When Love Dies by Meaghan Jackson (free ebook reader for ipad txt) 📖

Staring back in the rear view with my mother by my side, I couldn't believe this was happening. No this can't be happening..not to me. My step dad can't have left us. We can't be leaving this state, the only place I've ever known. No, I'm going to shut my eyes and open them and this is all going to be over. Right? When I open my eyes my real father wouldn't have said everything that a father shouldn't, wouldn't have done the things a father should never do to his child. This is my life. I'm Meaghan, I'm 14 and I have depression and insomnia.
Now under the circumstances being suicidal and cutting would be acceptable, right? Wrong. I look at the scars on my wrist and no matter how badly I want to hide them or try to hide them, it never works. My mom and I are going to Ohio to visit our family. Now, she's going for a week but I am going for the entire summer, I am then enrolling in the local high school. It's going to be weird going to school with my mom's "little brother" but hell, I guess it's just that I'm happy I at least get one friend at this school. We've been roaming around my entire life. Since my mom has never had any luck with guys.
Memories flash before my eyes as I stare back, at the house I once knew as home. That was alienated years before my step dad ever decided to leave us. My older sister decided to move in with my biological father at 12 years old, 4 years ago I had almost no clue what was going on. I knew about her troubles in school and run in with the cops but I didn't think it was bad enough for her to leave the household. She never liked our step father much. She probably had the thought in her head, the same one I had for man years, that our parents might get back together one day. But that dream was shattered when mom introduced us to "army dad" 9 years ago.
For 7 years of my life he had been my father where Jeff had failed. My sister had gone to live with Jeff and that had gone wrong in so many ways that none of us knew it would last. After a few run ins with the law and a couple boos and drugs later, she moved with my moms biological mother and 2 months later we found out she was pregnant. At 15 she had been pregnant with my niece (now a year and a half) Isabella. The house had held so many good times that I couldn't even dwell upon them at that moment. Soon the house is out of view no matter how far I turn around in my seat, and I finally settle. I look out the window and try to hold back my tears as they silently run down my face.
My best friend had come to see me off and now my phone is blowing up with almost everyone in my contacts telling me how much they miss me. It becomes so much that I finally turn it off and gently place it in the back seat next to my neon red jump bag. I simply know that the one text that I am wanting will never come. I hope for the best in Ohio and my mind wanders off to a place where I am finally pain free. I feel the truck slow and I finally realize that I'd been sleeping for 10 and a half hours, we're in Ohio. I see movement in the living room and I know its Emma and Molly. They're my mom's real mom's children. So like my moms little sisters. As we walk in we're greeted by more than Emma and Molly, we're greeted by Matt and Aaron also. It amazes me knowing that they stayed awake until 4 am to see us. I stop in the living room and take it all in, this will be my home for the next three months. As soon as I look outside I realize that it's more then 3 months, it's the next 4 years that I'm here. Then who knows where the hell I'm going.
This is my home, we all hug and kiss each other and Emma sheds a tear or two, they're all so excited for us to be here. We haven't seen them in almost 2 years, that was with my step dad. As we walk down stairs and lay down on the pull out couch, I start to cry. This is where I laid 2 years before with my little sister, holding her tight as she cried terrified of the thunder storm happening. I realize now that the father I had grown to love and know as my protector ruined my picture perfect life. I get up, feeling numb, and walk up the stairs and slip outside for a cigarette.
I lay on the porch swing and look at the willows hanging in the front yard over the pond. As I take a drag and inhale I close my eyes, I'm remembering laying in Alex's arms and feeling safe and secure and how I may never feel that again. Alex is the love of my life, he lives back in the hick town of Orange, Massachusetts. But that hick town was everything to me, for me. I honestly loved that boy dearly and it hurts me so badly to know I will never see his wonderful face ever again. I start breathing slower and slower as my cigarette goes out and soon enough I'm sleeping.
The swing is swaying and I feel some one brushing their fingers through my hair. The sunlight is warm and my bloody arms where I had cut myself last night is covered by a sweatshirt. Aaron smiles down at me and I snuggle into him. I have had a crush on Aaron since I was probably 8 years old but it was never compared to anything I felt with Alex. Once I smell coffee I get up off the swing and the moment that so many years before I would have considered perfect. Now I just numbly slide through life.
When I get in the house everyone is sitting at the table eating pancakes and Joy is talking to mum in the parlor. I say good morning to every one avoiding the weird looks as I stick my cigarettes in my waist band. I sit down next to Aaron and grab some pancakes. Being as exhausted as I am I get up and grab a cup of coffee, Emma follows me. “Hey why were you on the porch this morning?” Emma asks grabbing my sore, cut, arm through Aaron's sweat shirt. “If you can keep a secret I can tell you Emma, but you have to promise to keep your mouth shut to every one.”
She nods and we quietly slip down stairs and sit on her bed. “I was thinking about my ex Alex and everything and it all became too much to bear, so I grabbed my cigarettes and my supplies and went out to the front porch. I needed my fix last night and I don't know. Just thinking of Alex, Scott, and Molly made it miserable. When I woke up this morning I was still on the swing and Aaron was brushing his fingers through my hair.” Emma's mouth just dropped. She hadn't known about my little secrets and I knew if I hadn't sworn her to secrecy she would have went up stairs and told mom and Joy.
I could tell something had changed in her eyes and she had finally thrown together the words she had been longing to say. “Meg, I love you so much and it pains me too see you going through this. I don't want you to cut and smoke but if that's the only way to keep you living then in God's name I will keep your secrets. I want you to know that I am here for you no matter what and I will always have your back.” We hugged for a while and we had agreed to go back up stairs.
When we got up there every one had finished breakfast and mom and Joy were cleaning up. Emma made me a coffee as I sat down to eat. Aaron looked at me curiously as he had not known, before this trip, that I had been suicidal. Or my worst secret, that I had been hospitalized for it. I had moved out here not only to get a new start from Scott but to get away from being terrorized at school and trying to get away from people and their rumors. At school I couldn't concentrate because through the whispers I had known were about me my mind was telling me to run to the bathroom and cut my belly, arms, chest, legs, anything to shed the bad blood in my body.
Kids at school would whisper about it, about how I was “doing it for attention” or how I hadn't “really” been suicidal, that it was something else. But no one had been there with me. No one had seen the way I cried every night because of everything that had happened or been said to me. No one had felt the way I had felt, and in my mind, no one ever should. Of course my best friend and sister had been there with me, but she's the one who started the doubts. The one who had started the lies that had been circulating the school. I never thought my perfect life would ever end up like this, in an eternal low and in this shit hole.
As I was reminiscing my mother came over to me and gave me my pills, it's almost like I've been put on automatic. Every day I do the same thing, eat break fast, swallow my horse pills for my depression, and go on feeling numb. But not today. Something inside me shifted this morning when I realized that Emma under stood. That some one had finally seen what I had. I know she would never feel the way I had, but she had seen parts and glimpses of my pain.
We all get ready for the beach, well I guess we can call it the "lake" but the body of water is so huge you can't even see the other side! I sit on the beach and I feel some one standing above me, I look up to see Aaron. He smiles down at me and it makes me feel like a million bucks, for once I feel normal. I feel like me again. We walk down the beach holding hands and we meet up with Molly and Emma. Emma gives me a curious look and I realize the look on Aaron's face.
Everyone but me sees something, and as I look in the distance I see three people walking. Two of them are holding hands and it looks like two guys and a girl. I realize with her hair blowing all around as they get closer that it's my best friend. And, and..and..and..oh my god. My breathing gets irregular and I can't breathe all the sudden. Everything goes black and I can't see.