Pretty, Ugly Girl

Abi didn't attempt to look for Tommy at the skate park or anywhere else, she headed to his house straight away and hammered away on the door, desperate for him to open it. It was five am although Abi wouldn't put it past Tommy to be out at the skate park at that time in the morning. After almost four minutes of continuous hammering on the door, it finally opened to reveal Tommy. He had bed hair and was just in his boxers so it was clear that she had just woke him up but right now she just didn't care.

“Abi? Fuck... what are you doing here? You didn't meet me the other day so I thought you changed your mind,” he said, his voice cracking half way through because of the fact he was still only half awake.

“That's what I need to talk to you about,” Abi pressed, just wanting to be in his house, “Please; I need to talk to you about it.”

Of course Tommy let her in his house. He went into his bedroom and emerged a minute later with a shirt on his back so that he wasn't half naked. Seeing his boxers didn't bother Abi. He raised his eyebrow at the fact that she was pacing his sitting room floor. “What's up then?”

She then proceeded to tell him about the past few days. About how Jade was dead and how Hannah had found her on her bedroom floor. About how stressed everything had been because no one wanted to plan the funeral but it had to be done and it was happening tomorrow. She explained how that was the reason she couldn't meet him the other day despite wanting to. She knew that she couldn't leave the house or family then because that was something that none of them expected nor did any of them know how to deal with, including herself.

All the time she was talking Tommy was just standing near her, watching all her hand gestures she made. He knew that she didn't like her family, she had told him often enough, but here she was, not knowing what to do because her older sister was dead and it felt like practically everything had stopped because of it. He didn't blame her because no one would ever expect something like this to happen to their family and when it does, well they just don't know how to react to it. Even if they hated the sibling who did it.

Suddenly Abi stopped talking and turned to look at Tommy face on. “Are you going to keep your promise?” she whispered, finally realising that she had been speaking quite loudly.

He nodded, “Yeah, of course I am Abi.”

“It's just... tomorrow, right?” she hesitated, changing what she was saying. Tommy got the reason why she did that.

“You sure?”

Abi chewed on her lip for a moment or two before nodding. “Yeah, tomorrow. Just... it has to be after. The funeral, after it. Yeah?” He nodded.

No one knew that Abi was out of the house. She assumed most of them were going to be still in bed, wishing not to be getting up today so that they didn't have to think about the fact that they had to bury Jade tomorrow. Since she had died, their father hadn't been back to work since. He had phoned them, naturally, and told them the circumstances over the phone, whilst still in shock, and they gave him paid leave. All he had to do was phone them up the day before he felt he could go back to work. She figured that it would probably only be like a week after the funeral just so it looked like he actually cared about his daughter rather than barely even knowing her.

“So you're actually going to it?” Tommy's voice cut through Abi's thoughts. She looked at him for a moment or so with a confused expression before his words finally made sense to her.

She nodded, “Yeah. I figured that... well, I don't even knowing what I'm doing. This sort of threw me off balance, you know?”

Tommy got what she was on about; he really did despite the fact that he never had anything like that happen to his face. Sure the fact that his sister ran away was big in his family but it wouldn't have been as big as if she had decided to just end it all there and did what Jade did.

“Is it normal?” Abi asked with her eyes focused on Tommy. “To be like this?”

“Like what?”

“That's the thing, I don't even know.”

It seemed that Tommy hadn't got what she was on about judging by the expression on his face. It wasn't surprising because she barely got what she was on about because mostly everything that she talked about now didn't make sense. Even Mel had told her once during the last few days, during the only times she had spoken, that she didn't make sense. It didn't bother her too much but at times, like now, it did.

“How do you not know? That you know how you're feeling but not know how to describe it or you don't know, don't know?”

Abi thought for a moment. “It's both, in a way,” she mumbled.

“I promise, tomorrow,” he said firmly and Abi knew that he meant it.