u/Kenzie0333

We're way too quiet about how McKay was literally raped on camera in Season 1, Episode 6. It's actually so sad cause I think it fucked up his brain and kinda destroyed his relationship with Cassie too. It was a frat hazing by the way. Like, omg?

Also, that happened at his frat halloween party and then Cassie immediately cheated with Daniel at the school's halloween party.

I'm a teen writer and I fear that all of my good male names are all used up. Please help me.

Physical description (from the book): tall, brown, fluffy hair. jawline is sharp but features are soft. eyes are brown. skin is sunkissed (tan). Athletic build

Personality: sunshine character, smiling a lot.

EDIT: I'm also thinking I'd prefer a longer name with a shortened nickname that's cool sounding but still unique/ unusual

If this is too much to read, just skip. It's 23 pages but I don't know who else to ask for feedback. If anyone wants to, DM me and I can give you regular updates on the book

TW; Depression, suicide, drugs, body dysmophia, self-harm, etc

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Chapter 1

If I could choose what day I die on, I’d choose any Monday in February. That way, Taylor Swift's Fortnight can play and everyone can feel what I feel.

I think about dying a lot. What does it feel like? What do you think about? Do you know you’re dying? What do you see?

I’ve only been to one funeral before and it was for my cat. But Tofu went peacefully. He died when I was nine. I accidentally fed him grapes. I don’t actually know if he went peacefully, but I was told he did.

I don’t know if I want to die, I’d need the answers to all of my questions and, obviously, no one can give that to me. But I think I’d rather disappear.

My dream is to one day just phase out of existence. Not die, just simply stop. To die would imply pain and I don’t really like to get hurt.

It has occurred to me to hurt myself in order to feel something other than the impending sense of doom and the longing for vanishing. Everyone else does. I’ve tried cutting, but it became a dreadful dull in my life that stopped pleasing me. I don’t like pain, that’s just not me.

But then what do people in pain do, if not inflict more pain? That’s where I’m stuck. So I Googled coping mechanisms.

That was no help. The stupid bot assistant said that people in pain isolate. But I already do that. Everyone does, not just people in pain.

The closest I’ll ever get to disappearing is phasing out of a crowded room. It’s not hard. You know how people talk about being alone in a packed room? It’s that, but on purpose.

I mainly do it at school. I walk through the halls and no one notices me, but I prefer that. After all, it’s high school. Half of the people here wish they could do what I do.

To go unnoticed takes talent, honestly. At least, it does in the way I do. The teachers forget I’m in the room until they take roll call. The boys bump into me all the time and never even know it. The girls have nothing about me to gossip about. It’s amazing.

If I was anyone else, or maybe even looked any other way, this would be impossible for me. I’m not ugly, or at least not enough for girls to giggle about. But I’m not pretty enough for them to be jealous of either. The same is true for how I dress.

Clothes get more complicated than simple prettiness for going unnoticed. Never wear what you want. Blend in. Wear what they’re wearing, even if it makes your skin crawl and forces you into a body that isn’t yours. Not giving into my own style preferences almost makes me dizzy, but it’s worth it.

When it’s this close to summer, the girls at my school wear warm colors and next to no fabric. Not my personal choice, but it’s what I’m constrained to.

For example, today I’m wearing an off-white shirt with a baby blue ‘28’ in the center and jean shorts that couldn't be bothered to cover a scar on my upper thigh. I found both in donation bins last winter. Then, basic white Adidas and too much gold jewelry. My hair is done up in a messy bun and I have a black Northface backpack.

It’s not that the outfit is bad or ugly, I actually think it’s rather cute, but I’d need to take exposure therapy for 100 years before having the confidence and the composure to wear it by any other means than to vanish.

If there’s one saving grace that rescues me from complete style-disembodiment that I have, it’s my hair.

I like to dye my hair because it establishes a sense of control I have over my identity. My natural hair is a light strawberry blonde and it’s the same as my mother’s, so I always leave just a bit of it alone.

The first time I messed with my hair, I was thirteen. I cut my own bangs and dyed chunky strips of it brunette, leaving a few pieces blonde. But that was two years ago.

Last week, I dyed the underlayer of my hair light pink and cut curtain bangs. I like it like this because it’s cute and contrasts with most of my clothes. I think I’ll keep it for a while.

When it comes to my clothes, I look like I sit outside of my favorite coffee shop reading books on the weekends. Pinterest calls it ‘downtown girl’. God, isn’t it gorgeous? I like how it uses both the darker and lighter hues and all the shades in between, when my whole life I was led to think light was pretty and dark was for Disney villains.

I recognize that my hair might not match with this aesthetic, but I endure by not caring. I think it’s very Y2K of me.

I’m not a bigot, I don’t hate the style at my school of summer colors and bright tones. I think it looks like you’re about to go to a Zara Larsson concert. She’s very cool and chic and a great singer. But that’s not me.

“Maddie, are you ready for school?” My mother popped into my room to say.

No, I’m not, but I’ll go.

I picked up my Northface backpack and slung it over my shoulder and grabbed a hoodie and left my bedroom. I don’t live in a big house, but it’s okay-sized. Enough room for all of us.

I live with my mom and step-dad and my younger sister. She’s actually my half-sister, but I don’t like saying it like that. Me and her have a 9 year age gap, which sucks. I don’t treat her like a 6-year-old though, she’s just my sister.

My brother lives with his girlfriend out of state. We don’t talk much, I wish we did. I blame him a lot for how I feel, like if I had him to lean on I wouldn’t feel so empty, but that’s not realistic. I’d feel the same. I miss him though.

My mom’s quiet and non-confrontational like me. It’s both good and bad. Good because it gives us something in common, which is a very short list. It makes us compatible, because it’s rarely awkward. Bad because when I need her, she’s too non-confrontational to confront.

Me and my step-dad don’t always get along. Back before I started feeling like this, I misbehaved a lot. Admittedly, I wasn’t the best step-daughter. But he also wasn’t always nice and sometimes he said things that hurt pretty bad. Then I went quiet and now we just co-exist. But I prefer that to being yelled at.

