Misfits - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I awoke the next day to a car door
slamming. I looked out the window to see Alex’s dad walking in the house with
two bouquets of flowers. I looked around for Alex but I didn’t see her. The
smell of bacon filled my nose. I walked into the kitchen to see my mother and
Alex making breakfast. She must’ve redone the cover up because there was no way
you could notice that her eye was bruised. “Well good morning, sleepy head,” my
mother said smiling. “Morning,” I said sitting on a barstool by the counter.
Alex smiled at me and I smiled back. She always recovered quickly, or at least
pretended she did. My mother and Alex had a very strong bond. My mother looked
at Alex like a daughter. She would bake Alex a cake on her birthday, and buy
her presents on Christmas. My mother was oblivious to the abuse Alex went
through though. Alex wasn’t the type to show her wounds. She hides them. She
buries her feelings deep inside her until she explodes like when you fill a
balloon with too much air. That’s where I come in. I’m the only person that’s
ever seen Alex break down.

I remember once I was at her house in the living room. Her mother came downstairs and it
was pretty obvious she was on some form of drugs. Alex and I were sitting on
the couch watching television when her mother walked right in front of the TV.
“Mom, can you move please?” Alex asked. Her mother crossed her arms and glared
at us. “How long has HE been here?” She asked tapping her foot. “I don’t know.
An hour or two. He came here after school,” Alex answered. “What have you two
been doing?” Her mother asked her. “Watching TV. Mom are you okay?” She asked.
“Oh, I’m fine, but you need to stop whoring around. Your father’s going to be
extremely angry.” I was shocked when her mother said that. Alex and I were on
two separate sides of the couch, plus our parents both knew that we were only
friends. Alex and her mother screamed at each other for about twenty minutes
before her mother said she was going out. When her mother left Alex went on a
rampage. She ran upstairs to her room and I quickly followed. Her room was
cleaned to perfection. She ran in and grabbed her pillows off of her bed and
tore them to shreds, with tons of little feathers flying across the room.

When there was no other feather filled object
in the room left to destroy she fell to the floor. The whole time I stood in
the doorway thinking. Everyone always talks about how they hate their life, how
they have it worse than anyone else. Do you know why they say these things?
Everyone wants someone to feel bad for them. To show them that someone cares
about their problems. The two worst things in my life are that my father
doesn’t love me and my best friend is dying on the inside. In that moment I
realized I could do one of two things. I could leave. She was probably in so
much mental pain that she wouldn’t even realize if I left. I wouldn’t have to
watch her suffer. At night, I could put on my headphones and lock my windows
and never have to see what happens behind closed doors. I could make myself
oblivious. I could take the easy way out. The way most people would choose. Or,
I could walk over there and tell her that it would be okay in the end, and that
even though it seemed the whole world was against her, I would always be there
for her. I could walk over and tell her that I don’t understand how she feels
and that I couldn’t ever understand the amount of betrayal she feels every time
one of her parents treat her terribly. I had never been in a situation as
serious as that, but I would try every day to show her that she means something
to someone. I think that would make a difference. I think that if everyone had
at least one person who cared enough about them, who showed how much they cared
about them, the rate of suicide would decrease. The rate of self-harm and
diseases such as bulimia and anorexia would decrease, all because someone
cared. I understand that caring wouldn’t solve everything. People would still
kill themselves. Some people can’t stand to bear the pain of struggling any
longer, but before they take the final step towards doing something so serious
you might pop into their heads. You might be the last thing that could change
their minds. You could make a difference. I walked over to Alex and sat in the
pile of feathers she created. “My father’s going to murder me because of this,”
she said blowing feathers into the air. “Not if he doesn’t know,” I said and
she looked up at me. We spent the next hour picking up the feathers and
straightening up her room and I ran to my house and grabbed some extra pillows.
By the time we were done you couldn’t tell that the girl who lives here was
hiding something. You would probably assume she had OCD and that’s why
everything had to be perfect. You wouldn’t know that the reason there wasn’t the
tiniest wrinkle in her comforter, or why all of her perfume bottles were
organized in size order, or why she vacuumed her room every day, even if she
had only been in it to sleep, was because she didn’t want to give her father an
excuse to go to the bar. He’d use any little thing as an excuse to go out. But
back to reality.

I apologize for all the flashbacks. I understand you might find it difficult to realize
when I’m thinking back on things and when I’m talking about the present, but
try to keep up. After breakfast, and a day filled with movies my mother said
she watched when she was our age, there was a knock on the door. My mother went
and answered it and I heard the sound of a man’s voice and my body cringed.
“Alex, your father’s here,” my mother called. Alex and I walked to the door to
see her father in a black suit holding two bouquets of white rose. “Hi honey,
these are for you,” he said giving Alex the flowers. He said “hello,” to me
while Alex thanked my mother. While we watched them walk back to their house my
mother said “That sure is nice of him to bring her flowers.” If only she knew.