by Sadie Allen
SAVING ME
SADIE ALLEN
Copyright © 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Sadie, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.
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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events portrayed in this book either are from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, establishments, events, or location is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Please do not take offense to the content as it is fiction.
Trademarks: This book identifies product names and services known to be trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of their respective holders. The authors acknowledge the trademarked status in this work of fiction. The publication and use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Cover Design by Cover Couture
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Photo (c) Depositphotos
Editing by: C&D Editing
Proofread by: Judy’s Proofreading
Formatted by: Under Cover Designs
CONTENTS
Disclaimer
Author’s Note:
1. Nobody
2. Body Like A Backroad
3. A Perfect Tragedy
4. Sucker for Pain
5. Hopelessly Devoted
6. Prettiest Girl I Ever Did See
7. First Day of My Life
8. Getting the Story Straight
9. Bear Wall of Fame
10. The Grapes of Wrath
11. A Girl with a Plan
12. Big Lips and No hips
13. Sometimes, It’s the Little Things…
14. Barbara and Donna
15. B & E
16. She was There
17. Twenty-Nine Thousand and However Many More
18. Magic of Karaoke
19. Getting Hers Back
20. The Sweet Life
21. The Last Curtain Call
22. Not So Pretty In Pink
23. Therapy
24. Put It on a Sticky Note
25. Promtastic
26. Labels
27. Let Them Sink
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Sadie Allen
Maybe Never: Excerpt
This work in no way glamorizes or encourages anyone to take their own life. I hope to shine a light on mental illness, which is something that should be discussed more openly in schools and colleges, especially depression and anxiety.
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Suicide is an act of desperation.
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If you or anyone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide or depression/anxiety, please seek help immediately.
Don’t wait!
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Sometimes, our minds are our own worst enemy.
This book is very personal to me. As someone whose life has been touched by suicide several times and has struggled with depression in the past, I have put a lot of my own feelings and experiences into Saving Me.
Everyone handles and battles negative emotions differently, so this isn’t a representation of everyone’s battle. Also, I don’t think having a boyfriend or girlfriend is the answer or cure for depression or suicidal thoughts. I do, however, believe that there are people who come into our lives at the right moment who can make all the difference. My best friend did that for me over a decade ago. She stood by me when I didn’t have anyone, and that made all the difference in the world.
I also encourage you to be that person for someone else. As the saying goes: we don’t know what battle someone is fighting today, so be kind. Always be kind.
If you are struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, I beg you, right now, talk to someone. You matter. You matter to me and many others you may not even realize. There is nothing weak in asking for help. Even the strongest people have their bad days. If you don’t feel comfortable contacting someone you know, here is a list of organizations that will be happy to talk to you:
NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION LIFELINE
1.800.273.TALK (273-8255)
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National Child Abuse Hotline
1.800.4.A.CHILD (422-4453)
National Domestic Abuse Hotline
1.800.799.SAFE (799-7233)
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RAPE, ABUSE AND INCEST NATIONAL NETWORK (RAINN)
1.800.656.HOPE (656-4673)
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The Trevor Project
1.866.4.U.TREVOR (488-7386)
Veterans Crisis Line
1.800.273.TALK (273-8255) PRESS 1
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This is an organization that is near
and dear to my heart:
TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS
TEXT TWLOHA TO 741-741
https://twloha.com
To Rachael J.
Your death changed something inside us all. The world became a little crueler, and we became a little less innocent.
“Most of us are imprisoned by something. We’re living in darkness until something flips on the switch.”
- Wynonna Judd
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“Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
- Robert Frost
I stood at the top of the bleachers, studying the pill bottle in my hand and wondering if I should just chug the whole bottle or swallow a few at a time. If I choked, I guessed it would serve the same purpose. But that wasn’t the quiet, peaceful passing I imagined.
I looked out at the horizon, where the sun was dipping toward the earth, and exhaled a shaky breath. This would be my last sunset. It was a more perfect one than I could ever have dreamed. The sky was streaked in oranges, pinks, and blues, as a light, cool breeze whispered through the air, causing wisps of hair to tickle my face and neck.
I wrapped my arms around myself as I watched the sky deepen into twilight, the last vestige of glowing warmth before the oncoming night. It was kind of poetic in a way … I would soon drift away into the night myself.
I wiped the wetness that trailed down my face with one hand while I gripped the bottle tighter in the other. Was I really going to do this?
Now, you might be wondering why a girl like me, from a family like mine, would commit suicide in her track uniform while standing atop the bleachers at the football field. One word: desperation.
