tillehdemeepeh

6:30 AM
Jimmy slowly uncurled himself on the floor where he’d slept, and looked around. The first thing he noticed was Danny, laying sprawled on one of the two miss-matched sofa’s; second he noticed Liam, curled, almost cat-like, on the other.
‘Oh fucking hell’ Jimmy thought to himself as he looked at Liam.
He looked around but found nothing, noticing the light in the bathroom was on; he crept to the door and peered inside. Looking back to make sure Liam and Danny were still asleep, he slipped inside.

He found what he was looking for, and it wasn’t exactly a pretty sight. He sighed and turned the cold tap on in the sink.
‘I’ve seen self-harm before, but not this bad, and it’s not like I can DO anything, I mean he knows it’s bad, and that he shouldn’t do it, but I can’t do anything short of take away every sharp object in the house, which would be stupid. It’d just make him want to do it even more’
He watched as the cold water quickly mixed with the sticky red liquid that had dripped from the blade of t he 6-inch blade, which also sat in the sink and ran away down the plughole.
Then he sat on the edge of the bath and stared into space.
‘That’s it, I’m not going to just sit here anymore; I’m going to try and find someway of helping Li’. He stood up, grabbed the knife from the sink and went back into the lounge area. Somehow he knew where Liam kept all of his knives (he collected them), and he put the one he’d found in the drawer with all the others, taking care not to wake either Liam or Danny. He succeeded.
‘OK Li, now where…ah-hah, hang on’ he stopped in mid-thought and walked to the bedroom, where he found what he was looking for - a blanket, a sheet, anything.
He took the sheet he found and covered Liam with it, making sure to hide his shirt as best he could. Surely Liam didn’t want Danny to find out about his self-harm problem? Not now anyway?

By this time, it was almost 7. Him and Danny should probably be waking up and starting off for college already, and Liam too on any other day, but not today Jimmy decided
‘Not in this state.’
He poked Danny until he woke up.
“Wha? Huh? Meh?”
“Shut up you fool, just wake up and get ready, we’ll be late for college if we’re not careful” Jimmy was surprised to hear worry in his voice, but hid his surprise.
“What about Li?” Danny asked pulling himself to a sitting position and looking over at Liam
Jimmy glanced over too
“He’s out of his head, he drunk far too much last night; we should leave him, let him sleep it off like, ya know?”
Danny nodded. He knew what jimmy meant.

Two hours later Liam finally awoke and looked around the room sleepily. Deducing he was on his own, he sunk back against the cushions of the sofa and sighed, looking around the lounge in despair. It was a mess, to be honest. There were plates and cups all over the floor from last night’s dinner and the various drinks there had been afterwards, although down the end of his sofa there was simply a pile of beer cans.
“This just isn’t going to work” he said to himself, got to his feet and walked to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror above the sink
“OK, so what is wrong with me? Why am I in such a mess?”
He sighed again and looked down into the sink, expecting his knife still to be there, when it wasn’t. He realised that it had been Jimmy who’d moved it, and that it was no-doubt back in the drawer with all the others. He didn’t go to retrieve it; not yet at least.

“Hey Jim” Danny caught Jimmy’s attention on their way to college.
“Hmm?”
“Why d’you suppose Li drank so much last night? He doesn’t usually drink that much does he?”
Jimmy sighed.
“I don’t know and I don’t know. It’s all a mystery to me, it really is”
“Hmm” they walked the rest of the way in silence.
Daniella met them at the gate.
“Where’s Liam? I thought he was with you two,” she asked immediately.
Jimmy looked at her with a look of distain in his eyes.
“He’s not coming in today, he’s not well.”
“Oh.” She stared as him and Danny walked past her and into the building.
Danny walked into his registration room to find only Allie sitting there, alone at the back looking tired and worried.
“Hey Al, what’s up?” He asked, sitting down heavily in his seat.
“Oh, nothing, I just feel…weird…it’s normal though, honest, I’m fine” she tried her best to sound it as well, almost succeeding, but she didn’t quite manage to hide the quiver in her voice. Danny looked at her questioningly, but didn’t ask.