My dad lives several states away. We call once a week, but legally, we’re not supposed to see each other. He used to get doped up when he and my mom were dating, until he got locked up in jail. He and my mom never married and broke up when I was four, and I don’t really see him now, but I enjoy talking to him.

I can’t explain it, but one day when I was 13, I just started feeling new things. It was shortly after my birthday and it was just like this emptiness opened in my chest where my heart should be. Sometimes I feel like I’m falling or my heart starts beating really fast.

It was like the world lost its color overnight. Nothing occurred to cause it, it just happened. My body felt heavy even though I’ve always been small and it felt like I was dragging myself.

No matter what, I was on autopilot and my mind was cluttered with gloom and melancholy. My memory got foggy and I started getting blank spots in my memories. And for the future, I couldn’t see anything past the tip of my nose. I was just trying to make it to the end of the week and that was my life.

I’ve tried things to make it go away. One of the only times I’ve interacted with people from my school, I bought a bunch of weed.

I’m not exactly proud of the fact that I smoke. My parents don’t know, obviously. I only do it when it’s late at night or when things get bad. It helps me relax.

At school, I just walk through the halls from one class to another. I don’t talk to anyone and no one talks to me. I don’t think anyone even looks at me.

My younger sister, Rory, looked at me when I got into the kitchen and quickly showed me her drawing. It was a coloring sheet of some cartoon. The lines were all colored in, but the colors were all mixed up. Rory wants to be a famous artist when she grows up. Part of me knows she won’t make it there. I hope, if she does, I’m there to see it.

Chapter 2

“Who the hell is Madilyn Coleman?” I can hear the teacher mumble under her breath.

I raise my hand from the back right of the classroom. She scans the whole classroom before her eyes finally fall on my hand and she murmurs, “Oh, that’s right,” and checks off a box on her paper.

I’m not sure how the teachers forget an entire student’s existence, but I hope I’m never outside the class during a school shooting.

I hate when people call me Madilyn, even if that’s my name. No one calls me that, everyone calls me Maddie. Only the teachers who couldn’t give two damns about me call me Madilyn.

This is my last class of the day, thankfully. AP World History. I have a B-minus in this class. Not that I’m doing anything wrong in the class, since I have nothing to do but study. But sometimes the teacher loses my assignments and “is forced” to fail me.

I don’t aim to shoot high though. I don’t wanna go to college. Actually, I don’t know what I want to do after high school. I imagine I’m supposed to say “see the world” though.

I have 18 minutes and, if the clock above the door is correct, 42 seconds left in this class. After school, I plan to go home and ignore everyone, maybe work on my science homework, but definitely listen to some music and watch a movie.

Mrs. Peirrson is droning on about the Cold War when the yawn hits me and I find myself lying my head onto my hoodie and closing my eyes.

Did you know that during the Cold War, the CIA spent 20 million dollars on a cyborg cat? I do now.

I wake up at 4:48 in a dark classroom with no one around. Someone must’ve forgotten to wake me.

I pick up my backpack and carry it on my back as I waddle out of the classroom, still a bit dizzy from my nap. 

The hallways are still lit but empty. Now is around the time when everyone would be in a club or sport practice. I pass the janitor on my way out the big glass doors. “Bye, Toby.” I like him, he’s quiet.

Right now, I’m supposed to be in crocheting club. I don’t crochet. So instead, I take the pre-rolled weed out of my backpack, sneak around to the back of the building, and smoke.

I lost my AirPods two months after Christmas, so instead, I plug my wired earbuds in to listen to Purple by Olivia Rodrigo. I don’t know if it’s just me, but music is better when I smoke.

As I smoke, I think about school today. As a quiet person, I tend to notice more. As a girl, I tend to enjoy watching drama. There were girls in the hallways that were still not talking from previous fights and boys pretending not to gossip, even though they were.
The thing about boys and girls is that we are in every way the same. Boys gossip just as much as girls, and girls sexualize the other gender just as much as boys.

I’m imagining what it’d be like to be Jessie Reynolds, who is currently dating the hockey captain, when I realize it’s 5:15 and crochet club is ending.

My step-dad doesn’t like when I’m late, so I walk back around the school, encounter an angry bee, and run the rest of the way to the car. 

When I finally lost the angry bee, I opened the car door and sat in the back seat of the small Honda Civic. I can tell he doesn’t like the Honda Civic, but his old Mustang broke down and we own the Civic because it’s the only car my parents trust me to drive with only my permit.

We say nothing to each other as we pull out of the school lot and onto the road. I hate driving, so I’m glad he does it.

I plug in my wired earbuds to my phone and shuffle my playlist, which spits out Casual by Chappell Roan. I relate deeply to the song, even though I’ve never had sex.

The ride home is a smooth fifteen minutes when we pull into the cracked driveway. I look over at James, my step-dad, and his lips are moving but no sound is coming out. I pull out an earbud. “What?” I ask.

He sighs loudly. “If you can’t hear me talking over your music, it’s too damn loud.”

I look down at my nails, which are colored in with black sharpie for now, and my brow scrunches. “But what’d you say?”

He sighs again, “Do the dishes and take the dogs out before you retreat back to your den.”

I stare blankly at my nails for a moment and nod, then get out of the car. I can already feel my brain starting to go onto autopilot when I get inside.

Rory is coloring messily with markers and my mom is on the couch, playing her mobile games and sipping on a glass of wine. She smiled when she saw me, “Oh, baby, how was, uh… knitting club..?” 

As a non-crocheter, even I got a bit offended. “Crochet club. It was invigorating.”

The worst part of being home is the fact that only four people live here, six if we’re including the dogs. With so few people, it’s impossible to vanish, unless I do it literally and “retreat back into my den”.

I grab a drying towel, probably dirty, and dry the dishes, and put them where they belong. I don’t like to do it, but doing the dishes isn’t the worst job they could’ve given me. I just don’t like the soggy food Rory forgets to clean off her plate.

The dishes take me fifteen minutes to do since we have a small dishwasher. I call the dogs and open the door and stand outside. Our house is secluded enough for them to not need leashes. 

Rosie, as you might guess from the painfully basic name, belongs to my parents. Mainly my mom. She’s a tan and brown border collie. Hobie is mine. He is five years younger than Rosie and still a puppy. James wanted to name him Michael after his father, but who the fuck names a dog Michael? So I named him after Spiderpunk.