I knew it probably didn’t make any sense, but at seventeen years old, I was just tired of life. I was tired of being used and abused. Of being raw on the inside, like someone had scraped out my insides with a rusty spoon and left me bleeding and hollow. The pain blazing up my leg from the tips of my toes to the middle of my back was the only indication I was still alive. That I could feel anything. I was a ghost before I was even dead … which I was about to change.
I took a shuddered breath. A faint buzz filled my brain as memories flashed through my mind like some macabre slideshow.
I had a father who only started caring about me when I jumped my first hurdle on field day in sixth grade. Normal fathers would find this a proud moment, not change their purpose in life. It wouldn’t change the core of the father-daughter relationship. For my father, Derek Everly, however, it was a life-changing moment for the both of us.
My father had been a college track star who held state and national titles in the one hundred- and ten-meter hurdles. After graduating college, his path had been set for th
e Olympics. He had the determination and the numbers to back it up … until an ACL tear saw his dreams go up in a puff of smoke. So, on that fateful day, when his only child showed the same aptitude for jumping over obstacles, those dreams had reignited and became a blaze beyond my control. He was determined to live his dreams again … through me. Now he was more like a live-in coach than a father.
Sometimes I wondered if I was just numbers to him. Numbers on a stopwatch, in a track lane, on the scale in the bathroom, or a placeholder at the end of a race. Was my value really based on a set of figures? Would he still love me if I could never run again, like if I was paralyzed? My stomach roiled, and a sour taste filled my mouth. The thought was devastating. My life was numbers.
In his bid to achieve his dream, he controlled every aspect of my life, from what I put in my mouth to who I let ride in my car. He had once literally forced my mouth open in a restaurant to fish out a bite of buttered roll. Who did that? And Heaven forbid I let someone who wasn’t athletic, church-going, or white put their butt on the plush leather seats of my brand-new Toyota 4-Runner. Everything was about winning or how I made my family look in the eyes of our respectable townspeople.
My mother, her only crime was indifference. She allowed her husband to treat me like a possession because she was also a possession. Unlike me, though, she was a willing possession who didn’t understand why I chafed beneath the manipulation and control that were like physical bonds restraining me from living the life I chose. She didn’t realize, or maybe she didn’t care, that I was slowly suffocating, drowning in the sea of their expectations.
I shook my head in an attempt to hold the memories at bay. However, his voice was a constant presence in my head. All I could hear were his cold, unfeeling words …
“That was piss poor, Allison.”
“How many calories are in that?”
“You look heavy.”
“It’s like you’re running in molasses.”
Finally, his words from yesterday were the metaphorical nail in my coffin.
“You’re useless to me now! What am I supposed to do with you? You’re broken!”
I was broken.
And now I was all alone.
Useless.
Nothing.
I wanted freedom from my gilded cage, the imprisonment that had finally broke me.
It wasn’t just the controlling behavior of my father and the indifference from my mother.
My boyfriend, Miles, the lying, cheating douchebag, was banging my best friend behind my back. All my other friends knew, but none of them had said a word to me. They thought I was too stupid to see the way Laura looked at Miles, and the way he looked at her. Laura, well, she had not been very discreet regarding her feelings toward my boyfriend. She talked about him all the time, saying everything but “I’m boning him after your curfew every weekend.”
None of my friends would care if I was gone. They would probably shed a few pretty tears, maybe Miles would get some comforting sympathy lays. Other than a memorial scholarship donation, I would be a distant memory for them.
And these were supposedly the good kids? The children of the upper middle class? The “cream of the crop”? The future of our community?
Give me a break.
They were emotionally bankrupt liars who only cared about surface appearances. As long as I gave them that smile and nodded in all the right places as they gossiped about who still wore the same clothes from last year, they thought I was perfectly fine, happy even.
I wasn’t fine. I had been screaming on the inside for years, and no one had cared enough to ask me if I wanted to do something or be someone other than how they saw me. Everything was just chosen for me—my activities, my classes, my clothes, my hair, what colleges I was applying to, and my future career. My parents hadn’t consulted me. I was on the fast track to success—go to college, earn my undergraduate degree, and then go to law school like my father before me and his father before him. Still, I was the disappointment because I had the audacity to have been born a girl. However, jumping over a hurdle quickly seemed to have made up for my lack of a penis.
Then, yesterday, everything had changed. The answers to all my questions were answered. What was left of my battered and bruised soul effing died.
The first meet of the year, the preliminaries for the one hundred-meter hurdles.
As I had leaped over that third hurdle and brought my trail leg over, something cracked and popped. Then pain, blinding pain, had shot from my hip all the way to my brain. My knee had crashed into the top of the obstacle, but it had been nothing compared to the hurt that had taken over my body from my hip and back.
