Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
BELLATRIX
Iwas ten years old when it first sank in that I was different from my older sister.
Before that, I thought it was normal. Feeling tired and sick all the time.
It was my normal, I suppose. So were all the emergency room visits where I was poked and prodded and finally sent home after a few hours of the docs standing around with their thumbs up their asses.
My mother couldn’t afford all the blood tests they wanted to do. She also didn’t want me to die. Which meant the hospital would hook me up to an IV bag until I started feeling better, lecture Mama on proper nutrition—often implying the woman was starving me—patch me up and send me home.
It wasn’t until I’d run away at age fifteen and Vee found my ass in some gutter, after I’d crashed out on the sidewalk, that the fuckers with all those capital letters behind their names were finally able to put a label on what was wrong with me. A few labels.
Most days it felt like a curse…
I know. We weren’t supposed to say that, right?
We were supposed to put on a brave face.
Make everyone around us feel more comfortable.
Adapt to the world because it sure as hell wasn’t gonna adapt to us.
Especially when the fact your body was broken was invisible to the naked eye.
You looked normal. So you were expected to act normal too. Not complain.
I tried my best. I worked harder. Smiled wider. Faked energy that didn’t exist. But inside, I was tired. I wanted to sneak a sip of one of Gabby’s juices. I wanted to know what it was like to wake up fully rested. But I couldn’t and I didn’t.
My entire life revolved around what I ate, when and how I took my meds, monitoring my stress levels, and making sure my body and brain didn’t give out on me.
This wasn’t a pity party. Fuck your pity. You could shove that where the sun don’t shine. I had no problem bending ya over and offering a swift kick to help you do it either. It was an explanation.
The point was, I was used to having to work harder to just match my target step for step. Tonight, I had a leg up.
I’d kept one eye on the faded clock on the wall behind the fucker’s head and the other on his mouth and the smirk he was doing shit to hold back.
He had been so sure of himself. So certain he’d gotten one over on me.
Even though I’d spotted what he was doing the moment his slimy, tattooed arm slinked around my shoulder.
What he didn’t know was that the GHB didn’t affect me.
Not like a normal person. Because my brain wasn’t normal, remember? I’d built a tolerance over the years.
Like most of us girls, though, I could fake it.