Hobie is my dog. After Rosie, I begged for my own for three years and my mom finally promised me my own for Christmas. We just brought him home a month ago. He’s mainly black with  some brown and a German Shepherd. He sleeps with me at night and I sneak food to him under the table when my parents feed me garbage. His favorite food is chicken, but he likes Chick-Fil-A fries too.

My mom is my favorite person, but Hobie is a close second.

I watch him chase bees through the weeds, but they’re the ones that don’t sting, so I let him. Rosie does her business in the background.

I call the dogs inside and finally go to my room, Hobie on my heels. I close the door behind us and connect my phone to the bluetooth speaker. I play Picking Petals by Alyssa Grace. Hobie lies on his dog bed in his cage, chewing on his bone. That’s where he’s supposed to sleep, according to James, but he doesn’t.

I decide, like I normally do, that science isn’t worth my time or brain energy. So I turn my music down and open my laptop and pull up the tab with my bootleg movie sites and lie down. I watch How To Train Your Dragon because I was once close to naming Hobie after Toothless and it’s on my mind. I pat the spot beside me loudly and Hobie perks up, then quickly takes the spot beside me.

I skip dinner to finish the movie, then start Big Hero Six.

When I wake up, my laptop is dead and Hobie is snoring under my arm. I check my phone. It is 11:46 and everyone in the house is likely asleep. 

I get out of bed, disturbing Hobie for mere seconds, and groan when I realize I kept on my school clothes all day. It’s not embarrassing, but I hate to see myself in these clothes. Hobie is asleep, so I take them off. I avoid my mirror.

I fish into my dresser and find some Christmas-themed pajama pants and throw them onto my bed, even though it’s April. I pull out a T-shirt from the same drawer. It smells like crummy, old laundry detergent, but it doesn’t matter since no one will see me in it.

I throw it onto my bed and sit down, sighing tiredly. And then my eyes lock onto my own in the full-body mirror across from me.

Once you start to look in that mirror, you can’t look away. I stand as the mirror entrances me. I run my hands over my chest and stomach and turn to the side.

I’m small and shop in the petite section in TJMaxx, but that doesn’t mean I feel small.

My breasts are too small and my gut is too big. I still fit into an A-cup bra and I have to cross my arms over my belly when I sit to cover my rolls. They are ugly.

My thighs are the ugliest though. They’re big and jelly-like and covered in scars from when I’d cut too deep before. I don’t like to be alone and around knives anymore. My hands run down to my scars and I feel the rugged skin under my fingertips and my heart starts to beat faster. That scares me.

My legs shake under me and I run my hands over my chest again.

Lizzy Robins wears D-cup bras and she’s a freshman.

Lizzy Robins is in my Geometry class and always giggles from a text within the first five minutes of class. She’s also dating a cute baseball player.

My breath starts to become heavy as they run over my gut.

Bethany Childs flaunted her 18 inch waist to all the boys in the hallway today.

Bethany Childs is a senior and a cheerleader. She’s dated three football players, has the nicest car in her homeroom, and her hair goes down to her butt.

My body started to tilt as my mind grew dizzy and my hands drifted down to my thighs.

Imani Freeman eats salads to keep her thighs as small as they are.
Imani Freeman is a sophomore and she is a cheerleader too. She’s a flyer. Her boyfriend is a cute Hispanic boy that takes her out to eat every weekend. I’ve heard that she doesn’t even weigh 100 lbs.

No other sophomore has self-harm scars.

That’s what I thought as I touched the scars on my thighs, shaking violently and sobbing.

Hobie was awake now, staring at me and whimpering. I curl up at the foot of my bed and push him away when he tries to lick my ear. I feel bad, I know he was only trying to comfort me.

I reach into my backpack and pull out my packet of pre-rolled weed from earlier, but there’s none left. I smoked it all. That was the last of it.

I can’t control my sobbing anymore and it turns to screaming, so I put a pillow to my mouth. I tug at my hair until I feel like the physical pain I feel finally matches the mental pain I feel. I dropped the pillow and bit my thumb for good measure.

I lean my head back onto my bed and decide. I need more weed.I won’t make it through the night clean without it. I don’t like pain, but I’m not above it.

I put on a hoodie and some wide-leg sweatpants. I lock Hobie up in his cage before I go, or he’ll follow me. I grab my wallet on the way out, and leave the house undetected.

Thanks to my great-grandma’s inheritance, I have plenty of drug money.
I’m not dumb enough to wander into some drug lord’s house, and even if I do, I have pepper spray, so I can take my chances.

I pulled my phone out of my hoodie pocket. On Bethany Childs’s Instagram story, she’s holding a red solo cup in blue lighting with Avery Winters. So, there must be a party tonight.

It wasn’t hard to find out where the party was, Aaron Lovell, a popular senior basketball player, had posted a story with Bethany in it with an address.

The address was a twenty-five minute walk away from my secluded house, but, it turns out, a ten minute run. The house, of course, is a big two-story house, bigger than three of my houses put together. Only rich kids get popular.

I walk through the foyer of the house, the loud music and screaming instantly beating into my ears. There are people making out openly, playing drinking games, and, of course, people getting high. That means I’m in the right place.

Every party with drugs has a dealer, or at least I think it does. This is my first party, but I don’t plan to stay. I tap on an older boy’s shoulder and shout over the music, “Excuse me! Where can I find some drugs?” 

He turns around and looks at me for a second before he laughs and turns away. My cheeks turn red. That’s why I don’t talk to anyone at school.

I wander upstairs, further into the party. Do drug dealers hide in drug dens? I open a door to a bedroom, where a boy and girl are having loud, graphic sex. The boy shouts at me and I quickly close the door, scarred for life. I will never be able to unsee that.

I won’t be opening any more doors.

At school, I usually buy off this kid named Lightning. That’s not his name, but that’s what he’s called. I think it has something to do with the Lightning McQueen Crocs he wears everyday. He doesn’t ask too many questions and hasn’t sold me anything laced with Fentanyl, so I like him.

But Lightning just hangs around the hallways at school, not parties like these. I don’t know anyone here and I’m starting to feel a bit scared. My nerves are still crawling under my skin.

