We All Work To Survive

It wasn’t until the end of the day that I ended up running into Anthony again. And that was only because our lockers. If I had it my way, I would’ve just stayed away from him completely. But luck had never been on my side, and I doubted it would be now. I kept my eyes glued to my backpack. I had shoved multiple folders into it throughout the day. All containing the all important syllabus for each class. Honestly, I really didn’t think anyone read the things, just forked them over to their parents for their signature and tossed the rest in the trash. But I had promised my mom that I would do everything in my power to get my grades as high as I could without putting strain on myself (she was still worried about me offing myself). And I didn’t want to have her on my case from the very beginning. So I shoved them all in the purple bag and slammed my locked shut. I made the mistake of sweeping my gaze around on the side of my locker that I shared with Anthony. He caught my gaze and immediately started talking.

“So, the basketball team and a couple other school teams are all getting together out at Trevor Burten’s house tonight. Kind of a the first day of school blows thing. You wanna come?” I stood there with my mouth opening and closing like a fish for a couple seconds when a hand closed around my arm.

“She’d love to. In fact, she was already planning on driving me. You know, sober cab and all.” Kara’s almost long nails dug into my arm as I smiled and nodded. God, I was such an idiot. How could I just stand there mouth breathing while he was staring at me? Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t suddenly fallen in love with the kid. But you’d have to be blind to say that he wasn’t good looking.

“Cool. I’ll, uh, see you there, then?” I nodded again. This time he smiled back and disappeared with his friends again.

“You moron!” Kara hissed at me after releasing my arm. “Anthony Castings just practically asked you out. And all you could do was stand there like you’re deaf!” I scowled and punched her arm.

“Shut up, bitch. You think I don’t know that.” I swung my backpack over my shoulder and started for the student parking lot. The red-head fell in next to me. “I’m just confused is all. Did I tell you that he came and sat on my bench during lunch?” She practically shouted ‘what’. “Yeah, fed me some dumb line about how he wanted to get to know me because he thought I was interesting. Watch it!” I growled at some freshman as he backed into me. He shrunk away, terrified. I smirked in satisfaction. “I personally think he had too much weed packed into his bong this morning.”

“Oh come on, Tee. You’re pretty. Why wouldn’t he be interested in you?” I clicked the automatic lock on my keys, watching the lights flash from a couple cars away.

“Maybe because I’m me. And I look like this.” I motioned downward with my hand. “And his last girlfriend was Marissa Goldings.” Kara gave me a look that said to shut up. “What? I’m just being honest. You know what my therapist said about lying to myself.” She sighed dramatically and climbed into the passenger’s seat. It was sort of entertaining watching my vertically challenged best friend try and climb into my raised cab. She always looked like she was about to climb K2. Kara didn’t say anything else until I twisted the keys in the ignition. The engine starting was always my favorite part about my truck. It was diesel, so it was really loud compared to all the other cars in the school parking lot. It really limited my options for gas stations. But I didn’t care. My truck was my baby.

“Yeah, and you’re lying to yourself about not being pretty. I don’t know why you can’t see it.”

“If I was pretty wouldn’t I have had someone interested in me before now?” I didn’t let her answer, just plugged my iPod into the radio and put on T Mills’ ‘She Got A…”. I’d been listening to this kind of music since before I moved in with my mom and Charlie. It pissed my dad off so much. And pissing him off brought me joy, so I did it whenever I could. Kara scoffed at my blowing off the conversation, then started singing with me. I’m sure we looked like quite the pair. Two high schools girls rapping about fucking a white girl with a neck tattoo. But we didn’t care. We had stopped caring about people judging us about our music when we hit eighth grade. I rolled the windows down and turned it up just because I saw my siblings talking to their bible club members a couple cars down from where Kara and I were sitting in the line of cars. They heard my music immediately. I grinned and rapped more enthusiastically. When the song ended, they were only five feet from my front bumper and off to Kara’s side.

“You’re so mean to them.” I knew she was only joking because she laughed as she said it. I laughed too. Then switched it to Hollywood Undead’s ‘Everywhere I Go’. After that, I didn’t mess with it, just let whatever was on play, because I was driving and if I got caught messing with it while driving, Charlie would skin me alive. And then take away my keys.

“When do I need to pick you up?” I asked once I pulled into Kara’s driveway. She mulled it over in her head a little bit.

