Status: 50,239 words || Completed.

Pretty, Ugly Girl

Take Twenty Four

The only noise in the house was that of Gordon. He was crying and making noises in his crib but no one was paying him attention. They were all too shocked about what had happened. John was at work and unreachable despite the amount of times Mel had tried phoning him. James was standing in his bedroom's door way, eyes trained on Jade's door which was now shut. The noise coming from behind him was doing nothing to faze him.

Mel was standing just before the stairs started, waiting for the moment the door would go. Waiting for the moment she would move from the spot she had been rooted to since she had been woken by a scream. A scream that was emitted from Hannah.

And Hannah was just in her room and on her bed. Her knees were drawn to her chest and her chin rested on them. She kept her eyes open for a long time until she had to blink quickly before repeating the whole process again.

She had been the one to knock on Jade's door. Everyone had got up that morning like they normally did and they walked past her door like normal, no one bothering to stop and knock on it. Everyone assumed that she was asleep. Mel had only been up to deal with Gordon, like she had done since Casey done the runner. James had been doing some of his work so that he'd have the afternoon free to care for the kid. Abi had been busy in her room, doing her own thing and counting down the hours until it was twelve pm. Hannah had been downstairs watching the television as it was one of the only times when she could watch what she liked without anyone being around her and making snide comments.

When Mel had finished feeding Gordon, she'd changed his nappy before putting him back to bed and heading back into her room. And that is how the house stayed until it was half past eleven and Hannah noticed that no one had come downstairs for breakfast which seemed really strange to her. James almost always came down for breakfast as did Mel because she believed that she should have three healthily balanced meals each day. Hannah hadn't expected Abi to come down for breakfast because she didn't ever really. She could now notice that Abi was looking a bit thinner around her cheeks but nowhere else because Abi was wearing clothes that always covered her body up completely and didn't give an indication as to whether she was fat or skinny.

So with Hannah being Hannah, she got up from the sofa and went upstairs. Her curiosity was too much for her to just sit there and think about why they weren't coming down for breakfast. She had completely forgotten about what she had said to Jade yesterday so she knocked on her door without really bothering with the fact that maybe Jade had been upset by it. But even if she did remember what she had said to Jade, it wasn't like she thought that her sister would be upset over that. She was eighteen, it wasn't like anyone that age and above would get upset over something like that, right?

When she heard nothing from the other side of the door she knocked again. Even when Jade didn't answer the door there was always a noise from inside the room or even a voice shouting about how she didn't want anyone to bother her and just wanted to be left alone by everyone. So the fact that when she knocked again there was still no answer from her made her furrow her eyebrows in wonder. Putting her hand on the handle was something she did easily. Opening the door was something that she did without thinking about it too much. However, the thing that came the easiest was the scream.

The scream that had Abi come from her room, curious and a bit worried about the fact that Hannah had screamed. When she saw the sight which had made her scream, her own eyes had widened before she pulled her little sister out from the room and into the hallway. It was too later though and she knew it. Hannah had already seen too much of the scene.

Mel was out of her room just after Abi had pulled Hannah out of the room. From the way they were standing she could tell that it had been something in Jade's room which had made the youngest of them scream. She approached the room with the intention to ask Jade what was going on but her words died on her tongue when she took in what the room looked like.

Frames that held pictures were all over the floor as was the glass that normally protected the pictures. There was a bunch of scrunched up paper on the floor as well. It looked as if Jade's whole desk had been just pushed onto the floor with no care about the mess it was making. Only her notebook lay on it. But the worst thing was what was lying on the floor, in the mist of all the glass. It was why Hannah screamed and it was why Abi had dragged her from the room.

Jade was lying on the floor, glass surrounding her. Almost as if a switched had been flipped inside of her, Mel had rushed over to her, kneeling on the glass when bending down, and tried finding a pulse on the girl. By now James had exited his room and was now in the doorway of Jade's room, his eyes focused on Mel and Jade. He honestly felt like he was dreaming then.

Mel had screamed at him to phone an ambulance when she couldn't find a pulse on Jade and for once he did exactly what she wanted him to do straight away. She didn't want to believe that she couldn't find a pulse on her, she didn't want to believe that Jade could be dead. James had come back in the room saying how there was an ambulance on its way and how there was no answer from their father.

That was the only thing that made her move from beside Jade, the fact that there was no answer from him and he needed to know straight away. She had tried his mobile and work place but he just wasn't available to come to the phone. The person who had answered at his work asked if they could take a message for him but Mel knew that she couldn't tell them what had happened. There was no way - despite the fact that he seemed to not care about them - that he deserved to find about this through someone at work. All she had told them was that John needed to be home straight away because it was really important. She was frantic on the phone and made them swear that they'd tell him that it was extremely important that he got home straight away.

And that was what lead to the places that each were almost stuck to as they waited for the ambulance. Mel had attempted to go back and try and find a pulse on Jade but James had stopped her, a sorry look on his face, and told her that there was none because he had checked. The blood on his t-shirt and hands was an indication that he was telling the truth. Mel was the one who told Hannah to sit in her room and keep the door open.

It seemed that they were each listening to her straight away today. The circumstances that they were under were horrible though so Mel figured that they were doing it because really, they didn't know what to do about it or how to even react to it.

The wait for the ambulance seemed to take agonisingly long and Mel didn't know just how much she could take of Gordon crying before she cracked. At first it had been easy to ignore because he wasn't their first priority but then he proceeded to get louder which therefore invaded their thoughts even more. Though no one bothered to go to him and see whether he needed to be fed or changed. They were in shock over this all.

The phone was what disturbed them first. Mel quickly snapped it up and placed it to her ear. “Hello?” she asked.

“Mel? What's going on? I have several miscalls off of you and you've phoned into my work saying that it was extremely important,” came the voice of John, the only one who didn't know what was going on.

“I don't care whether you're allowed to or not, you have to get home right now,” she told him, managing to keep the frantic tone out of her voice. Sure she wanted him to get home as soon as possible but she didn't want him to rush and possibly get into an accident.

There was silence down the other end of the phone for a moment or two. “Dammit John! This is about your fucking children. I am not going to be the one to break this to you down the phone because that's not fair on you but if you don't get here within the next half an hour then so help me John, I will not be held responsible for my actions.” Mel hung up the phone without waiting for a reply.

A heavy knock at the door broke the silence again.
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I would just like the say that the pictures in the character section aren't that solid of what they actually look like - they're there mostly for my benefit but also so that if anyone looks at them, they'd get a rough idea of how they look.