I walk through the upstairs hallways until I finally see a person smoking a joint. I tap his shoulder. He turns around. “Where’d you get that?” I ask him, pointing to his joint.

“Oh, from Davis. In the game room.” “Where’s the game room?” The boy points to the door at the end of the hall. I thank him and walk to the room and open the door. A lot of smoke clouds my face and I cough, not expecting it.

There are five people in the room. Two boys sitting on a couch, a girl playing on the PlayStation, a boy sitting on the floor, and another girl laying down. All of them are smoking and probably on stronger stuff. I noticed that the boy on the ground is the one with a backpack, probably full of drugs.

“Excuse me, may I have some drugs?” I ask him loudly, standing up straight so that he’d take me more seriously.
Everyone’s eyes lock onto me and the boy laughs loudly, just like the one downstairs did. But at least he didn’t turn me away.

“What’re you, a narc?” He said. My cheeks turn red as I realize that, by trying to be polite, I sounded like a five year old asking for candy.

I shake my head. “No. I just need more weed.”

The boy’s face is busted up and tattooed and he has a lot of piercings and a bleached buzz cut. I think he looks cool, but like a movie drug dealer.

“Are you Davis?” The boy laughs at me again and shakes his head. He points with his thumb to the girl playing the PlayStation. So Davis is a girl.

The girl pauses her game and finally looks up at me. Her hair is black with a thick blue strip. She’s pale and skinny and her skin is flawless. She’s also Asian, maybe Korean. “You smoke weed?” She said with a condescending tone. I nod. “For how long?” I take a minute to think and say, “Um… Probably started two years ago.”

Her eyebrows rise slightly. “Okay. Why do you smoke?” I sigh, my skin feeling tight. “Why does it matter?” She rolls her eyes, “Because I don’t believe you’re not a cop.” I press my lips tighter together. “I’m not.”

“Are you wearing a wire?” “No. I just want weed.” “Prove it.” My face scrunches with confusion and I sigh, exasperated. “How do I prove I’m not wearing a wire?”

“Strip.”

My jaw drops slightly and I start to feel just a bit lightheaded. All I wanted was some weed.

“I’m fifteen.”

Davis rolls her eyes. “And I’m seventeen. I’m not sexualizing you, I just don’t believe you. And I can’t go to juvie again.”

My breath starts to become shallow. I can’t strip in front of a bunch of older kids just for weed! But I might.

“I… I don’t know…” 

Davis sighs. “We can go into the bathroom. I won’t make you strip in front of them.” She stands up and I’m slightly grateful.

“Oh, fuck you, Davis.” The boy with the bleached buzzcut says. Davis throws her PlayStation control at him and it hits him in the jaw and he groanes loudly. “Shut the fuck up, Winston.”

Winston glares at her, throwing a pillow at her. “Don’t call me Winston.”

Davis goes into the connected bathroom and looks at me. I lock eyes with her and scramble forward nervously. My bones feel like they’re hollow and ringing repeatedly in my body and my muscles feel tight, like they’re hugging me and don’t want to let go. I need that weed.

Davis shuts the door behind us. “I’m sorry. It’s not personal, but I can’t take any chances.”

In no way can I relate to her, but I still understand. “I get it.”

I start to undress in front of her. She stands in the corner, unfazed.

“I’m sorry for Danny.” “Danny?” 

“The boy with the buzzcut. If he knew you, he wouldn’t be weird like that.” I realize she’s talking about the boy she called Winston. “Oh. It’s okay.” No, it’s not.

“No, it’s not. I keep telling him to leave customers alone. You don’t have to take your bra and panties off, it’s fine.”

I nod, silently thankful. I’m in only that and a bit cold and very uncomfortable. She apologizes again. I tell her it’s okay. It is, I get it.

“Is your real name Davis?” She smiles. “No. I chose it ‘cause it’s a guy name, usually. It makes me sound like I have a big dick.” My back muscles cringe, but I don’t say anything. 

She eyes me when I put my hoodie back on. “What’s your name, kid?” 

“Maddie Coleman.” 

“Do you go to Eastern?” I nod. “I’ve never seen you before.” She says. I shrug, “I don’t like to be seen.” 

She laughs quietly. “I like you, Maddie.”

My cheeks turn red. Davis is the only person to ever tell me that. And she feels like the closest thing I’ve had to a friend in two years, even if she’s only my current drug dealer.

“Are you a freshman?” I shake my head. “Sophomore. You’re a senior?” She shakes her head. “Junior.”

“Why do you sell drugs?” “Money.” I smile. I think I like Davis too.

“What’s your real name?” This is the most I’ve talked to anyone from my school in years. “That, Maddie, is a secret.”

She smiles and presses a finger to her lips. Davis is really pretty. I’m jealous.
 
She opens the door and leads me out of the bathroom. She slings her arm around my shoulders. “Guys, this is Maddie. Be nice to her.” No one greets me.

She sat back down on the beanbag she was on before. “Maddie, come sit.” She says, beckoning me. My eyes widen slightly. “Really?” She smiles and nods. I run over and sit on the floor, leaning my back on the couch.

“Davis, can I have the weed now?” She pauses her game again. “Oh, right, I forgot. I’ll give it to you for ten bucks a gram. Danny, stop hogging my bag. If you stole anything, I’ll cut you.” A gut feeling tells me Davis isn’t lying.

She grabs her bag from Danny and pulls out a few label bags. They’re labeled, I think, by the amount of marajuana in them. “How much do you want?”

“Um…7 grams.” She pours the flakes in a few of the bags into a bigger bag. “Seventy bucks, kid.” I gave her three twenties and two fives. She put the money in her bag.

“Oh. You know Danny.” She waves her hand at the boy. She points to the two boys on the couch, smoking. One of them is a skinny black boy with braids, a patch of braids are dark red. Davis calls him Ant. The other is a bigger white boy. I think his bulk is more muscle than fat, he looks like a defensive football player. His hair is light brown and pushed up in the front, out of his forehead. Davis calls him Bama. Then she points to the girl lying on the floor and calls her Trix. Trix has sunset orange hair to her shoulders and a lot of blush on her cheeks. She has body glitter all over her chest. She’s wearing a pink tank top and a black skirt, striped pink and black socks up to her knees and platform converses. She’s looking dazedly to the ceiling and stringing her hair in front of her face.

