a sniff of the heroin in front of her, almost instantly feeling it take effect.

She walks down the creaky wooden stairs of her grandmother's house, much of the carpeting on the stairs slowly fraying at the ends. She grips the dark wooden handle tightly, it feels smooth in her grip. Her house in Portland didn't have this many stairs and Temperance's thin legs aren't used to it.

She eventually makes it all the way downstairs, the smell of eggs much stronger in her nose than it was upstairs. She finds her grandmother in the kitchen in the back of the house, still wearing her pajama and an apron made of old T-Shirts and blouses.