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Harleigh
“Harleigh, come on, open the door.”
Nate’s voice echoed around his family’s bathroom. It was a small room downstairs. I hadn’t even known where I was going when I got the text message from an unknown number, but I’d found myself in here and locked him out.
“Harleigh…” His bangs grew more insistent, each one reverberating through me, making me flinch.
“Stop,” I murmured, hands pressed to my ears. “Stop, stop, stop.”
I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were so tight they burned as I tried to force air into them. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Inhale. Hold—
“Harleigh, I swear to God—”
“Leave me alone,” I shrieked, laying down on the cool smooth tile. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t make my lungs work. “Just… just leave me alone.”
Clutching my cell phone, I read the text message again. The hateful, cruel words taunting me. Seeping into every crack and insecurity I had.
Unknown: Why don’t you just do us all a favor and go back to wherever you came from, piece of trailer trash whore. Or better yet, end it properly this time. No one wants you here. You think Miller gives a shit about you… He doesn’t. He feels sorry for you. Has some weird need to save you. But he doesn’t care about you. Nobody does. Your mom did the world a favor… Now why don’t you?
Bile rushed up my throat and I had to press a fist to my mouth, forcing myself to swallow it back down. My head swam with dark, dark thoughts; not helped by all the drugs in my system. The benzos. Nate’s really strong weed.
I probably shouldn’t have gotten so high, but when he’d lit up a blunt, I’d craved it. The momentary peace I knew it would bring me.
Surviving my new life in Old Darling Hill was exhausting. Keeping up pretenses, acting like everything was okay so I didn’t draw too much attention to myself. Every day was like wading through mud, and some days it was almost impossible to keep moving.
But I did it.
I kept pushing forward.
Even when Nix had showed up again, I’d kept putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward.
Because the choice was simple. Continue to exist—to try and find myself again in all the heartache and pain—or give up.
And I knew what lay at the end of that choice, and it was a place I didn’t ever want to revisit.
“Maguire, come on, open the door and let me in. We can figure it out, I swear. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
Stupid.
Because that’s what it was to people on the outside. A stupid, reckless, spur of the moment decision. It couldn’t possibly be the final straw. A moment born out of pure desperation and hopelessness. A moment when everything felt impossible, the obstacles simply too insurmountable.
A moment when choosing to end it felt like the easier option than sticking around to fight.
Unless somebody had been in that situation, they couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like to be in that headspace. To truly believe that it was the only answer.
My breaths came in short sharp bursts as I drowned in the darkness. It swept in, unyielding and unforgiving, enveloping me in its ironclad grip. It would be so easy to close my eyes and surrender. To let it wash me away until there was nothing left.
“Harleigh… Fuck.” Nate’s footsteps receded, fading into the distance.
A whimper spilled out of me as I tucked my knees up and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Harleigh? Harleigh!”
My eyes flew open. Had I fallen to sleep? Was I dreaming?
“I swear to God, B, if you don’t open this door right—”
“N-Nix?” My voice was barely a whisper, my limbs heavy and head too clouded to focus.