“Trix is high on diazepam. Don’t bother her, she’s enjoying it.” Davis says, smiling. Trix giggles absentmindedly.

“So, let’s see you smoke, sweetheart.” Danny says, smirking. It takes me a moment to realize he was talking to me.

I roll up a joint and look at him. “Do you have a light?” 

He snickers and pulls out his lighter and lights the flame, then waves it around. “Come get it, Baby.” 

“Stop being a dick, Danny.” Davis says, rolling her eyes. Danny shoves her head, but Davis doesn’t react. Maybe that’s just how they interact.

“Really, c’mere, Sweetheart.” He says, grinning. He waves the flame around again. I, against my better judgement, crawl forward and hold out my joint. He holds the flame to the end. I hold the other end to my lips and inhale, taking the smoke into my lungs. It feels good, I can feel it settling my nerves already. I exhale and it feels just as good.

“Okay, girl. Didn’t realize we had a pro in our presence.” Davis giggles. I smile and laugh too. It’s funny that the one thing I’m good at is smoking.

“Does her highness want something a little… harder?” Danny says, smirking as he reaches slyly into Davis’s bag and pulls out a bag, smaller bags and containers inside it. 

“Oh my god, stop messing with her, Danny.” “I’m not messing with her, I’m offering.”

Ant talks for the first time since I’ve been here. “Yo, Dan, leave the kid alone.” His voice is deep and he’s got a drawl to it. Danny does not seem like a very good listener.

He opens the bag and takes out a smaller baggie of stickers. He sits next to me. “This is LSD. Y’know, acid. Makes you hallucinate and see shit. Try it, Baby.” He grins at me.

“Danny, Stop. Don’t take it, Maddie.” Davis said. She is standing now. Ant speaks again, “Danny, stop it.”

Danny groans, “What? Maddie’s cool, right, baby?” 

I looked at the sticker baggie in his hand. Was that the LSD?

“How do you take it?” 

“That’s enough, she’s not taking acid.” Maddie snatches the baggie out of his hand and Danny looks up at her, frowning. 

“Fuck you, Davis. I knew you were cool, baby. She wants to take it, don’t be a bitch.”

“People die from LSD.” “Says the one selling it.” 

Danny got her there.

“Maddie’s not taking LSD as her first hard drug.”

“Fine. Try a gummy, Babe.” He offers me a little gummy, the size of my finger tip. “What does it have in it?” I ask.

“Fentynal.” He says, grinning. 

I look up at him, my face paling. He busts out laughing loudly, “You should see the look on your face. Nah, it’s ecstasy, Baby. Not gonna kill you.” He glances up at Davis, who is already eyeing him.

He offers it to me again and I take it between my fingers.

And then, I take my first hard drug.

-

Thank you for reading! DM me!

I read all of your advice and revised! Thanks for all the support on Maddie, I appreciate it. She's partially based on me and my life so I was happy to hear she was relatable. It's almost midnight where I am, so I probably can't get started on chapter two until tomorrow but I will post what I revised of chapter one here. Also, no one said it, but to me, the ending felt abrupt, so I extended it.

(Also, looking back at it, I'm SO happy many of y'all called me out of some parts of it, way too much of my own self started to slip into Maddie, but I fixed it!)

TW: smoking, depression, self-harm, etc

If I had to choose what day I’d die on, I’d choose any Monday in February.

I think about dying a lot. What does it feel like? What do you think about? Do you know you’re dying? What do you see?

I’ve only been to one funeral before and it was for my cat. But Tofu went peacefully. He died when I was nine. I accidentally fed him grapes. I don’t actually know if he went peacefully, but I was told he did.

I don’t know if I want to die, I’d need the answers to all of my questions and, obviously, no one can give that to me. But I think I’d rather disappear.

My dream is to one day just phase out of existence. Not die, just simply stop. To die would imply pain and I don’t really like to get hurt.

It has occurred to me to hurt myself in order to feel something other than the impending sense of doom and the longing for vanishing. Everyone else does. I’ve tried cutting, but it became a dreadful dull in my life that stopped pleasing me. I don’t like pain, that’s just not me.

But then what do people in pain do, if not inflict more pain? That’s where I’m stuck. So I Googled coping mechanisms.

That was no help. The stupid bot assistant said that people in pain isolate. But I already do that. Everyone does, not just people in pain.

The closest I’ll ever get to disappearing is phasing out of a crowded room. It’s not hard. You know how people talk about being alone in a packed room? It’s that, but on purpose.

I mainly do it at school. I walk through the halls and no one notices me, but I prefer that. After all, it’s high school. Half of the people here wish they could do what I do.

To go unnoticed takes talent, honestly. At least, it does in the way I do. The teachers forget I’m in the room until they take roll call. The boys bump into me all the time and never even know it. The girls have nothing about me to gossip about. It’s amazing.

If I was anyone else, or maybe even looked any other way, this would be impossible for me. I’m not ugly, or at least not enough for girls to giggle about. But I’m not pretty enough for them to be jealous of either. The same is true for how I dress.

Clothes get more complicated than simple prettiness for going unnoticed. Never wear what you want. Blend in. Wear what they’re wearing, even if it makes your skin crawl and forces you into a body that isn’t yours. Not giving into my own style preferences almost makes me dizzy, but it’s worth it.

When it’s this close to summer, the girls at my school wear warm colors and next to no fabric. Not my personal choice, but it’s what I’m constrained to.

For example, today I’m wearing an off-white shirt with a baby blue ‘28’ in the center and jean shorts that couldn't be bothered to cover a scar on my upper thigh. I found both in donation bins last winter. Then, basic white Adidas and too much gold jewelry. My hair is done up in a messy bun and I have a black Northface backpack.

It’s not that the outfit is bad or ugly, I actually think it’s rather cute, but I’d need to take exposure therapy for 100 years before having the confidence and the composure to wear it by any other means than to vanish.

If there’s one saving grace that rescues me from complete style-disembodiment that I have, it’s my hair.

