A Split Second Decision || Closed
It had been so many years since Matt had died that everybody expected Sierra to be able to handle it better, to no longer be so angry. And she had been able to fool everybody, since coming back from therapy camp, that everything was fine. That she was better and she felt happier and she was no longer the dark, angry girl who roamed the streets with a cigarette hanging from her tense lips. Well, everybody except her sister, but Katie had promised not to say anything. Desperate for Sierra to stay with her and not be sent to therapy again. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do because wasn't she supposed to get Sierra sent away again so she could actually get 'better'? Nevertheless, Sierra was happy that Katie hadn't made that decision. She didn't want to be sent away again, it had driven her even crazier.
She stomped into the house after a terrible day, shrugging off her jacket and breathing heavily due to the heat. She hated the sun. Sierra hurried upstairs, hoping nobody was home to see how frustrated she was right now. Her parents had kind of been on the warpath about Katie's real father (which Sierra was still struggling to cope with) so she doubted they really would anyway. Why should they? They'd kind of stopped looking at her so closely and keeping her under house arrest once they'd ascertained that she was okay. That she was coping. Sierra stood in the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was red from the warmth and her hair was wild but that wasn't what bothered her. What bothered her was her eyes... they seemed like they had no life left in them. She didn't look like she was here. Well, she physically looked like she was here but... the rest of her felt like it was somewhere else. That was stupid, yeah? Feeling like you were somewhere else when you were staring at yourself in a mirror and could quite clearly see you were in your own bathroom. Sierra wondered, for a moment, if she was even real. Maybe this was a dream. That would mean Matt had never died... but Annie Pierce wouldn't really be dead either would she? Sierra didn't even know if she could focus on Annie Pierce and her friends anymore. She knew -A was planning something big for this weekend, some bombshell to drop at Bradley Miller's memorial service but... the excitement had been sucked out of her. Why was that? Sierra thought that it had something to do with spending the last few days sitting in a secluded part of the park drinking vodka and staring at pictures of Matt. She'd also broken the bottle and taken it to her wrist at one point, just to see if she could feel anything that wasn't grief or rage. She couldn't.
She felt like she was backsliding. Going back to the days when Annie Pierce ruled the streets and she was just a nobody. Some angry girl walking around in black clothes with ratty blonde hair who nobody even seemed to remember now. It was like, since coming back as somebody who smiled and took an interest in socialising, people suddenly wanted to talk to her and they had no recollection of the Sierra White who used to walk around Baberton under a black cloud, snapping and glaring at everybody who looked at her the wrong way. She didn't know if she really liked that because... this person, this happy person, she wasn't real. She was a lie. No wonder she felt like she wasn't real... she wasn't. Sierra didn't want to go back to being the girl who was angry at everything because that girl had had no purpose, no drive, nothing to focus all of her energy on. Now she had -A and her revenge... didn't she? It didn't feel like that mattered anymore. Nothing felt like it mattered. When had that happened? She hadn't realised that she'd stopped taking such an interest. Revenge didn't seem like something that would satisfy her any longer She just wanted Matt back. She wanted her family to stop being such twats and she wanted Katie to just accept that their father was her real father. That she didn't need to know this other guy...
Sierra turned and left the bathroom, dumping her bag in the middle of the hall and walking into her parents room. Her father left his co-codamol pills in here. He took them for the injury he sustained while on duty in Iraq or somewhere, she never really asked for details because she'd been so fucked up back then and hadn't cared about anything anybody else had to say. She didn't know why but... the urge to empty the box had suddenly overcome her and she felt like she had to. She had to find those pills and she had to look at them. Just look at them. That was it. Maybe she had a headache. Sierra grabbed the box from beside the bed and scurried through to her own room, closing the door firmly behind her. There, she settled herself on the bed and started pulling out the little packets of pills and laying them out in front of her. Then she licked her lips and stared at them. Would they make the pain stop if she took them? Just a couple... She turned and picked up the water bottle she kept beside her bed, grabbing her anxiety medication while she was at it. Maybe she needed to take some more. Maybe they weren't working. Sierra opened the bottle and emptied a couple of the pills into her hand, not hesitating to swallow them down. She pursed her lips and then picked up one of the co-codamol packets, popping all the little pills from the packet and swallowing them one by one. Then she opened another. And another. And another. By the time she'd emptied eight packets, Sierra felt woozy but she didn't stop. She felt like she couldn't. She'd started this and now she had to finish it. This would solve everything, yeah? It would stop her hurting and being so fucking angry all the time and Katie wouldn't have to deal with having such a shit sister and her parents wouldn't have to put up with their failure of a daughter. The crazy little bitch who couldn't even function properly and lied and schemed her way through her life. Who didn't even put any effort into getting better or making something of her life because... what was the point? Sierra hadn't really understood how much she was hurting until this very moment and now all she wanted to do was make it stop. Make it go away. End it.
Hours later, she was lying and staring at the ceiling. She felt strange. Confused and completely focused at the same time. Her heart was racing and then slowing down to the point where she couldn't even feel it and everything felt so completely tingly and strange that she didn't even know what was going on. Maybe this had been a bad idea. Was she stupid? No. That hadn't even sounded like her own voice in her head, what was happening... but she realised she hadn't been stupid. This was the only way to make everything better. For everybody. It wasn't as if anybody in this town would even miss her, why feel guilty for doing people a favour?
After staring at the ceiling for a little while longer, Sierra took a deep breath, closed her eyes and then she simply let it take her.
