Making You See - Chapter Two

Her apartment was cold and damp. It was suppose to be temporary, while she searched for a new place. A getaway from her mum and step dad. The getaway she never really wanted, until her mother remarried to an abusive man. She would have happily still been

Her apartment was cold and damp. It was suppose to be temporary, while she searched for a new place. A getaway from her mum and step dad. The getaway she never really wanted, until her mother remarried to an abusive man. She would have happily still been living with her mum, on her own, in her cozy, nicely decorated, two storey house. Instead she's stuck in a dump. Somewhere no one wants to hang out in, not even the person who owns it.

The wallpaper, which she was clearly forbidden to change or replace, was peeling off of the walls, curling round itself. The wall underneath was as grubby a pile of dirty dishes that had been sitting there for months and months on end. She hated it. But it was the best thing she could afford, after unwillingly completely cutting herself off from her parents.

She was sat on the sofa wrapped in a spare blanket, so that she didn't have to touch the actual material. She wasn't being snobby. If you could see it, you would understand her actions. It was disgusting, not fit for someone to live in. What choice did she have?

Lucy's stubborn side took over when it came to her housing. She refused to go to a housing society. She always believed in working for your shelter, not begging or getting it for doing nothing.

She began to scroll through local job advertisements on the phone her mum bought her for her seventeenth Birthday. It was one of the last things she bought her and she wasn't in any hurry to replace it, even though it was almost a year old. She didn't have the spare money, or any money for that matter, there was no way she could replace it.

Just as she clicked on a job she liked the sound of, working in Newlook, her phone screen flashed with an incoming call from her best friend, Victoria. When she answered it, the only thing she could hear were unstoppable sobs coming from her friend's side of the phone call.

"Do you want to come over?" She asked, not expecting an answer, Victoria was crying and when she cried, there was no stopping her unless she was annoyed or distracted.

The phone beeped as the line went dead. Lucy returned to job hunting. The job she'd found looked perfect. Perfect hours, perfect pay, around something she loved, staff discount. What could be wrong about it?

She scrolled further down. 'Must have experience.' She let out an exasperated sigh and tossed her phone on the chair beside her. How could one get experience if no one would hire her and give her the experience. This job loop thing was impossible to get into.

A calm knock on the broke her trail of thoughts. She jumped up to answer it, guessing it was a very upset Victoria.

She shuffled into the cold apartment, shivering due to the extreme temperature change. Victoria hadn't said a single word. She just kept biting the sleeve of her jacket. Lucy nodded at the sofa for her to sit on and she didn't move an inch. She just kept nibbling away at the sleeve like a mouse and cheese. She was acting weird, something was very wrong.

Assuming it was the dirty sofa that prevented Victoria from sitting down, Lucy spread the blanket she had been wrapped in across the whole of the two seater sofa, covering up the grim it naturally had. Again, she didn't move. Lucy walked over a threw her arms around her best friend, pulling her into a hug. Reluctantly, Victoria hugged her back, sobbing into her shoulder.

"What's wrong?"

"Lucy, do you remember Jon?" She asked, trying to hold her tears back in.

Lucy shook her head, confused, she was crying because of some guy she'd never spoken about before.

"You must! He was crazy about you Luce," she explained, shocked at her lack of memory.

She shrugged, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're so oblivious to stuff, Lucy. He wouldn't leave you alone, thinking about it, you never did realise he liked you until I pointed it out to you," she laughed shakily, remembering the way he'd act around her, "It was so cute the way he was awkward around you. He'd massively show off and his friends would tease him so much, poor boy. He was hot, surely you remember him?" She tried to get Lucy to remember him.

She could vaguely remember her best friend pointing out that this guy liked her and what he looked like, but she couldn't remember anything about him.

"What 'bout him?" She shrugged.

"He's dead."

Tears trickled softly down Victoria's cheeks. Lucy stared at her in disbelief. Surely she was messing with her. She had to be joking. Teenagers don't get murdered, they've done nothing to deserve it. They're still kids, maybe he made a mistake, but kids always make mistakes. Why did someone feel the need to murder him? He was just a kid, he had his whole life ahead of him.