I like to dye my hair because it establishes a sense of control I have over my identity. My natural hair is a light strawberry blonde and it’s the same as my mother’s, so I always leave just a bit of it alone.

The first time I messed with my hair, I was thirteen. I cut my own bangs and dyed chunky strips of it brunette, leaving a few pieces blonde. But that was two years ago.

Last week, I dyed the underlayer of my hair light pink and cut curtain bangs. I like it like this because it’s cute and contrasts with most of my clothes. I think I’ll keep it for a while.

When it comes to my clothes, I look like I sit outside of my favorite coffee shop reading books on the weekends. Pinterest calls it ‘downtown girl’. God, isn’t it gorgeous? I like how it uses both the darker and lighter hues and all the shades in between, when my whole life I was led to think light was pretty and dark was for Disney villains.

I recognize that my hair might not match with this aesthetic, but I endure by not caring. I think it’s very Y2K of me.

I’m not a bigot, I don’t hate the style at my school of summer colors and bright tones. I think it looks like you’re about to go to a Zara Larsson concert. She’s very cool and chic and a great singer. But that’s not me.

“Maddie, are you ready for school?” My mother popped into my room to say.

No, I’m not, but I’ll go.

I picked up my Northface backpack and slung it over my shoulder and grabbed a hoodie and left my bedroom. I don’t live in a big house, but it’s okay-sized. Enough room for all of us.

I live with my mom and step-dad and my younger sister. She’s actually my half-sister, but I don’t like saying it like that. Me and her have a 9 year age gap, which sucks. I don’t treat her like a 6-year-old though, she’s just my sister.

My brother lives with his girlfriend out of state. We don’t talk much, I wish we did. I blame him a lot for how I feel, like if I had him to lean on I wouldn’t feel so empty, but that’s not realistic. I’d feel the same. I miss him though.

My mom’s quiet and non-confrontational like me. It’s both good and bad. Good because it gives us something in common, which is a very short list. It makes us compatible, because it’s rarely awkward. Bad because when I need her, she’s too non-confrontational to confront.

Me and my step-dad don’t always get along. Back before I started feeling like this, I misbehaved a lot. Admittedly, I wasn’t the best step-daughter. But he also wasn’t always nice and sometimes he said things that hurt pretty bad. Then I went quiet and now we just co-exist. But I prefer that to being yelled at.

My dad lives several states away. We call once a week, but legally, we’re not supposed to see each other. He used to get doped up when he and my mom were dating, until he got locked up in jail. He and my mom never broke up, and I don’t really see him now, but I enjoy talking to him.

I can’t explain it, but one day when I was 13, I just started feeling new things. It was shortly after my birthday and it was just like this emptiness opened in my chest where my heart should be. Sometimes I feel like I’m falling or my heart starts beating really fast.

It was like the world lost its color overnight. Nothing occurred to cause it, it just happened. My body felt heavy even though I’ve always been small and it felt like I was dragging myself.

No matter what, I was on autopilot and my mind was cluttered with gloom and melancholy. My memory got foggy and I started getting blank spots in my memories. And for the future, I couldn’t see anything past the tip of my nose. I was just trying to make it to the end of the week and that was my life.

I’ve tried things to make it go away. One of the only times I’ve interacted with people from my school, I bought a bunch of weed.

I’m not exactly proud of the fact that I smoke. My parents don’t know, obviously. I only do it when it’s late at night or when things get bad. It helps me relax.

At school, I just walk through the halls from one class to another. I don’t talk to anyone and no one talks to me. I don’t think anyone even looks at me.

My younger sister, Rory, looked at me when I got into the kitchen and quickly showed me her drawing. It was a coloring sheet of some cartoon. The lines were all colored in, but the colors were all mixed up. Rory wants to be a famous artist when she grows up. Part of me knows she won’t make it there. I hope, if she does, I’m there to see it.

If I had to choose what day I’d die on, I’d choose any monday in February.

I think about dying a lot. What does it feel like? What do you think about? Do you know you’re dying? What do you see?

I’ve only been to one funeral before and it was for my cat. But Tofu went peacefully. He died when I was nine. I accidentally fed him grapes. I don’t actually know if he went peacefully, but I was told he did.

I don’t know if I want to die, I’d need the answers to all of my questions and, obviously, no one can give that to me. But I think I’d rather disappear.

My dream is to one day just phase out of existence. Not die, just simply stop. To die would imply pain and I don’t really like to get hurt.

It has occurred to me to hurt myself to feel something other than the impending sense of doom and the longing for vanishing. Everyone else does. I tried cutting, but it became a dreadful dull in my life. It didn’t help much since I don’t like pain. That’s just not me.

But then what do people in pain do, if not inflict more? That’s where I’m stuck. So I Googled coping mechanisms.

That was no help. The stupid bot assistant said that people in pain isolate. But I already do that. Everyone does, not just people in pain.

The closest I ever get to disappearing is phasing out of a crowded room. It’s not hard. You know how people talk about being alone in a packed room? It’s that, but on purpose.

I mainly do it at school. I walk through the halls and no one notices me, but I prefer that. After all, it’s high school. Half of the people here wish they could do what I do.

To go unnoticed takes talent, honestly. At least, it does in the way I do. The teachers forget I’m in the room until they take role call. The boys bump into me all the time and never even know it. The girls have nothing about me to gossip about. It’s amazing.

If I was anyone else, or maybe even looked any other way, this would be impossible for me. I’m not ugly, not enough for girls to giggle about. But I’m not pretty enough for them to be jealous of either. The same is true for how I dress.

Clothes get more complicated than simple prettiness for going unnoticed. Never wear what you want. Blend in. Wear what they’re wearing, even if it makes your skin crawl and forces you into a body that isn’t yours. Not giving into my own style preferences almost makes me dizzy, but it’s worth it.

This close to summer, the girls at my school wear warm colors and next to no fabric. Not my personal choice, but it’s what I’m constrained to.

For example, today I’m wearing an off-white shirt with a baby blue ‘28’ in the center and jean shorts that couldn't be bothered to cover a scar on my upper thigh. I found both in donation bins last winter. Then, basic white Adidas and too much gold jewelry. My hair is done up in a messy bun. I also have a black Northface backpack.