“How about you just come inside for a minute and I’ll grab a couple things. Then we both can get ready at your house?” I shrugged, not really caring. It was as good of an idea as any. So I pulled the keys out of the ignition and followed my best friend into her house. I was greeted with a hug. Taken back for a second, I finally realized who was hugging me.

“Hey, Mary.” Kara’s mom had since drilled it into my head to call her by her first name. She was honestly the nicest lady ever. And she much more of a homebody than my own mother. She was the one who taught me how to cook. Well, she taught me how to make a few staple dishes. And I was excellent at them because I totally made them all the time for myself.

“It’s so good to see you, Tuesday. I feel like I haven’t seen you in years!” I laughed lightly as she released me.

“It’s only been like, two weeks. You’re the one who decided to take that vacation. I’ve been right here.” She smiled at me and pulled me into the house.

“Honey, look who’s here.” Kara’s dad was sprawled across one of their couches, reading glasses low on his nose as he reclined and read the paper. “Steve.” He looked up when he heard his name.

“Tuesday! When did you get here? It’s been so long since we’ve seen you.” I smiled and nodded, knowing they’d keep going.

“I just got here with Kara. We were gonna go unwind from the first day back at my house, if that’s okay.” I smiled my church girl smile, even though I didn’t have to. They would let her come with me anywhere. They didn’t think she would get into too much trouble with me around.

“Of course it’s okay, sweetie. Just make sure that you guys aren’t getting into any trouble.” Kara sighed dramatically as she entered the room with a bag stuffed with clothes.

“Mom, we’re going to her house. What sort of trouble are we going to get into?” They had a staring contest for a couple seconds before the younger of the pair gave in. “Alright, we’ll stay out of trouble. Are you on shift tonight, daddy?” There were two things that didn’t take me very long to figure out when I started coming over to their house regularly. One, Kara was a complete daddy’s girl. Two, she had him wrapped around her little finger. Probably since she was a baby.

“Yeah, patrol’s been doubled what with the dead girl and all.” Kara’s dad was also a cop. He was second in command at the sheriff’s station. Right behind Sheriff Stilinski.

“Alright, be careful. I’ll see you later. If I’m not home before you head out, I love you.” Fifteen minutes later, we were pulling into my driveway.

“You do know that if your dad busts this party tonight, you’re grounded for the rest of your life, right?” Kara flipped me the bird as she jumped out of the truck. I just laughed it off and headed into the house. The moment we were in my room, Kara attacked me with a curling iron. From that moment until we left, I was being poked and prodded with who knows what for god knows what reason. Until finally my best friend was happy with my appearance.

“You look good. If Anthony doesn’t drop his jaw when we show up, then he’s gay.” She inspected me for a long while more. “I really wish you would’ve picked a more universal belly ring. The black doesn’t really go with your outfit.”

“It goes with the clothes that I pick.” I deadpanned and picked up my phone from where I’d dropped it on my bed when she’d started throwing clothes at me. “Now, c’mon, we’re gonna be way later than fashionably late if we don’t leave now.”

The house was packed. Just a couple school teams my ass. Almost the entire school was here. Except the top tier, I realized. So this was the spot to be if you weren’t the cool shit people at the school. The best things about these parties was that I didn’t have to worry about running into my siblings. I blended in at these parties. Nobody ever really saw me. Well, I guess that phase was over because nearly everyone looked at us when we arrived.

“Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks this is weird.” I muttered out of the side of my mouth. Kara only nodded her head and paved a path to the kitchen. She handed me a beer but I shoved it back to her. “Designated driver, genius. I can’t drink tonight.” She pouted but drank half the thing down before taking a breath. That was what got us into trouble. Kara was a light-weight, but she drank like she wasn’t. And any time you told her otherwise, she would freak out on you and go find some more to drink. Pretty soon, she’d had three beers in a matter of fifteen minutes. “Jesus Christ, Kare, you’re gonna get alcohol poisoning one of these days.” She waved me off and took her beer elsewhere. After a couple minutes of just hanging out on the counter, I decided I better go find her and take her home. She’d probably get into trouble and not want to speak to me for the rest of the week. And maybe even part of next week. But it was whatever. At least she wasn’t going to get alcohol poisoning or end up hooking up with some guy from the swim team.

“There you are.” I froze when I heard the voice. I’d forgotten that Kara told Anthony I would be here. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Here I am, and here I go.” I made for the door again, but he caught my arm.

