Shed Your Yellow

Every child who grew up within the boundaries of New Jersey knew it wasn't a good idea to be walking around at night. So it was no surprise for the Belleville inhabitants to think nothing of the teenage girl who raced around the streets, undoubtedly making her way home as the skyline tinged an assortment of warm red's and purple's. Occasionally, a face might glance out the window, the movement catching their eye, Charlotte however was not that lucky, no-one noted the distress on her face. As she bolted around a corner, someone grabbed her from the side.

She winced being thrown against the red brick wall behind her. A tall man's silhouette cast over what was clear of the paving leading up the small alleyway. Rubbish lay strewn across the ground erupting from the overflowing rubbish bags that could no longer take the sheer mass of it, it did not make a very nice landing pad for the teen as she fell. She tried to clear her mind as she images of the stale fast food beneath her staining her jeans came to mind. If the putrid perfume of the street was not enough to make a jail cell sound pleasant, the sight of Troy Williams certainly was.

The infamous Troy Williams was notorious around New Jersey, not someone you'd mess with, rather the polar opposite in fact. That hadn't stopped fifteen year old Charlotte Davies. It started last year with her mother's diagnosis; cancer the doctor told her. She can remember when she'd came home, wrecked from the hospital visit. She had always been a mummy's girl; cooking and shopping with her mum every day up to the age of twelve, slowly all of it had stopped. After all, she was at an age at which she'd be with her friends for the majority of the time, the rest of the time spent on the computer or watching TV. The relationship she shared with her mum had failed to dim despite the decreasing time spent throughout the week with her. Instead they had a day out on the Sunday. In the morning she'd rise for church, something that had been enforced by her Christian father and afterwords would go out with her mum, shopping for a bit or even doing something in the house, before going out for dinner somewhere. Charlotte had always made time for it.

Her father soon died and her mother kept it together, pretending as if the man she'd been married to for over ten years were simply on a holiday. It was different after that weekend, her mother came home from the doctors visibly shaken, at least it was easily obvious to Charlotte who was used to her mothers normal behavior. She had asked over and over what the doctor had informed her but no answer bare 'its nothing to worry about Charlotte, dear' or the tired sigh of 'Mind your own business, you have more important things to worry about. School for example' had came. Her mother soon began drinking, though not heavily. It all started going down hill after she'd found out. She'd came in from school early and found a letter stuck through the door. Charlotte had always opened her mothers mail and pinned it to the notice board hanging from the the sunshine yellow wall in the kitchen; so her mother didn't ignore it like she preferred to. Charlotte had always read the letters, not that she'd told her mother so. No, of course her mother always knew she had, it didn't mean she let on about knowing.

The letter was from a Dr. Jonathan Highly - a name unknown to her. Charlotte zoomed through the letter reading at paces she never had before. The letter was filled with different treatment methods, with a recommendation at the bottom as to which Dr. Highly recommended. Jonathan was a specialized doctor, he worked around cancer; treating it and looking into different ways to avoid it. Charlotte could barely read through the letter and she felt more and more green with every passing word, the closing paragraph triggered it and she'd ran for the toilet, bringing up the non-existent contents of her stomach. Her mother had known for weeks and she didn't want to treat the cancer, she'd been avoiding appointments with the doctor since.

After that, her mother's drinking increased and ever since, it'd be a deep decline. From bad, to worse. It took her a month, but she finally got her mum to agree to the first stage of surgery, and the drugs that followed. The doctors told her there was a high chance of this removing the cancerous cells from her mothers breast. It hadn't though.

Charlotte had blackmailed her mother into using her college and university funds to get the surgery. She didn't have money to get to university or further schooling, her dreams from the age of 10 when she decided finally, that she wanted to be in the music industry; not as a performer or musician, but behind the scenes, running her own label. Her chance of this was over now.

Therefore, she gave up on school, she didn't need it anymore. She wouldn't participate in lessons, nor would she do the homework, etc. Her grades slipped drastically, it wasn't that she didn't know the information, she just didn't care to apply it. She'd turned from teacher's pet, to a teacher's worst nightmare. She laughed when she first got the meeting with the school councilor and she laughed when they asked if it was because of her dad's death, a year previous, or because of her mother's recent diagnosis. She fumed however when they sent letters home, not one of them made their way to her mother and she forged the signatures on the bottom the slips which were supposed to prove her mother had read the document. She had long since ran out of excuses as to why her mother couldn't come in to speak to them. Then social services entered... 'why did they all have to but in?'

