Status: 50,239 words || Completed.

Pretty, Ugly Girl

Take Twenty Six

The day wasn't going well and the majority of the house had only been up for ten minutes. Gordon just wouldn't be quiet for anyone, not even for Mel and he normally quietened down when in her arms. She had attempted to feed him but he didn't want the milk, she had changed his nappy and then tried with the milk again but he still didn't want it and she also winded him to see whether he had any trapped wind that was making him uncomfortable. There was none.

The fact that he wasn't shutting up meant that James was slowly becoming frustrated with him as was John. John didn't even like him in the first place because from looking at the kid he guessed that he probably wasn't James' kid. Though for some reason he never did a paternity test to see whether or not he was related to him. It was obvious that the test wouldn't be done; after all it was the majority of why Casey left him with James. She knew that if she stayed then there would be one done which would end up with her being homeless with the child, if the test came back as he wasn't James' and she didn't think she could handle that. Not many people would be able to survive on the streets with a newborn child and the majority of women who were homeless with children got taken to a mother and child hostel.

Abi wasn't coming out of her room no matter how many times Mel knocked on her door. It was no use trying to get into the girl's room because she had a lock on the door from the inside despite the fact that it was a fire hazard and she had been told several times of it being that hazard. Mel was keeping the thought that she was still asleep because she didn't want a repeat of the other day. After all, it did start out like this for Hannah.

Deciding that she has to be asleep (keeping her thoughts from straying), Mel went on to knocking on Hannah's door and having the twelve year old open the door. It looked as if she hadn't slept in days and that was probably true. Hannah had tried sleeping the first night after finding Jade but she was plagued with the image of Jade's body and that had her waking up from the nightmare crying and shaking. She kept it to herself though and that night she had snuck into Jade's room. She was close to having a crying breakdown when she was in the room but she managed to look under Jade's bed and pull out the box that she knew contain her medicine pills. Hannah knew that Jade had some to keep her awake at time. She had started using them after miscarrying and hadn't stopped using them since.

Hannah knew she wouldn't be able to stay up for nights on end without the use of the pills and so far she had managed to stay up and avoid the nightmares.

“Are you okay Hannah? It doesn't look like you've been sleeping much,” Mel fussed, feeling the girl's forehead to see whether she's ill or not.

Hannah just shrugged her off. “I'm fine, okay? Totally fine. So there's no need for you to worry.” The tone that she spoke in freaked Mel out but she didn't say anything but only looked at her with a strange expression before having a sigh and telling her to get ready to leave before heading back to Abi's door.

This time she got an answer from Abi though it wasn't one that was pleasant towards her. She yelled, through the door, that she should start getting ready before heading downstairs, apparently worn out by just tackling the two girls. The past few days had been wearing her thin because at times she just didn't know what to do and that was what was getting her the most. She had to be the rock in the family because she knew that John was hopeless because he was rarely around and now that he was (at least for a while), he was still in shock over the fact that Jade was dead.

In a way she was glad that the funeral was taking place at one pm because there was no one any of them would be ready to go by eleven. That was the time she could have organised the funeral for but then she thought about the people that had to come and decided to rearrange it. It would have been absolutely disgusting of them if they turned up late to the funeral, after all the funeral was of their sister and John's daughter.

It was hard to get them all together so that they could leave for the funeral but somehow Mel managed. None of them wanted to be heading towards it. None of them wanted to think about what had happened let alone have it out in the open and surrounded by people.

No one really invited anyone to the funeral, the people that turned up mostly invited themselves because they either knew Jade or they went to school with her and assumed that they were friends there so therefore they should be at the funeral. If Jade had been able to see the people that had turned up to her funeral she probably would have never killed herself at home. She would have rather run away before doing so because then she wouldn't be able to be identified (she wasn't in the police database) by people if she had went to a place where no one knew her.

Out of them all, Abi was the one who wanted to be there the least. The only thing that got her through the talking in the service was the knowledge that she would soon be out of the place and be able to be with Tommy. If she was honest with herself, being with Tommy was the one thing that she preferred out of anything and everything. She felt it was stupid to like spending time with him that much but she couldn't do anything about it and really, she didn't think she would even if she could.

John was the only one who spoke during the service about Jade but he didn't know how to choose his words and it was quite obvious to anyone in the room. James didn't know what he could have said if he had went to the front. Everyone knew that they didn't get along and that they always argued so there really wasn't anything he could say that he felt he could actually force out of his mouth. 'I love you' weren't words that often came out of James' mouth, if anything they rarely ever came out of his mouth. He couldn't even remember the last time he had said them three words, let alone who he had said them to.

Hannah wasn't speaking much but no one could really blame her. It was obvious that walking in and finding Jade dead was taking its toll on her greatly. Though no one knew about her using Jade's pills they could all see that she was getting barely any sleep and that she wasn't eat that much. Mel couldn't even recall if she had eaten a single thing since finding Jade.

Then again, she hadn't been paying too much attention because it felt like everything had shifted over to her and she had to get everything ready whilst somehow holding her mourning in for Jade. And no matter how much she hated what had happened and would have never thought that they would be woken by something like that, Mel couldn't say she was surprised with the fact that Jade had finally realised that she just couldn't take life and decided to end it all.

Just by watching how she was acting was a clear indication that Jade wasn't happy throughout the days. In fact if Mel could recall correctly, she had barely seen a time that Jade had been happy within the day since the day her life had been shattered. The day she had found out she miscarried her child.

Then suddenly it dawned on Mel that Gordon probably was the trigger for Jade to kill herself. She had always wanted a child and was thrilled to be pregnant but was crushed when it died so for her brother's girlfriend to get pregnant, give birth to a healthy baby and then just disappear like she did obviously wasn't something that Jade took too well.

In a way Mel couldn't help but feel responsible for it because she could have easily told James that Casey couldn't stay there and that they needed to move out because she was pregnant but she didn't. And it wasn't because James wouldn't listen to her because it was half her house and half John's house so she could have kicked him out if she wanted to.

It should have rained because they were burying her. The weather shouldn't have been sunny like it was because that was too different to the mood. But there was nothing anyone could do about the fact that the sun was high in the sky and it was slowly getting warm out. It ruined the mood and, consequently, made it worse.

A few girls that Jade was apparently 'close to' cried when her coffin was lowered into the ground. No one from the family did, mostly because they weren't big on showing their emotions and also because they just couldn't make themselves cry over it. No one really minded that they didn't cry because it was known that sometimes people don't cry when they mourn and that's perfectly okay because really, you don't have to cry to be mourning. Some coped with it by not speaking and some coped by crying. Some also coped by inflicting pain onto themselves even though Mel never got why people would do that. It didn't make sense as to how that could ever make someone feel better about something like someone dying in their family.

Abi was the first one to leave when the funeral was over with. She didn't wait for anyone nor did she head to the car that they had come in. There was no intention to go back home within her because she was going to go and meet Tommy and do what they had arranged to do yesterday. There was a bit of doubt in her mind that he wouldn't go through with it now but then she reasoned and thought that he had done a good thing about helping her before and this would be helping her again so he would go through with it.

She was sure of it.
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I think this might be all posted up by tonight. It's a strike today so I had no school. I only have exams tomorrow and no more school until January.