Flying Free (MAC Security 2.50)

I can’t bear having a number that can’t be divided by three.

Pulling the first sheet off the top, I move it to the side knowing that I’ll put that back in the break room for someone on the next shift.

Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I try to forget about the extra sheet and start typing away.

Halfway through my pile of papers, I feel my cell vibrate and pull it out, seeing Elena’s name flash up on the screen.

She’s been trying to ring me every day since I missed my session with Anita and I’ve been putting off speaking to her. Instead, I’ve been messaging her to tell her I’m fine.

I can’t put it off much longer though, I know she won’t stop until she’s heard my voice so I decide to call her when I finish my shift.

Looking at the clock above the door, I see that I only have two and a half hours left so it’ll be fine until then. I know that Elena will want to know what had happened and I feel obliged to tell her.

I hate that everyone still sees me as broken.

At one stage, I was. Now though, I feel less broken. I’m healing, it may be slow but I’m getting there.

I try my hardest to forget about it all and tap my fingers on the desk three times, then another three. After getting up to thirty I feel calmer so I press my fingers against the keyboard and start to type again.

“Honey, are you sure you’re okay? I can come down for a visit, it’s no bother,” Elena says down the line as I walk through the campus, careful not to stray from the lights that line the path.

Talking to Elena while I’m walking home keeps my mind off the fact that it’s dark and that no one but me is around. Normally when I walk home, every little noise or shadow scares me but when I’m distracted it goes much quicker and it’s a lot less stressful.

“No, no, it’s fine, really. I don’t need you to come but you know you’re welcome anytime,” I say, adjusting the bag on my shoulder and crossing the road.

I smile when I hear her huff a breath. Sometimes, I swear that she uses things like this as an excuse to come and see me. What she doesn’t realize though is that she doesn’t need an excuse. If she wants to come and visit, then she can.

“Really?”

I chuckle at her high pitched tone just as I see my building in sight. “Yeah, you know I love spending time with you.” I nod, even though she can’t see me, and push the key into the apartment door. “How is everyone?”

This was where I have to try to take control of the conversation because she can talk about the family for hours if I’m not careful. One time, she had me on the phone for three hours. I mean, I even had cramp from holding my cell to my ear for so long.

Pulling the envelopes out of the mailbox for our apartment, I start to walk up to the second floor. I continue to listen to her as she tells me what Trevor is currently building and laughing when she says that he’s in the cabin more and more lately.

Trevor’s cabin is his man cave. It’s where he spends a lot of his free time, building anything and everything out of wood. When I lived with them, all I did was sit in that cabin with him and watch the way he would use his tools. The smell of wood brings back so many memories of us sat in there in silence. Silence that we both understood. I never had to explain anything with Trevor.

“I swear, honey, he’s married to the thing. Only time I see him is when he wants to be fed. He won’t even show me what he’s building.” I smirk, knowing exactly why he was doing it.

It was coming up to their thirty-year wedding anniversary and Trevor was working hard on a surprise for her.

Living with those two before I came to college was fantastic. There was never a dull moment and sometimes I wonder what would have happened to me if they wouldn’t have taken me in that day.

I would have been put back into the system and I knew first hand that it wasn’t an experience that I wanted to repeat.

When I was first put into the system years ago, the first home was amazing. They looked after all the kids the same and made sure we were all fed and clothed. Once I moved into my second, I really saw the true meaning of a bad home.

I thought what I had grown up in was bad but this was nothing in comparison. Luckily, I only lasted in that home for three days before I was moved back home to my mom and dads.

They’d tried to do better, they came off the drugs and even went to parental classes. The first few weeks were perfect, just what I had always dreamed of but then the drugs slowly started back up and so the cycle went on.

Going and getting your parents their next hit at the age of eleven isn’t what I should have been doing but there was no other option. I thought that when I walked in on my mom OD’ing that would’ve been the pinnacle of my life, the changing factor.

It wasn’t though. That came six years later.

Then I really, truly, saw exactly what my dad thought of me. How much he thought I was worth.

Three thousand dollars to be exact. Give or take a couple hundred bucks.