Chapter 38

                                    

                                          
Beer cans littered the wooden room.  It was dark.  Ray Ray had become accustomed to darkness.  Ever since that day . . . that day two weeks ago.  The day that started the year.  He had messed up big time. Not that he could even remember very well what he'd messed up at the moment.

                          
He was so drunk.  So very, very drunk.  All he'd seen since the day they came home from the hospital were the four wooden walls and the wooden floor of their tree house they had built with Meek last summer.  In fact he couldn't tell the floor from the walls.  It all just looked the same.

                          
"Cheers to me." He slurred as he sipped at yet another beer can.  It was amazing what people would send you when you turned thirteen. Some crazy kid from the private high school near their school had gifted him crates of beer for his induction to teenage-hood.  They had even brought it up here for him. No one had noticed since the entire house hold was depressed.

                          
Everyone was depressed.  It was painful staying in the house.  That's why he was out here, where there was no heater, drunk out of his newly teenage mind.  He knew it wasn't a good mix. Cold and drunk.  But it was the only punishment he was getting.  Every one else was too sad to even scold him.
                          
No one even cared that he skipped the first few days of school . . . then again it's not like he was in trouble.  The teachers would have sympathy for the kids with the dead sister.  Every one was sorry.  His new phone had been receiving texts even though he hadn't give anyone his number.

                          
"Oh look . . . the sun's rising." He said with a loopy smile.  He scowled. "It's still dark."  He lifted the can towards the growing sunlight. "Oh happy day . . ." He sang loopy.  He giggled. "When Jesus washed . . . oh God I'm going to hell." He took a bite out of a sandwich Perrie had brought him last night.

                          
She was the only one bringing him food ever since she recovered from illness. Asking him to be careful of alcohol poisoning. She was the least depressed out of every one.

                          
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It seemed that everything Leigh-Anne loved left her. Everyone she loved.  The sun was rising.  She was exhausted.  It had been two weeks without sleep.  Two weeks with half of her heart gone.  That was literally how she felt. Like someone had cut into her chest and tore half of the organ keeping her alive out.  The other half still beat without much purpose.
                          
Jesy wasn't dead.  At least not yet.  But Leigh-Anne was terrified to have hope.  The doctors had said she was completely brain dead.  The only thing keeping her heart beating was a machine at the hospital.    They hadn't even called it a coma.  They simply said brain dead.  Dead as in she would be taken off the machine eventually.  Then really dead. There was still a chance . . . a five percent chance.  What was five out of a hundred? Next to nothing.
                          
She'd pretended that she was okay at first. She'd tried to eat so that she wouldn't upset Nicki more.  She tried to keep up a smile while Garvin tried to convince her to keep living.  She didn't cry in front of everyone.  She'd thought . . . maybe Jesy would just wake up like magic. The world didn't really have magic.
                          
And now she was tired of pretending that she wasn't dead inside.  She was tired of everyone looking at her as if the sight of her broke their hearts.  She just wanted to curl up.  She just wanted to sleep and never have to wake up.  But sleep wouldn't come.  Just blinking brought Jesy's image to mind.
                          
She looked to Nicki next to her, asleep with tear streaks on her face.  Leigh-Anne couldn't even enter her bedroom.  She tried the first day . . . she wanted to go there to be alone for a while.  To cry in privacy.  But she ended up fainting.  She couldn't do it hence why she was sleeping in Nicki's room.