I had gone down, taking the hurdle with me and knocking into the runner in the next lane. I had slid across the rubber track, feeling my skin tear and burn. My lungs had seized as the pain took all the air from me, and wetness had leaked from my eyes and down my face.
“Help me,” I remembered croaking, fighting back a scream of agony as I tried to move my leg.
I didn’t remember much about what had happened after that, except the pain. Just the pain. I had never felt pain like that in my entire life. I imagined childbirth was at that pain threshold.
Dad, as well as my mom, who I hadn’t even noticed was with us until we were in the emergency bay, had rushed me to the closest emergency room. Once there, we were immediately rushed back. I figured that was partly due to the screaming.
Dad had set me on the bed carefully, while Mom smoothed her hands over my face, pushing my hair back. If I had been totally coherent, I would have seen the tears shimmering in her own eyes.
The rest was a blur of going to the x-ray room, getting my scrapes cleaned, and then the doctor coming in. I should have known something bad was going to happen when my dad, a nurse, and my mother started to hold me down. Then the doctor had grabbed my hurt leg and maneuvered it in a way that had made the pain from earlier seem like a dream. A scream had ripped from my throat as, with a deft movement and the accompanying pop, my leg had been set back into place, and then it was all over.
“There, that should do it,” the tall man wearing a lab coat had declared as he set my leg down gently on the table.
“Wh-wh-what did you do?” I had asked, panting, my breaths sawing in and out of my chest.
“Young lady, your hip was dislocated. And due to the bruising that’s appearing on the back of your thigh, I also think you have a small tear in your hamstring. The dislocation I can fix, but the soreness from the dislocation and the possible tear is something you’re going to have to take it easy on.”
“Okay.” What else could I have said? I was just glad the feeling of someone stabbing me repeatedly with a knife was gone from my body.
“What do you mean, take it easy? When will she be able to run again?” my dad asked.
“Run again? Sir, your daughter will need to see a sports injury specialist for that, but I don’t think she’ll be on a track anytime soon. I recommend one we hav—”
“Thank you, but we’ll take her back home and have her doctor refer one,” Dad interrupted.
I looked at my mom, whose lips were thinned and eyes narrowed. I could tell she was biting her tongue. Evidently, she didn’t like my dad being rude any more than I did. That was new.
I knew the doctor had to have been annoyed, but his expression had taken on one of extreme patience as he said, “Again, she’ll need to rest and ice her hip and leg for the rest of the week. Try to keep it elevated. I’ll get her some pain medication just for tonight, but Tylenol or Aleve should work after that. We’ll wrap her leg while you fill out the discharge papers, and then we’ll leave you all to it.” He then patted my non-injured foot and was gone with a swipe of the curtain.
“Derek …” my mother said softly, but my dad was already on the phone.
“Russel? Derek Everly. Ally had an incident, and we need a referral.” He stared at his feet as Dr. Black said something on the other end. “She dislocated her hip and poss
ibly has a small tear in her hamstring.” He nodded then looked up at my mom, extending his hand and snapping his fingers.
I guessed she knew what he meant because she pulled out her phone and reached over me to hand it to him. He then cradled his phone to his ear and started tapping away at my mom’s phone ...
The memory was so fresh in my mind that it now haunted the present.
I looked down at the pills in my hand again. They were small, white, and round … so innocuous looking. Then I again looked up and over the back railing of the bleachers, watching the sun as it slowly sunk into the horizon. I ignored the icy prickles that skittered over my skin, the tears that continued to drip from my face, the whispers of doubt that crept into the forefront of my mind.
Was I really going to do this?
The buzzing in my head was getting louder, like there was a hive of bees nesting there. Panic seized me in a vise as my body bucked with a sob, my breaths coming out in pants. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly and shook my head from side to side with such force that it wrenched my neck. The bees were relentless.
I had to do this. The decision had been made, and I had to stick to the plan. Finally, something was going to be my choice. This was going to be my emancipation.
I took a deep breath then lifted the hand holding the pills toward my mouth …
A blur of movement flashed in front of me, knocking all my mother’s Tramadol out of my hand. I watched in shock as the little white pills hit the metal with what sounded like dozens of little pings as they fell everywhere, most landing on the ground in the dirt beneath the bleachers.
I slowly turned my head to see who had dared to ruin my moment and froze. How had I not seen him? How had I not heard him? I stared into a pair of burning semi-blue eyes. And by semi-blue, I meant they were mostly blue with a bit of brown in his right eye. Unusual. Beautiful.