Status: updates will probably be at ungodly hours
Who Else Will Love You?
Prologue
Hayden had died when I was twelve. I remember the night I found out like it happened just yesterday. It was Monday night. A clear, cool night in the beginning of June. I heard my mom answer the phone and then scream bloody murder. She collapsed on floor and sobbed. She bawled for hours before coming into my room to tell me. I pretended to be asleep when she barged in. She shook me so I would wake up, and I remember so clearly that look of sorrow she held in her eyes. When she announced that Hayden passed I just cried. Involuntary tears dripped down my cheeks and eventually I let sobs rip from my throat. When your best friend and only sibling leaves you forever, it hurts. I felt like someone stabbed me and all of my guts were spilling through the wound. I wanted him to walk through the front door and tell me it was all a cruel joke, but the look in my mom's eyes said that it was true. That he would never come back home. I didn't sleep that night nor did I eat the next day. I didn't go to school for the next week. I sat home wallowing in sadness. I felt numb. My friends didn't text me or call me to see if I was okay. I had no one. I mourned by myself in my room as my mom drank the pain away.
When I went back to school the next Monday, the teachers looked at me with pity. It made me want to viciously attack each one of them. I didn't need their pity! My friends avoided me like the black plague. And my heart dropped every time I passed someone I knew and they looked away to avoid me. I dropped off my book that we had read in book club last week, declining the one the librarian tried to hand me for this week's meeting. I skipped swim practice that afternoon, opting to go home instead.
It went on like that for months. I stopped eating. I stopped talking. My grades suffered, but I didn't care. All I wanted was my big brother, and that was a wish that would never come true.
Eight months after the death of Hayden, I picked up a push pin and scraped the skin over my protruding hip bone until I saw tiny beads of blood. Eleven months after Hayden passed, I picked up a razor blade and dug it into my right thigh, creating four small lines that blood poured out of. One year and two months after Hayden died, I took a razor blade to my left arm. I felt a sick satisfaction cutting my skin open and watching the blood pour out, pooling in the sink or in the bath tub.
It went on like that for the next couple of years. I was isolated from everyone. My mom became an alcoholic, and rarely came home. I was alone.
When I was sixteen, I met a boy. The day that I met him is engrained in my memory. It was September 18th. He bumped into me in the hallway at school, knocking my phone out of my hands. It landed face down on the tiled floor. He muttered an apology and went to pick up for me. He shoved it back into my hands, simultaneously revealing that the screen had shattered.
"Oh my god..." He muttered as his eyes went wide.
"Shit." I cursed loudly as I examined the damage.
"I'm so sorry!" He apologized.
"It's okay, it was a piece of shit anyways." I shrugged, hiding the fact that I was actually quite upset about my phone being shattered.
"I'll lend you my iPod until you get a new one." He offered, fishing an iPod out of his pants pocket and handing it to me.
"No it's cool dude." I told him, declining his rather sweet offer.
"No seriously. Take it. I'm Echo, by the way." He said as he shoved the iPod into my hands.
"Eden." I replied, looking over the shiny iPod.
"Well Eden, call me when you get a new phone yeah? I'm gonna need that iPod back."
"I don't have your number." I stated, giving him a curious look.
"Yeah you do." He said as he grabbed my free hand and scribbled his number down with a sharpie that he pulled from behind his ear.
"Thanks?" I offered. The whole situation was odd, but I could work with odd.
"No problem, Eden." He offered with a small smile before he turned and walked away.
His voice was seared into my brain. Those blue eyes were burned into my memory. And I wanted him. I wanted him with every fiber of my being, I just didn't know it yet.
So this is the story of how he changed my life.
When I went back to school the next Monday, the teachers looked at me with pity. It made me want to viciously attack each one of them. I didn't need their pity! My friends avoided me like the black plague. And my heart dropped every time I passed someone I knew and they looked away to avoid me. I dropped off my book that we had read in book club last week, declining the one the librarian tried to hand me for this week's meeting. I skipped swim practice that afternoon, opting to go home instead.
It went on like that for months. I stopped eating. I stopped talking. My grades suffered, but I didn't care. All I wanted was my big brother, and that was a wish that would never come true.
Eight months after the death of Hayden, I picked up a push pin and scraped the skin over my protruding hip bone until I saw tiny beads of blood. Eleven months after Hayden passed, I picked up a razor blade and dug it into my right thigh, creating four small lines that blood poured out of. One year and two months after Hayden died, I took a razor blade to my left arm. I felt a sick satisfaction cutting my skin open and watching the blood pour out, pooling in the sink or in the bath tub.
It went on like that for the next couple of years. I was isolated from everyone. My mom became an alcoholic, and rarely came home. I was alone.
When I was sixteen, I met a boy. The day that I met him is engrained in my memory. It was September 18th. He bumped into me in the hallway at school, knocking my phone out of my hands. It landed face down on the tiled floor. He muttered an apology and went to pick up for me. He shoved it back into my hands, simultaneously revealing that the screen had shattered.
"Oh my god..." He muttered as his eyes went wide.
"Shit." I cursed loudly as I examined the damage.
"I'm so sorry!" He apologized.
"It's okay, it was a piece of shit anyways." I shrugged, hiding the fact that I was actually quite upset about my phone being shattered.
"I'll lend you my iPod until you get a new one." He offered, fishing an iPod out of his pants pocket and handing it to me.
"No it's cool dude." I told him, declining his rather sweet offer.
"No seriously. Take it. I'm Echo, by the way." He said as he shoved the iPod into my hands.
"Eden." I replied, looking over the shiny iPod.
"Well Eden, call me when you get a new phone yeah? I'm gonna need that iPod back."
"I don't have your number." I stated, giving him a curious look.
"Yeah you do." He said as he grabbed my free hand and scribbled his number down with a sharpie that he pulled from behind his ear.
"Thanks?" I offered. The whole situation was odd, but I could work with odd.
"No problem, Eden." He offered with a small smile before he turned and walked away.
His voice was seared into my brain. Those blue eyes were burned into my memory. And I wanted him. I wanted him with every fiber of my being, I just didn't know it yet.
So this is the story of how he changed my life.
♠ ♠ ♠
This starts out on a pretty heavy note. Sorry about that, but the background story is important! If you any CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM please feel free to comment.I started out with background information. Basically she gets depressed and starts self-harming and becoming very isolated after her brother dies. Then she meets Echo. The boy who gave her his iPod after shattering her phone. I mean who gives an iPod to a stranger and just trusts them to give it back? Echo is pretty naive...