There was a place Penny knew of, one where she and Jesse would go when they had to escape his Dad during her summers there while her mom was off partying somewhere. The cliff overlooked the ocean, and it was the perfect place to watch the sun set set down into the water. Despite the things that had sent them out there, those quiet moments smoking weed and drinking in silence with Jesse were some of her favourites, most peaceful memories.
And that's all she wanted. Peace.
Ignoring the clink of her phone against the bottle that was rolling around her passenger seat as she turned her station wagon off the main road and onto the dirt one that would lead her to the cliff side. The comments that had started to flood her page as the likes and views rolled in en masse still played through her head, each worse than the last. She'd hardly been able to look at it. He hadn't even tagged her, and still they'd found her.
Turning off her headlights as she parked right at the edge, Penny rolled down her windows and cut the engine, reaching over for the bottle and cracking the lid open. Lighting a cigarette and starting with a few pulls of that, and despite the burn, despite her gag, she managed to chug a decent few mouthfuls.
Finally opening her phone to 99+ notifications, even her scoff was slurred by now as she flicked her cigarette butt out the window and over the side of the cliff. Before even thinking of opening Instagram, she used her car key to take three very large bumps from the baggie in her cupholder, trying to steel herself from looking. Hadn't she seen enough?
Body feeling like it was floating, and emotions sufficiently muted for a moment, Penny finally unlocked her phone and looked down at the comments that had been the last thing she'd had open. Eyes slid down to 'messages' confusion and curiousity tugging at her as she lifted a wavering finger and managed to hit the icon after a couple of tries.
And she shouldn't have. It was the worst idea of her life. Message, after message, after message of the most horrible things she'd ever read in her life. Death threats, rape threats, people begging her to take herself out of the world's equation, judging her looks, her job, what she did to survive. Hundreds and hundreds of them.
The world had judged her and found her unworthy. Dirty. Worthless.
The sob that tore itself from her came from deep inside, so powerful it wouldn't be held back by anything.
Between sobs, gasps, and scrolls she'd drank deep and snorted deeper. By the time the bag was gone, and the bottle two thirds empty, she couldn't even lift the phone anymore, and it lay in her lap open to the DMs she could no longer read.
Despite the lethargy of her limbs, how insurmountably heavy they felt, her heart was beating so fast it felt like it was bruising her insides, the only sensation left that she could focus on as consciousness fought a losing battle to maintain itself. Her last waking thought that she just really needed a hug from her cousin.
As the crunch of the sheriff's car tires grew behind her own car, Penny Hart didn't hear it, or if she didn't she was no longer aware. Because Penny Hart, was barely conscious at all. She had no idea the universe had done her the mercy of the Sheriff's Deputy driving past on Carroll's quietest tertiary highway where her car was just visible from.