Sally and Allie only shared one class, music. They would have both shared it with Danny, Jimmy and Liam, if they weren’t separated by gender as well as year group.
Sally had kept to herself pretty much the whole time they’d been at the college, mainly to try and keep her ‘problems’ a secret that only her small group of friends knew of.

As they sat through an extremely boring lecture on 19th century musicians, Allie turned to Sally and asked her:
“Sal, how much do you know about Li?”
Sally looked at her in surprise.
“I know less than you do about him Al, why?” she was genuinely interested; she’d wanted to get to know Liam better for a long time, but always had trouble making conversation with anyone, especially guys, which was why she was glad when Allie had approached her and started talking to her like she was a normal human being, rather than a freak, which was how most other students thought of her because she dressed differently, and had her hair different.
“I was just curious … that’s all …” she turned back to her work and noticed that she’d only written three words, and she hadn’t realised it.
Very small, in the top right-hand corner of her page, she’d written ‘I love Liam’
‘Why did I write that? I don’t feel like that at all … do I?’

Break time rolled around and Allie and Sally retreated to the library, hoping to avoid Daniella, who, Allie had informed Sally, was in a foul mood and looked as if she might kill the first person to annoy her.
Unfortunately someone had managed to annoy Daniella by telling her about what Allie had written on her paper. How they’d seen it, she didn’t know.
“Allie” Daniella poked her head around the corner of the book shelves and glared at her as she said her name
“Yeah?”
“Can I have a word or two?”
“You can have two. Fuck and Off.” Allie got to her feet and walked out, leaving Sally sitting there alone thinking to herself ‘Now what the hell was THAT all about?’
Then Danielle turned on her too
“And you! You’re in on this too”
“What?” Sally flushed; she didn’t want to be involved if she could help it.
“You know what’s going on here, you’re in this with that Allie, you all just want my life to be a misery”
“Shut up” Sally said quietly
“What?”
“I said shut up” Sally was getting defiant now, she didn’t want to hear what Daniella was saying
“Don’t say shut up to me!”
“I’ll say shut up to anyone I like, now get out of my way because I don’t have to stand, or even SIT here and listen to this rubbish you’re talking about, I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about” She shoved past Daniella and made for the door.
Daniella called after her
“Alchy”
Sally stopped dead in her tracks and stared around for a few seconds, before making a dash for it out of the library.
‘How did she know? No, this can’t be happening, where’s Allie? I need to talk to her…NOW’ she didn’t know where Allie was, but she kept walking anyway, instead of Allie she found Danny.
“Hey Sal...dude, what’s up?” He looked concerned as soon as he noticed the look of anger, furry and fright on her face.
“That…BITCH DANIELLA!” she yelled, she didn’t usually swear, and even less often did she swear about someone
Danny looked surprised at what she said but just reached out and pulled her into a hug, in the middle of the corridor.

Allie had in fact, not gone very far at all. She was as much an artist as she was a friend to Liam and the art room was only just down the corridor from the library. Taking refuge in there she slowly began to release her emotions onto paper. Black paper with a rough raised embossed effect, making full use of the equipment available.
She heard Sally from her end of the corridor and jumped almost a foot in the air.
“Oh my God Sally!” she said out loud and rushed out and down the corridor as fast as she could.

“Hey, hey Sal, calm down, tell me what happened” Danny said to her as they stood in the middle of the corridor. Since he was almost a foot taller than Sally it looked a little odd for him to have his arms round her shoulders.
Just as Allie turned the corner Sally returned the gesture by wrapping her own arms round him and buried her head in his chest as if he was a safety blanket (In fact he was more like that old teddy bear you were given when you were born that had almost gone thread bare yet you flatly refused to get rid of).
Seeing this turn of events Allie smiled sadly and turned back to return to the art room.
At the library she came face to face, with Daniella

Piczo