It’s not that the outfit is bad or ugly, I actually think it’s rather cute. But I’d need to take exposure therapy for 100 years before having the confidence and the composure to wear it by any other means than to vanish.

If there’s one saving grace that rescues me from complete style-disembodiment that I have, it’s my hair.

My whole life, I never changed it completely from the soft, light blonde that my mother gave me. I dye it a lot, but I always leave part of it original, like my bangs or strips throughout my head. I hate forgetting that I look like my mother.

My favorite hairstyle that I did was probably around two weeks ago, when I dyed my hair for the first time. I dyed the whole thing light brunette, but cut my own bangs for the first time and left strips of my original hair on top, to look like highlights..

Now, my hair is the same light blonde as her, but underneath is light pink. Pink isn’t usually what I give into, but it was when I dyed my hair two weeks ago. Part of it was impulse, part of it was wanting to try something new, part of it was desiring the flow from light blonde to light pink underneath. I like it now, just how it is.

It’s hard to explain what my taste is when I have so many. 

In clothes, I look like I sit outside my favorite coffee shop reading books on the weekends. Pinterest calls it ‘downtown girl’. God, isn’t it gorgeous? I like how it uses both the darker and lighter hues and all the shades in between, when my whole life I was led to think light was pretty and dark was for Disney villains.

I recognize that my hair might not match with this aesthetic, but I endure by not caring. I think it’s very Y2K of me.

I’m not a bigot, I don’t hate the style at my school of summer colors and bright tones. I think it looks like you’re about to go to a Zara Larsson concert. She’s very cool and chic and a great singer. But that’s not me.

My music taste is a bit weird. I like Taylor Swift, but not 1989 or Speak Now. I like Folklore and Midnights. I don’t know if that’s relatable or not. 

Same with Olivia Rodrigo. I like all of her songs, but I prefer her Teenage Dream to Katy Perry’s. And Pretty Isn’t Pretty and Less and The Cure and Honeybee and Purple and Hope Ur Ok and Enough For You and The Grudge and Making The Bed. 

God, maybe I just like Olivia Rodrigo.

So, if I may, here’s a list of everyone I love in the music community;

Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Tate McRae, Gracie Abrams, Bella Kay, Arctic Monkeys, Noah Kahan, Conan Gray, Phoebe Bridgers, and Dominic Fike.

I feel like it’s a very short list of a lot of mainstream people. Which is okay.
If I like music, I either like a few songs by an artist and really love all those songs, or I like an artist’s whole damn discography and my love is stretched thin over them.

“Maddie, are you ready for school?” My mother popped into my room to say.

No, I’m not, but I’ll go.

I picked up my Northface backpack and slung it over my shoulder and grabbed a hoodie and left my bedroom. I don’t live in a big house, but it’s okay-sized. Enough room for all of us.

I live with my mom and step-dad and my younger sister. She’s actually my half-sister, but I don’t like saying it like that. Me and her have a 9 year age gap, which sucks. I don’t treat her like a 6-year-old though, she’s just my sister.

My brother lives with his girlfriend out of state. We don’t talk much, I wish we did. I blame him a lot for how I feel, like if I had him to lean on I wouldn’t feel so empty, but that’s not realistic. I’d feel the same. I miss him though.

My mom’s quiet and non-confrontational like me. It’s both good and bad. Good because it gives us something in common, which is a very short list. It makes us compatible, because it’s rarely awkward. Bad because when I need her, she’s too non-confrontational to confront.

Me and my step-dad don’t always get along. Back before I started feeling like this, I misbehaved a lot. Admittedly, I wasn’t the best step-daughter. But he also wasn’t always nice and sometimes he said things that hurt pretty bad. Then I went quiet and now we just co-exist. But I prefer that to being yelled at.

My dad lives several states away. We call once a week, but legally, we’re not supposed to see each other. He used to get doped up when he and my mom were dating, until he got locked up in jail. He and my mom never broke up, and I don’t really see him now, but I enjoy talking to him.

I can’t explain it, but one day when I was 13, I just started feeling new things. It was shortly after my birthday and it was just like this emptiness opened in my chest where my heart should be. Sometimes I feel like I’m falling or my heart starts beating really fast.

It was like the world lost its color overnight. Nothing occurred to cause it, it just happened. My body felt heavy even though I’ve always been small and it felt like I was dragging myself.

No matter what, I was on autopilot and my mind was cluttered with gloom and melancholy. My memory got foggy and I started getting blank spots in my memories. And for the future, I couldn’t see anything past the tip of my nose. I was just trying to make it to the end of the week and that was my life.

I’ve tried things to make it go away. One of the only times I’ve interacted with people from my school, I bought a bunch of weed.

I’m not exactly proud of the fact that I smoke. My parents don’t know, obviously. I only do it when it’s late at night or when things get bad. It helps me relax.
At school, I just walk through the halls from one class to another. I don’t talk to anyone and no one talks to me. I don’t think anyone even looks at me.

T/W; Depression, drugs, self-harm, suicide

If I had to choose what day I’d die on, I’d choose any Monday in February.

I think about dying a lot. What does it feel like? What do you think about? Do you know you’re dying? What do you see?

I’ve only been to one funeral before and it was for my cat. But Tofu went peacefully. He died when I was nine. I accidentally fed him grapes. I don’t actually know if he went peacefully, but I was told he did.

I don’t know if I want to die, I’d need the answers to all of my questions and, obviously, no one can give that to me. But I think I’d rather disappear.

My dream is to one day just phase out of existence. Not die, just simply stop. To die would imply pain and I don’t really like to get hurt.

It has occurred to me to hurt myself to feel something other than the impending sense of doom and the longing for vanishing. Everyone else does. I tried cutting, but it became a dreadful dull in my life. It didn’t help much since I don’t like pain. That’s just not me.

But then what do people in pain do, if not inflict more? That’s where I’m stuck. So I Googled coping mechanisms.

That was no help. The stupid bot assistant said that people in pain isolate. But I already do that. Everyone does, not just people in pain.

The closest I ever get to disappearing is phasing out of a crowded room. It’s not hard. You know how people talk about being alone in a packed room? It’s that, but on purpose.

