True Colours

"Have a nice day at school, mousey?" Dad asked, walking out of the kitchen with a towel in his hands, smiling widely when I nodded. "Make any friends?"

I nodded.

"So you spoke?" I shook my head. "Oh, well, I'm still proud of you, Mouse." He ruffled my hair as usual, no hug, and smiled back at me as he made his way into the kitchen again.

I sighed and climbed the stairs, slumping down on my bed when I got to my room. I patted my phone into my pocket and grinned when I sighted my book ready and waiting. Time Stops For No Mouse. It was one of the only books I hadn't read all the way through that we owned in this family. Dad didn't read, Tori didn't read. I was the only one who read as a hobby; so books weren't exactly common in the Brooke house.

I grasped the book in my hands and flicked through to my bookmark that happened to be a Pete Wentz nude stuck to a piece of cardboard, cut out so that the edges fit to Pete's figure, with Patrick Stump's face stuck onto it and censoring the penis. I thought it was a pretty hilarious bookmark, if I'm honest. Created by myself, of course.

"Hey Oli, did you make any friends today?" Tori asked with spite in her voice. I nodded. "Didn't think you wo-- wait, what?"

"I made friends." I stated quietly.

"Yeah, of course you did." She smirked sarcastically and I pulled my phone from my pocket, getting up the text that Tay had sent me when I checked that I had her right number. She was too caught up with Jordan, yeah she definitely liked him, to enter it herself and read it out. "'Sup smelly?'? What kind of a text is that?"

I shrugged.

"Well... Well, I made friends too. Toni Brooke is a name known throughout the school already." Yeah, and it's reputation is already covered in filth and bitchiness.

Tori was a jealous girl. After I got all of the attention from everyone after what happened, she started to hate me for everything I did. I had no idea what was happening at the time, my doctors and therapists had prescribed me a bunch of tablets trying to help me through it so I was a little out of it, but after a while I realised how much she loathed me. She despised me for something that wasn't my fault, and that I'd rather not have happened in the first place. She shouldn't be jealous. She should care.

"This chubby kid that looked a bit like a potato was staring at this girl, so me and this girl called Penelope threw spaghetti at him. It was so funny." She smiled proudly and I looked at her in disgust. "What? It was great."

"Just get out, please." I murmured and she rolled her eyes.

"Rather than reading you should be going out and speaking to people. Get a life. YOLO." I physically gagged at the phrase she used and waited for her to leave. When she finally did, I went back to my book.

I rolled my sleeves up my arm and scratched the old scars that lined my wrists absent-mindedly. I hadn't cut for quite a while, I hadn't been so bothered by nightmares and my subconscious for quite a while, and I was pretty proud of myself really. I'd started after the incident and years of bullying and annoying therapists, cutting on a regular basis for a few years straight. Until dad found my razors. He took them away, but I still had one. One that he'd missed. One that I sort of ached for at this moment.

I dismissed the thought and blinked at my book, focusing on it. But I couldn't focus.

"Too many distractions." I thought to myself, looking up to see my window open. Dad had probably hoovered in here. I don't know why but after every cleaning session he has, he opens the windows. I hopped off of my bed and slammed the window shut.

This room needed decorating.

At the moment it was a plain, boring white rather than the midnight blue I'd prefer. I wanted my bedroom to look like the night sky and had the perfect image in my head. Midnight blue ceiling and tops of the walls, towards the bottom of the walls the blue colour gets lighter and lighter. I had a few fairy lights for stars and picked up a pack of sticky, light-up stars that you peel off the back of and stick to the ceiling, back in New York where I used to live.

I had a few other things to decorate the walls with too. String, paper, posters. My bed covers were already a light blue to go with it all, and the carpet was blue too. It was perfect. I'd attach bandanas and strings of paper birds and aeroplanes, or cards along the wall for decoration and my band posters would litter the wall the opposite side to the one that my bed was placed against, so when I rolled onto my side I could see my idols straight away, along with the scene outside of the window that was there too.

But, along with all of this, I'd like to keep one wall plain white. Ready for experiments. Vibrant colours, extreme shapes; everything. The odd painted band member, a sun in the corner- of course, and basically everything that you could think of. This was going to be my project. Project Paint.

And it had to be perfect.

"Mouse!" Dad's voice broke me from my thoughts. "Get changed, we're going over to the neighbours. Tori, you can stay here if you like."

Dad didn't trust me on my own since the razor thing and, with my sister hating me and all, leaving me with her was just as bad. She'd slit my wrists for me, given the chance.

I grabbed a Green Day t-shirt and charcoal skinnies from my wardrobe, along with a load of bracelets from compartment in the top of my wardrobe to cover up the scars. When I'd undressed and redressed, I tugged a beanie onto my head and tried my best to make my hair look okay for once, brushing my fringe out of my beanie and letting it rest over my eyebrows. I repositioned my bracelets so that they covered my scars completely and took one last look at myself in the mirror. My brown eyes looked dull as usual and my eyeliner was smudged, my hair still looked really scruffy and my t-shirt was still way too oversized but it'd do.

It's only dinner at my neighbours.