"Maybe the actual love of his life killed him, like, maybe they had an argument and she got mad," she joked in attempt to cheer her friend up, "A girlfriend or something."

"Well unless you murdered him, that didn't happen," she retorted, annoyed at her lack of sympathy.

"What?"

She groaned, frustrated by her best friend, "How can you not remember? He was mad about you, always had been, he died still loving you Luce."

"Er..that is a tad creepy. I don't even know him," she insisted.

Lucy racked her brain for the memory of a guy who use to follow her around, crazy for her. The memories didn't exist. It was like he didn't exist.

Tears continued to flow down her face, more frequently. It looked like two mini waterfalls were streaming from her eyes. Lucy couldn't work out why she was crying so much. She barely knew him. He was just some random guy that use to follow her best friend around, that's the only way Victoria knew him, nothing special, they had no history.

She was barely acknowledging Lucy anymore, she just kept crying. At that rate she would have used up all her bodily fluids just by crying over someone's death. Of course it's sad that he was murdered, but she was massively over-exaggerating.

The only thing Lucy could do was rummage through her memories and try to remember the guy her friend was mourning over.

She remembered sitting at lunch one day, laughing with her friends, who she's still friends with today. The faces of all the people there appeared in her mind, one by one, she smiled, thinking about how much everyone had changed in the past few months.

Lucy dove deeper into that lunch time memory. If Jon had been with her as much as possible, the chances were he was there too.

"Oh look, here he comes Luce," her best friend, Victoria teased, whispering it into her ear.

Lucy glanced behind her, to see no one, but Jon and his friends. His friends were slightly dragging him. It was almost as if he wanted to be there, but he was scared of walking over. He didn't want to be laughed at, his pride getting in the way. His friends were laughing, as was he, what he didn't realise was they were laughing more at him, he was laughing in embarrassment.

Eventually he reached the table at which Lucy was sitting; immediately he plucked up the courage to talk to her...

"I can't take it anymore, just stop crying. It's not like you even knew him, not really. Just stop it. He's gone, gone for good. Get over it for gods sake," she screamed insensitively at Victoria.

The tears stopped escaping from her sad eyes. She stared up at Lucy, shocked by how her best friend was being with her. She knew she could be nasty to some people. Time and time again she'd watched her push people away when they got too close, but Victoria always saw herself as an exception; the one person Lucy hadn't pushed away.

Victoria looked horrified, horrified at the way she had spoken and the things she had said.

"You know, I knew you could be nasty, but I never knew you was this heartless. Have some sympathy Lucy. In fact, I did know him. Maybe I hadn't spoken to him lately, but he was a family friend since we were little kids, being my neighbour and everything, it was like losing a family member, I have every right to be devastated about his death, even if you don't care about him. I bet you didn't even notice he was my neighbour, you're so self centered sometimes."

Victoria is normally a quiet girl. She tended to let her best friend push her around so that she does not lose her. She was hurt, she didn't even know why. She was use to her best friend's mood swings, just not directed at her.

"One second you're this kind girl that everyone loves, the next you're a spiteful person, who doesn't want to talk to anyone," she stated through gritted teeth, "It's like I don't even know you anymore."

Victoria didn't want a reply. She wanted to leave and let Lucy think about things. To feel guilty, although, it was something that she'd never witnessed Lucy do. she always would just pretend it never happened. No apology, nothing. She didn't even act strange around that person or hold a grudge, ever.

Lucy stared sheepishly at her, probably now old, best friend as she stormed furiously out of the damp apartment, slamming the door in anger. She wanted to show how annoyed she was, slamming the door was just a way of signifying it to Lucy, since Victoria knew that she was quite oblivious to how she made people feel, well that's the way she came across to everyone who knew her and most of who had only seen her in passing.

Lucy wandered over to the mini fridge-freezer and crouched on the cold, brown tiles to find the milk. She was sure the tiles weren't meant to be brown, patches were white or grey, but it fitted in with the rest of the disgusting room. Her main goal was to spend as little time as possible in the apartment. It probably wasn't even safe to live in. It was better than being homeless though or having the housing department finding you somewhere to live.