I mainly do it at school. I walk through the halls and no one notices me, but I prefer that. After all, it’s high school. Half of the people here wish they could do what I do.

To go unnoticed takes talent, honestly. At least, it does in the way I do. The teachers forget I’m in the room until they take role call. The boys bump into me all the time and never even know it. The girls have nothing about me to gossip about. It’s amazing.

If I was anyone else, or maybe even looked any other way, this would be impossible for me. I’m not ugly, not enough for girls to giggle about. But I’m not pretty enough for them to be jealous of either. The same is true for how I dress.

Clothes get more complicated than simple prettiness for going unnoticed. Never wear what you want. Blend in. Wear what they’re wearing, even if it makes your skin crawl and forces you into a body that isn’t yours. Not giving into my own style preferences almost makes me dizzy, but it’s worth it.

This close to summer, the girls at my school wear warm colors and next to no fabric. Not my personal choice, but it’s what I’m constrained to.

For example, today I’m wearing an off-white shirt with a baby blue ‘28’ in the center and jean shorts that couldn't be bothered to cover a scar on my upper thigh. I found both in donation bins last winter. Then, basic white Adidas and too much gold jewelry. My hair is done up in a messy bun. I also have a black Northface backpack.

It’s not that the outfit is bad or ugly, I actually think it’s rather cute. But I’d need to take exposure therapy for 100 years before having the confidence and the composure to wear it by any other means than to vanish.

If there’s one saving grace that rescues me from complete style-disembodiment that I have, it’s my hair.

My whole life, I never changed it completely from the soft, light blonde that my mother gave me. I dye it a lot, but I always leave part of it original, like my bangs or strips throughout my head. I hate forgetting that I look like my mother.

My favorite hairstyle that I did was probably around two weeks ago, when I dyed my hair for the first time. I dyed the whole thing light brunette, but cut my own bangs for the first time and left strips of my original hair on top, to look like highlights..

Now, my hair is the same light blonde as her, but underneath is light pink. Pink isn’t usually what I give into, but it was when I dyed my hair two weeks ago. Part of it was impulse, part of it was wanting to try something new, part of it was desiring the flow from light blonde to light pink underneath. I like it now, just how it is.

It’s hard to explain what my taste is when I have so many. 

In clothes, I look like I sit outside my favorite coffee shop reading books on the weekends. Pinterest calls it ‘downtown girl’. God, isn’t it gorgeous? I like how it uses both the darker and lighter hues and all the shades in between, when my whole life I was led to think light was pretty and dark was for Disney villains.

I recognize that my hair might not match with this aesthetic, but I endure by not caring. I think it’s very Y2K of me.

I’m not a bigot, I don’t hate the style at my school of summer colors and bright tones. I think it looks like you’re about to go to a Zara Larsson concert. She’s very cool and chic and a great singer. But that’s not me.

My music taste is a bit weird. I like Taylor Swift, but not 1989 or Speak Now. I like Folklore and Midnights. I don’t know if that’s relatable or not. 

Same with Olivia Rodrigo. I like all of her songs, but I prefer her Teenage Dream to Katy Perry’s. And Pretty Isn’t Pretty and Less and The Cure and Honeybee and Purple and Hope Ur Ok and Enough For You and The Grudge and Making The Bed. 

God, maybe I just like Olivia Rodrigo.

So, if I may, here’s a list of everyone I love in the music community;

Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Tate McRae, Gracie Abrams, Bella Kay, Arctic Monkeys, Noah Kahan, Conan Gray, Phoebe Bridgers, and Dominic Fike.

I feel like it’s a very short list of a lot of mainstream people. Which is okay.
If I like music, I either like a few songs by an artist and really love all those songs, or I like an artist’s whole damn discography and my love is stretched thin over them.

“Maddie, are you ready for school?” My mother popped into my room to say.

No, I’m not, but I’ll go.

I picked up my Northface backpack and slung it over my shoulder and grabbed a hoodie and left my bedroom. I don’t live in a big house, but it’s okay-sized. Enough room for all of us.

I live with my mom and step-dad and my younger sister. She’s actually my half-sister, but I don’t like saying it like that. Me and her have a 9 year age gap, which sucks. I don’t treat her like a 6-year-old though, she’s just my sister.

My brother lives with his girlfriend out of state. We don’t talk much, I wish we did. I blame him a lot for how I feel, like if I had him to lean on I wouldn’t feel so empty, but that’s not realistic. I’d feel the same. I miss him though.

My mom’s quiet and non-confrontational like me. It’s both good and bad. Good because it gives us something in common, which is a very short list. It makes us compatible, because it’s rarely awkward. Bad because when I need her, she’s too non-confrontational to confront.

Me and my step-dad don’t always get along. Back before I started feeling like this, I misbehaved a lot. Admittedly, I wasn’t the best step-daughter. But he also wasn’t always nice and sometimes he said things that hurt pretty bad. Then I went quiet and now we just co-exist. But I prefer that to being yelled at.

My dad lives several states away. We call once a week, but legally, we’re not supposed to see each other. He used to get doped up when he and my mom were dating, until he got locked up in jail. He and my mom never broke up, and I don’t really see him now, but I enjoy talking to him.

I can’t explain it, but one day when I was 13, I just started feeling new things. It was shortly after my birthday and it was just like this emptiness opened in my chest where my heart should be. Sometimes I feel like I’m falling or my heart starts beating really fast.

It was like the world lost its color overnight. Nothing occurred to cause it, it just happened. My body felt heavy even though I’ve always been small and it felt like I was dragging myself.

No matter what, I was on autopilot and my mind was cluttered with gloom and melancholy. My memory got foggy and I started getting blank spots in my memories. And for the future, I couldn’t see anything past the tip of my nose. I was just trying to make it to the end of the week and that was my life.

I’ve tried things to make it go away. One of the only times I’ve interacted with people from my school, I bought a bunch of weed.

I’m not exactly proud of the fact that I smoke. My parents don’t know, obviously. I only do it when it’s late at night or when things get bad. It helps me relax.
At school, I just walk through the halls from one class to another. I don’t talk to anyone and no one talks to me. I don’t think anyone even looks at me.