“Where are you going? I thought we could sit around and talk some.” He gave me a smile, one of those panty dropping smiles. He totally knew what his smile did too. And I hesitated, I really did. But then I shook myself out of it and pulled my arm away.

“I really have to find Kara and get her home. She’s already had way too much to drink.” I didn’t wait around for his answer to that. I ducked and dodged beneath arms and around people dancing. I finally found my best friend chugging UV Blue straight from the bottle. I didn’t think about it. I just ripped the bottle away from her and threw it on the floor. It shattered but I didn’t care. All I cared about was the fact that my best friend probably needed her stomach pumped at this point.

“What the hell!?” The host of the party showed up, and he looked furious. “Did you do this?” He motioned angrily towards the broken bottle on the floor and the blue liquid spreading all over the floor. I simply nodded and threw Kara’s arm across my shoulders. When I started making my way towards the door, he made to stop me. “Where do you think you’re going? You’ve gotta clean that up before you can go anywhere!”

“Sorry, I’m a bit busy trying to take care of the other mess you let happen. I’ll tell my parents to pay for the rug, that is, if you want my parents over here talking to yours about why they’ve got to pay to clean half a bottle of UV Blue out of their carpet. Then you know, I’ll have to tell them that it happened because I was trying to get my best friend to stop drinking so she doesn’t get alcohol poisoning.” I stopped to pretend to think about it. “Although you know, that probably won’t go over well with your parents though. If I remember correctly, you all sit in the front row at church every Sunday. Somehow I don’t think your parents know you threw this party. And somehow I don’t think it’ll go over well when they find out about it.” His face blanched for a second before shouting at me to get out. I scoffed and continued out to the street where I’d parked my truck. Oh, yikes. I hadn’t thought about that. I had no idea how I was going to get her into the truck.

“We can take my car as long as you promise to stop ditching me.” Anthony was honestly one of the last people I wanted to see right now. But he did have a car that would be easier to get Kara into. By now, she was just moaning and not supporting any of her weight.

“Alright. But we’re gonna have to take her to the emergency room. There’s no way that she doesn’t have alcohol poisoning. Or won’t have it.” So he helped me get her into the car and to the emergency room. When we got there I found old neighbor, Mrs McCall, at the desk. “Uh, excuse me, but my friend needs some help.” She looked up. Her eyes stayed on me for a second before going to Kara being held up by Anthony behind me.

“Oh my goodness. How much has she had to drink?” I panicked and didn’t know how to get the words out. “How much, Tuesday?”

“I- I don’t know. We were at a party and she had a couple beers in front of me and then she disappeared and I found her a half hour later drinking straight from a bottle of vodka. I tried to get her out of there as fast as I could after that.”

“Alright,” she said something to the other nurses in the ER, carted Kara off, and then came back to me a little while later. “Tuesday, honey, she’s gonna be okay. They’re pumping her stomach right now. Her parents are on the way. She’s gonna be okay.” I wiped at the tears that had formed on my face. “I promise she’ll be okay.”

“Thank you, Christ, I’m sorry. I must look like a blubbering idiot.” I pulled myself together and let out a deep breath. “Thank you for coming out here and telling me.”

“Well, from what I remember you and her are like my son and Stiles. And I’m pretty sure Scott would be a wreck if Stiles turned up like that.” I smiled at her and wiped more tears off my face. Then Mary burst through the door with Steve right on her tail. From the looks of it, they hated me for what happened to her. Mary started towards me right away.

“You! How could you!? We trusted her with you! You were supposed to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid! You’re supposed to be a good influence in her life! You’re the exact opposite of that! You’re a terrible, demon of a girl! I can’t believe I trusted you with my daughter!” A fresh new batch of tears were streaming down my face. Because I knew she was right. I knew I was supposed to be a positive influence in her life. I knew I was supposed to stop her from doing anything stupid. But I didn’t. I let her drink. I let her make dumb decisions.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I know! I should’ve been watching out for her! I’m so, so sorry!” I nearly cried at them. Mary didn’t seemed phased by my tears. Steve just simply looked at me with a sad expression and told that maybe I should just leave. So I got up and left. I was sitting on a bench outside the hospital when someone sat down next to me. “Not now, Anthony.” Only it wasn’t him.

“Hey, Tuesday.” My head snapped over to him so fast I think I gave myself whiplash. “My mom called.”

“Hey, Scott.”