She promised herself she would never resort to benefits, she would always work for her lifestyle, however hard it was for her. She would rather go back to her parents' house than get a council house, not that she thought any less of people she knew that did live in council houses. They just weren't for her. She'd always promised her mother and her partner that she would never go back and live with them or even visit. Not while the evil creature she was supposed to call her step dad lived there anyway.

As she pulled the milk out of the fridge and closer to her face, she could tell it was off. The disgusting, sour, smell reached her nose almost immediately and made her want to gag. It had only been in the fridge a day. Chances were it didn't even work, the light went on whenever the door was opened, but she couldn't feel any cold air escaping from the small white box like thing.

Giving up with the milk, she decided to text her best friend, Victoria, to see how she was doing. Lucy hated seeing her best friend upset, thankfully she was always the quiet but bubbly one in the group, along with Lucy, they often kept the group cheerful.

Lucy sent her best friend seven messages, trying to get her attention, each read a few seconds after they were sent. After the seventh message she received a blunt, rude reply, telling her to go away.

She scrolled through the contacts in her phone, searching for one of her closest guy friends and Victoria's boyfriend's number. She paused when she reached the 'J' part of her contacts, noticing a number she didn't recall having on her phone. Jon Rivers. The name felt like it imprinted itself in her mind, she couldn't remember ever talking to him, how did she manage to get his number?

Lucy tapped his name to bring up his contact details. It was practically empty. All that was in his contact details was his name, picture and notes which showed up as three stars.

Lucy examined the picture, it had been cropped or badly taken. He was sat rather close to a girl with long, wavy straight hair. He was looking at her and not the camera, smiling in content, like there was no place he would rather be. He looked sweet, innocent and happy, not angry and agressive like Lucy expected him to be, having been killed. The face was familiar to her.

She zoomed the view in on the girl next to him. There was no way of being certain, but the way the girl's hair was looked exactly how Lucy had her hair most days. They were both in school uniform, but on her wrist, slightly visible was a pink and purple bracelet identically to the one she'd owned for over five years.

She twisted the bracelet around the wrist, trying her hardest to compare the two. Although it was blurry, the bracelet was clearly the same. The girl in the picture was Lucy, Victoria had been right. She didn't remember the picture being taken or the scene taking place, but the photographic proof was enough to convince her that she knew Jon, after all, the camera doesn't lie.

She tapped on the notes section to see the full notes. She could feel the nerves and anticipation in her stomach. She was connected to a guy she couldn't even remember, quite close by the sounds and looks of things. What could the notes possibly hold?

'I need your help - Jon'

Shaking her head, she tried to shake Jon out of her mind too. It didn't work. It was lingering around in her mind, refusing to leave and she couldn't work out why.

Her phone vibrated, with a message notification, breaking her deep thoughts about the contact she had found and the notes to go along with it.. For a few seconds while she read the message and responded appropriately, it succeeded, stopping her thinking about Jon and how she apparently knew him.

She clicked on her William's caller ID, sending a call to him. A second later her replied.

"Why is Vicky upset?" He asked, concerned about his girlfriend, it was sweet, how protective he was of her.

Her mind flickered back to the conversation with her best friend. The only thing she could remember was her friend crying because of the death of Jon. The next thing she knew, she had left her house.

"Some guy called Jon was murdered, she was upset over it because she knew him," Lucy stated without a hint of sympathy, trying to remember each detail about her conversation with Victoria, "Do you know if she's annoyed at me? She told me to go away when I text her earlier?"

He laughed, harshly, "It might have had something to do with what you said to her before she stormed out. Look, I'm sorry, just apologise, yeah? You know she'll forgive you in an instant if you do, you know what she's like." He pressed end call, leaving her to think about what he'd said.

Victoria storming out did not ring bells to Lucy. It was something she'd never seen happen, ever. What could she have said to make her best friend storm out?

"Lucy!" A voice called to her from her kitchen.

As far as she was aware, she was home alone. No one should be calling her name. Unless it was from outside or her phone. She checked her phone, puzzled by the voice, the call had definitely ended.

She heard the voice call her name again, more urgently this time.

"Who's there?" She called out. Probably the most stupid thing she could say. She should have just crept up on whoever it was or called the police.

There was no reply and she assumed her mind was playing tricks on her, when someone vaguely familiar appeared at the living room door.

"I need your help."

It was Jon.