Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They always say high school is the best years of your life. Well, I’m happy to say they’re right.

To be honest, I didn’t think ANYTHING could get better than 2009. I was about to graduate, had a cool sort-of girlfriend, and a steady small business. Okay, maybe the business was selling Percocet in the locker rooms, but success is success, or some shit like that.

I thought I’d try college. Karen encouraged me. That bitch is too good for me. She’s such an awesome friend I’d kill for her.

Anyways, my heart knew I was destined to be an unemployed dropout, but it was worth a shot. At least maybe I’d meet some hot bitch and we could do lines together in the bathroom at parties.

Well, that happened. I met this awesome girl named Lucille in my first week of college. She was into some crazy stuff, and she always had the best weed. She never told me who her dealer was, but they were definitely cool.

Lucille was a good motivation to stay in school for a while, but then she got caught with a blunt and got kicked out. She was some kind of weird hippie who refused to use basic technology; so I never got her number, and she stopped visiting me after she was expelled. I never saw her again.

Whatever, I didn’t need her anymore.

After Lucille there was Aaron; he was a medical student with a hot English accent. I think he liked me because he saw me as this hopeless depressed addict he could save. But fuck that, this is real life not some shitty medical drama Karen would try to get me to watch with her.

Anyways, Aaron was cool, but his savior complex got a bit too much for me. My last straw was when he threw out all my coke and threatened to call the cops on me. A girl’s gotta have standards, and fully condoning my lifestyle and doing absolutely nothing to stop me was one of mine. Aaron didn’t fit the bill anymore, so he had to go. And between you and me, he just wasn’t that great in bed.

Karen liked Aaron, though. She was pissed when I dumped him. Thought he was a “good influence” or something like that. So obviously I told her to leave me the fuck alone and project her hallmark-ass romance fantasy on some other hopeless degenerate.

Yeah, she didn’t like that.

Karen got so fucking mad at me. She told me that she was sick of my shit, not that exact wording though, poor girl can’t curse to save her life. I’ve told her it’ll help her regulate her anger better, but she read some science article that told her the opposite, so she doesn’t believe me.

Fuck, I keep getting off topic.

So yeah, that was the day Karen left. Blocked my number and didn’t answer when I knocked at her door.

First Lucille, then Aaron, now Karen.

I wasn’t in love with her or anything, but it still sucked when she stopped talking to me. Karen was special, she was always all for my batshit even when she knew I was doing something wrong, which was often; I’m not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. But Karen still liked me, so I must’ve been doing something right.

I knew one day she’d snap and leave like everyone else—I just didn’t think it would be so soon.

Like, at least give me some time to mourn my dead relationship with my ex boyfriend. No need to kick an injured dog.

….

I miss her sometimes.

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You know, it is kinda weird when the one person who believed in you just up and leaves.

After a week of trying to contact her, it got really clear Karen didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. That fucking sucks.

I wish I had actually done something awful to her, not said a half-thought through joke that wasn’t even funny and kicked her the wrong way.

At least then I’d have a reason to blame myself.

I don’t like getting all corny with metaphors and shit, but Karen was my rock. She sat awake till three in the morning, chatting with me on MySpace about all the school drama and shit my dad used to say. She always drove me home after parties when I was too drunk to think. Her and me laughed about when the counselor tried hitting on us, which looking back that was kinda fucked up but it was kinda funny at the time.

Karen fucking tried weed for me. Turns out she was allergic to it, but still, that’s commitment if I’ve ever fucking seen it.

Our friendship just felt right. We were so different, with her nerdy geek shit and my pill popping emo shit, but we made so much sense together. I can’t even explain it; we just had that kind of connection that strung itself around your spine and made it clear that it wasn’t going anywhere.

But it did. I said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and it went somewhere.

I spent a couple months hoping it would come back, but it got to a point where it just wasn’t worth it anymore. I couldn’t just sit around waiting. I had to get on with my life.

Karen wasn’t coming back anytime soon. That didn’t mean I had to sit and cry about it.

***

Eventually the inevitable happened. I dropped out of school and went back to the streets.

I really tried. I was in and out of different universities for years. But nothing worked. Failing classes there, caught with stuff there, transferred just to spite an ex there. You know the roster.

I moved back to my hometown. I managed to find my old dealers and customers, they were glad to see me again. None of the old guys I used to fuck with in high school wanted to talk to me anymore, though. That sucked.

Even with my main source of income gone, I was managing alright.

Sure, I wanted to die more than I ever have before, but I was making a living and that was enough for now.

…

My using only got worse. There were some days where all I was running on was coke and willpower, and eventually I ran out of that, so there was just the coke keeping me going.

I only really got out of bed when I had to meet someone; either to sell some goods or myself. I wasn’t eating much anymore, food felt like too much work and the thinner I was the more clients I got, so I guess there was some benefit to it.

But I was fine. All I needed to do was get through one more day, then the next, and keep doing that till some deranged stalker finally shoots me in the head. That was all I needed. All I needed to do was wait.

This was enough. I had enough. I didn’t need to do anything else.

Right?

Chapter Text

I was losing.

It all came to me one night when I staggered out of a client’s apartment into the dimly lit streets of my town. They’d been really rough with me, into some weird degrading shit. Not only that, but it was getting harder for me to stand anyways. Skin stretched across bony legs can only carry you so far.

