Pretty, Ugly Girl

Tommy was just sitting on his couch, looking at the pictures that were spread out across his coffee table. It was a routine he had become accustomed with. Once a month he brought out the box from underneath his bed, poured all the pictures out and onto the coffee table before shifted through them and laying them out one by one. And that he would just sit there, without talking, for a few hours, just watching them.

The pictures weren't even that good; some were blurry where you couldn't see the face of the person in the actual photograph and some had too much sunlight hitting at the lens which makes the picture almost impossible to decipher. But in a way it was that which made them so important to Tommy.

A picture that was sat to his right held the image of a girl, of around the mid teen age, smiling at the camera. Or at least it seemed like she was smiling at the camera, she could have been smiling at the person who was holding the camera. This picture caught Tommy's eye and he reached over and picked it up between two fingers. There were light smudges on the actual picture itself from the amount of times people had just been careless when they picked it up and didn't bother to hold it by the edges.

In a way the girl in the picture reminded him of Abi. Not physically because the girl looked far too naturally pretty to be compared to Abi – not that he was saying she was ugly, because honestly, she really wasn't, but she wasn't pretty either. They just, to him, had the same shaped personality.

Tommy knew the girl in the picture. She was called Lucy Baille and the picture was approximately seven years old, if he could remember correctly. He was there at the time it was taken but he was only eleven then so he was fairly young at the time. He could recall the person who was taking the pictures was this guy called Steve. He was twenty at the time; Tommy could remember that very clearly. And the reason as to why he could remember that very clearly was because the girl in the picture was his sister.

Two years after the picture was taken, she started acting strangely and of course, people were worried about her because she was just someone that people loved and cared about which obviously meant that a lot of attention was placed on her at times. But Lucy was a good girl. She was good at school and would help Tommy whenever he needed help. She even helped look after their mother when she was ill in bed and almost ready to die. She didn't though – thankfully – and it was thought that without Lucy by her side the whole time, she probably wouldn't have made it through. The illness she had was extreme and could have turned deadly within a blink of an eye.

Tommy hadn't seen Lucy in just over three years. It wasn't over the fact that anyone stopped seeing each other or anything (though it could be seen that way) but it was the fact that Lucy just seemed to... disappear. Just like that.

Of course no one wanted to believe that she was just gone like that in the beginning. She just wasn't that girl and she was probably off doing something nice for someone or something like that. But it soon became apparent that she was gone when a week had passed on by and there had been no sighting of her by anyone. She wasn't in the same village they were in and people were starting to think that she wasn't even in the same country anymore.

As much as people wanted to report her as missing, they couldn't because she was eighteen – an adult – and it became soon known that it wasn't something that was sudden. One look at the place she was staying in showed that she had either packed everything up and taken it with her or sold most of her stuff and just taken what she needed. It was more than likely to be the second option because there was no way someone would be able to travel wherever she was going with the things she used to own.

A few days after it was known that Lucy was indeed gone, someone noticed that the guy who had taken the picture of her before – Steve – was also missing along with his passport and money. Now people weren't stupid and they knew that he knew her and she knew him. But no one wanted to believe that Lucy, good, kind Lucy would ever go anywhere alone with him, much less run away with him. He wasn't the sort of person who was a good person (the judgement that came from only his actions alone) and much less someone who was decent enough to even think about leaving one's family to run away with.

But, so it seemed, Lucy had done just that. And Tommy hadn't seen his sister since that happened. If he said that it bothered him than he would be lying. Yeah, sure, he missed her like any other brother would but he was glad that she got away. He had no idea what it was like to be always thought of as being the good kid, the kind kid, but he figured that it'd be something that would weigh down on the shoulders of the person an awful lot. And to carry that weight your shoulders would be something that would tire you out in the end, Tommy thought, so in all he wasn't that much surprised that Lucy just couldn't take it anymore and decided to take her life how she wanted it rather how it was expected to go.

Tommy had received one postcard from his sister just before he moved to where he was now. She had told him not to tell anyone about it because she didn't want their parents knowing she was in contact with him. He understood that fully and never once said anything about it to either of their parents. Hell, he didn't tell anyone about it just in case that person said something to someone else and it got out. But he kept the postcard safe and sound, away from anyone's view and somewhere that people would have to be looking for in order to find it.

The postcard stated that Lucy did, indeed, run away with Steve because he could offer her the one thing she wanted: freedom. She could be who she wanted and he didn't care. He loved her (apparently) with all his heart which was why – much to Tommy's shock – they already had a child together.

It was the whole reason she had run away in the first place. Lucy was pregnant with Steve's child and she wanted to keep the baby as did Steve. Even though she was eighteen and fully capable of making her own decisions, she knew that someone she knew would object to it which would lead to others objecting to it and in the end she would cow tower to what they wanted. It was obvious that they would want her to abort the child because she wasn't married and the fact that the child's father would be Steve of all people would have most certainly disgust some people.

It didn't disgust Tommy which was the reason Lucy felt she could trust him and tell him about it. She even offered to keep in contact with him but he sent a postcard back saying that it would be best if she didn't because there was a chance someone could find it sooner or later. He knew that she agreed with him because she didn't send one back.

In the end, the whole deal he had with Abi boiled down to the fact that she reminded him of Lucy. And because of that, he didn't want to lose the contact with Abi which was why he had this deal with her. He knew what she wanted so as long as he kept with his side of the deal, he could have contact with her.

And really, that was all he wanted.