That was when she turned to Troy Williams. She wanted to pay for the chemotherapy, the last chance for her mother's recovery, but without her mother working, she also had to pay for food, housing and electricity. At the current moment she was in debt, not making any money towards her mum's treatment.

She looked Troy in the face, returning to her streetwise persona. He smirked dangerously at her, stepping fully out of the shadows. The handful of men that joined him following suit, trapping her against the barricade of men that surrounded her. Her face turned to stone, void of emotion, trying to make herself look more threatening than she felt from her position on the ground.

"Well look what we have here, a stray cat perhaps?" Troy started, towering over her small frame. She tried to stand, determined on regaining the dignity she still had, only failing as her ankle clicked and she fell back into the pool of rubbish. The men laughed, she curled up tighter. "I don't appreciate you trying to steal from me, little one." He lifted her clean off of the ground, as her legs dangled hopelessly in mid-air. Her eyes prickled due to the tugging of the copper strands of hair he had, caught in his iron-tight grasp.

"I was planning on giving it to you, I didn't know where you were. I was late getting out of there, the cops showed up" She heaved out, fighting for some air.

"Well, you won't make that mistake again" He stated simply, plucking the brown envelope from her pocket with his freehand before throwing her back into the wall. She struggled to stay on her feet, her ankle almost giving out. Troy nodded at the men then spinning on his heel and leaving the alleyway.

Confusion clouded her thoughts as he left, there was no chance that she wasn't going to be reprimanded one way or another for not handing over the money. One of the four men cleared his throat loudly. 'Fuck!' she thought.

When she finally woke up, the sky was no longer turning dark, it was dark. The alleyway was illuminated purely by the small band of moonlight that squeezed through the peaks of buildings to make it there. She blinked a couple of times, finally able to see something, even if it was just her hand. She put her hand into her messy hair, soggy from whatever it was she'd been lying in, presumably mayonnaise. She felt a hard stinging spot, she'd been bleeding and the blood had matted her hair together in clumps, she wanted to cry because of the pain shooting through her body. Her arms stung due to the grazes that ran up the side and her ankle felt broken, if not badly sprained. How would she get home?

Charlotte crawled up the alley, her hands being penetrated by the glass shards that lay scattered around the backstreet. She tried her best to avoid the broken beer bottles, not to much avail. She could barely see her hands so it was all guesswork, she made it to the opening, tears fell down her face unforgivingly. 'What did I do to deserve this?'

The red-head hugged the building tight using it as a support as she struggled to her feet. She looked around, paranoia setting in; she didn't know what time it was and she was hobbling around Jersey so hurt, she doubted she could throw a punch without knocking herself out. The scariest part of the journey home was undoubtedly passing the pubs, the intoxicated men smoking outside the pubs would call at her, trying to get her attention, she pretended to ignore them terrified that they'd abuse her further. She made it to her house in around forty minutes. A journey that normally would take her fifteen.

She let herself inside the house, for the first time thankful that her mother had forgotten to lock the door as she was certain she'd lost her key at some point during the night. She collapsed on the stairs as she made her way to the bathroom, waking her mother up.

"Charlotte, honey?" Her mother slurred, obviously as drunken as the men she'd met on the way home.

"Yeah, mum; its me I'm just getting a drink." She lied.

"Where were you this afternoon?" Her bottle green eyes widened, as she stuttered her answer.

"Don't you remember, I had test revision..." Silence. Her mother was too drunk to remember most things these days. She'd never been violent or abusive to her daughter, she just preferred to drown her sorrows in alcohol, finally giving up on life, wasting what was left as if it made dying all the less painful.

Charlotte pulled herself up the remainder of the steps, heaving at the top her chest sore and decorated with bruises. It only took one glimpse in the mirror to make her throw up, she bowed over the toilet. Once finished, she grabbed some toilet paper and wiped her mouth, taking some more to help clean her face. She ran the paper under the cold tap water, wincing as the water hit her skin. The soap stung the cuts and she had to press the the ball of paper closer to her face to stop herself from pulling away. She was a mess and there was no chance of her going to school tomorrow- none whatsoever.

It didn't take her long to sleep; A fitful sleep full of nightmares.