I collapsed from the exhaustion on a bus stop bench, shoes sliding off my feet. The metal bench was cold on my back, which was exposed by my dress. But I didn’t care. It felt so good to finally rest. The streetlight above me flickered, moths fluttering around it.

I always liked moths. They’re a lot cooler than butterflies. Shame they don’t come out much in the daytime. I bet a lot more people would appreciate their beauty if they weren’t so hard to find.

I gasped. The withdrawal hit me like a brick. I couldn’t breathe. I needed coke, percs, something. Anything. My whole body was shaking, I felt sick.

I didn’t have anything on me. My main dealer didn’t live far from here; I could make it if I tried—

I vomited onto the sidewalk the moment I stood up. That kind of watery vomit when there’s nothing else in your system. I hadn’t eaten anything that day.

I inhaled and exhaled. So much energy went into just breathing.

What the fuck had happened to me? Why was I so weak to substance now; in high school I could go days without using, but now in only an hour I was collapsing.

This wasn’t me. This wasn’t who I was supposed to be. Why had I let myself fall so far? So many people had believed in me, but here I was completely letting them down. Lucille would’ve laughed if she saw me like this. Aaron would’ve cried. My dad would’ve yelled at me. And Karen…

Karen.

I needed her.

I staggered over to the phone booth by the bench. Dialing her number was like muscle memory, even after all these years.

“Karen”, I wheezed into the phone, tears falling with every breath. “It’s Emily, Karen. I know you hate me, but I need you. I’m sorry for everything. I’m back at home, and I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore.

“I’m disappearing, Karen. I need you”.

Chapter Text

Karen came back.

That girl is a goddamn saint, I swear. She showed up at my apartment the next day.

I was still in bed. I always left my door unlocked because I lost the key, and she showed up in my bedroom.

“Emily?”

I sat up and took her in. There she was. That dorky girl with the big glasses and obsession with Twilight standing in the doorway, now a woman with thinner glasses. She looked more confident now, put together and sure of herself. Probably still had an obsession with Twilight, though. I never go the hype around those movies, but I still watched them with her a million times.

“Karen”.

I couldn’t help but smile. I tried to stand up but stumbled, Karen catching me.

“Thanks”, I muttered. She smiled back at me, looking me up and down. I must’ve looked like a mess, or maybe I looked the same as I always had to her.

The next couple of months were a field trip of doctor visits and therapy sessions. Karen, the fucking angel that she is, helped me with everything. She took me to every appointment, but I couldn’t find the right energy to talk to any shrink.

I wasn’t trying to refuse, I just couldn’t speak. I was shaking with anxiety every time we tried a new doctor. All I could see was a stranger; and strangers hadn’t exactly been kind to me in the past.

In the time in between Karen would come over, I thought a lot about when I was a kid. It was like I was reversing, all of the memories from the last eight or so years felt insignificant; instead replaced by loud Marilyn Manson concerts with my old friend Jecka and making out with my ex girlfriend Nicole in the back of a Spencer’s.

“Do you remember Jecka and Nicole?” I asked Karen when we were eating breakfast together one morning. Well, she was eating. I was trying my best to ignore the food on my plate.

“Jecka and Nicole? Of course I do”, said Karen. “Why?”

“I want to see them”.

“Oh. Is there any reason?”

“I don’t know, I just feel like seeing them again will help me feel better”.

“Okay. I have a friend, Danny, who I think is still in contact with them. I can ask him for Jecka’s number and we can try to get them over here”.

“Thank you”, I smiled faintly at her. She did too much for me.

“It’s no problem”, Karen smiled back. “Now you need to eat, still”.

I sighed and took a bite.

***

I was ecstatic when I saw Nicole again. I was scared, though. It’d been even longer since I’d seen her, she was almost like a stranger. But I’d know that long flowing ponytail anywhere.

Jecka and Karen went to the other room to talk, leaving us alone together.

“So, how have you been?” Nicole asked me, sitting down on my bed next to me.

“Shit. You?”

“Same”.

I laughed weakly. “What’s been going on?”

“Well, my landlord kicked me out so I’m living with Jecka, and I have a kid now”.

“Really? Who’s the dad?”

Nicole bit her lip. “That’s not important”.

Must be a deadbeat, I thought. That was weird, though. I honestly couldn’t see Nicole ever wanting to have a kid. I didn’t even think she liked men enough to end up pregnant.

It was nice to catch up with her. I was worried things would be weird, ‘cause of the whole dating-situation-thing we’d had in high school. But it felt like all that didn’t matter anymore. We were two estranged friends, finally reuniting. Finally tying all those loose ends I’d left behind.

I couldn’t sleep that night.

Talking to Nicole had given me a sense of closure I didn’t think was possible. For the last eight years I’d been nothing but a tumbleweed in a messy storm, all my humanity had been drained from me.

But now I had everyone back. Well, not everyone. There was still Lucille, Aaron, and my dad. But I didn’t care about them, I had the people who had mattered.

They were here, and they cared about me; but what was left of me to care about? I couldn’t do anything without help. I couldn’t even talk to strangers anymore without being scared. I was nothing, a shell of whatever person I once was.

No matter how many people loved and cared for that shell; it would always be empty. Emily wasn’t coming back. She’d died a long time ago, only I was left, and I was fading more and more every day. What would happen when there was nothing left?

I laid on my back and closed my eyes.

If this is how I disappear, so be it.

I was done fighting. I could finally sleep.