Bad Girls

by Aurora Yeo

  “You’re getting weaker in the comeback section, dearest. I think your days without cheerleading is weakening you.” He reached forward and patted my cheeks, but I jerked away, still frowning.

  “Stop insulting me then!” Luckily, we had reached the ice cream aisle, and it made me momentarily forget about what a giant prick Wesley was and pounce over the side of the trolley to grab tubs of sweet Ben & Jerry’s. When I was about to grab my sixth tub, Wesley’s annoying voice broke the silence.

  “You do know that you’re paying for that right?”

  I hit him in the arm with two of my favorite ice cold men.

  ***

  Aisle after aisle, my butt was getting sorer, and I switched position once again in the darn trolley. Wesley was pushing the damn thing as if he was taking his own sweet time strolling in the park, and he was doing it on purpose, knowing that I couldn’t wait to get home with my frozen tub of goodness.

  Scowling, I glared at Wesley. “Can’t you push this thing any faster?”

  “I didn’t take you for the rough type, babe.” Wesley winked at me.

  I scowled. “You need holy water. And bleach. And tons and tons and tons of help for your brain and heart, Wesley Jerald. Even with that, I doubt the heavens can purify your thinking.”

  “Only the best for my dearest.”

  Fighting a small grin, I turned back and leaned against the trolley. As we passed the checkout, the cashier gave me a quizzical look as I popped my chewing gum, raising my eyebrow at her. She didn’t question me but kept her eyes fixed on me the entire time she was scanning the products.

  When I finally got out of the trolley, my legs were already numb, and I slowly limped my way toward my Diablo, deciding on pushing it all the way back home.

  “You coming?” Wesley popped on his helmet after he put our goods securely in place. I shook my head, gesturing to my own bike.

  “I can’t leave my bike here. Someone might steal it. I’ll catch up with you later.” With that, I pushed the bike out of the parking lot and down the street toward the gas station.

  After refilling the bike, I decided for a little time by myself around the neighborhood. The feeling of the wind against my hair was so exhilarating, doing absolute wonders. I didn’t bother with the helmet, allowing the wind to caress my cheeks as I went faster and faster. After a while of driving aimlessly, I stopped by an abandoned factory. Curiosity, as always, got hold of me, and I got off my bike and walked inside.

  Graffiti adorned the walls, but each of them was beautiful, a real piece of art. I traced the dried paint with my fingers as I wandered further into the deserted building, my footsteps echoing behind me.

  “Now you know what’s the real story, you’ll be more careful in the friends you chose.” A voice echoed past the dark halls, making me stop in my tracks.

  “I don’t know…The girl was a brunette. She is a blonde.”

  “Can’t a girl dye her hair?” The first voice sounded smug.

  “Well, she was absent for a few days after that. It is her, isn’t it? God. I can’t believe I trusted her!” Summer’s voice rang clear in the air, and my heart stopped.

  “It’s okay. I’m here for you now. Now you know why I did what I did.” Charlotte’s voice was smug, victorious even. I felt my heart constrict when I finally realized what they were talking about.

  I dashed out of the building and onto my bike and tore down the street to go home, to return to Wesley. I couldn’t believe my ears; I felt betrayed. Charlotte was smarter than what I gave her credit for, and Summer dumber. I thought she had at least left me with three things, but I was down to two.

  She took Summer away from me as well.

  Rage consumed me as I raced down the deserted road.

  Let’s just say I was thanking the heavens for my helmet because the next thing I knew, I heard the loudest horn ever, and my vision turned so bright before everything just turned dark.

  Chapter 17

  Wesley burst through the hospital doors upon receiving the news of Avery’s accident. When he received the call from Avery’s phone number, he joked about finishing all the tubs of ice cream, thinking that it was Avery. That, however, soon slipped his mind when the hospital staff informed him of his best friend’s road accident, saying that he was apparently the last person she dialed based on her phone’s call log. They had already tried calling her parents, but not a single member of her immediate family picked up the phone.

  He went out of the house in the pouring rain and rushed toward the hospital, nearly tearing down the road. He had to reach the hospital; he had to see Avery.

  They say that you lose the ones you love the easiest, no matter how much you try to protect them from the dangers of the world. The truth is the more you protect them, the more they became vulnerable. Avery was protected, but she wasn’t vulnerable. She slashed her ex’s tires and created absolute chaos in an A-class bitch’s life. If there was anyone who was strong, it was Avery. What did she do to deserve all of this?

  Avery was nothing but a kind-hearted girl, even before Wesley had left in search of his older brother, Nathan. She was caring and kind. Before Charlotte Brooke stormed into her life like a tornado, Avery was the poster child for everything good and perhaps even perfect.

  Hell, she was perfect to him, and that was all that mattered.

  So when he burst into the hospital door in a soaking mess, the nurse had to try to calm him down, telling him that she was in the operation room at the moment. What nearly drove him insane, though, was that Avery’s condition had not stabilized yet, and that made Wesley’s nerves fray, sending his thoughts into a wild flurry. He had to force himself to put his trembling hand into the pockets of his leather jacket to retrieve his phone. He had to force his voice to stay clear while he dialed both William and Nathan. But he broke down the moment he reached his third call—his baby sister, Winnie.

  “Hello?” Winnie’s sweet voice broke into Wesley’s thoughts, but he couldn’t even speak a coherent word.

  “Winnie…It…it’s Avery. I am at the…the hospital now.” Wesley refrained himself from crying, desperately trying to hold back his tears as his voice trembled.

  Luckily, Winnie immediately understood what her brother was trying to say, and she told him that she was on her way. She ditched her current blind date for her best friend and tore down the street in her Mustang, just like her brother did.

  The whole gang, meaning the triple threats, gathered outside Avery’s operation room, and everyone was only growing more and more anxious as one hour passed. However, an hour soon bled into two, three, and then four. By then, the trio was already pacing back and forth, all chewing their nails down to the bed as they anxiously waited for news about their friend.

  Wesley almost burst into relieved tears when the nurses finally came streaming out of the door, but once he noticed that something was up, his heart dropped again. They didn’t even bother to speak in whispers and just yelled at one another, asking for more bags of blood. He paled drastically when the cogs in his head fell into place.

  They ran out.

  And this fact made Wesley go back into full-on panic mode. He knew all his friends’ blood types by heart, only because they had a school-required checkup years before he left in search of Nathan. Confirmed by the nurses’ loud and frantic shouts, Avery was an O–, and that was probably the rarest blood type ever, a universal donor, and yet the rotten hospital had run out of supply.

  Wesley was still panicking when Winnie’s voice snapped him out of his mini-trance.

  “I’m just asking! No need to shout, you bitch!” Wesley shouted furiously at Blake, and he wanted nothing more than to walk over and punch the bastard in the face. To think that they had been best friends a long time ago, yet Blake had changed so much during Wesley’s time away that things between them could perhaps never be the same again.

  “What is happening to Avery is none of your business!” Winnie screamed back, poking him in the chest harshly with h
er well-manicured finger.

  Wait, Blake?

  “Blake, you’re an O–, right?” Wesley shot out from his seat and walked straight in front of Blake as his face remained that furious shade of red.

  “So what if I am?”

  “I need you to donate blood. It’s for Avery. She needs it.”

  “And why would she?”

  Blake was starting to get on Wesley’s nerves. The former had made it quite clear that he wanted nothing to do with Avery, and yet he was sticking his head into her matters once more.

  “You want to know what happened to her? Fine! I’ll tell you what fucking happened!” Wesley screamed at his ex-best friend, throwing his hands up in absolute rage as Blake took a small step backward. Wesley didn’t notice, though; he was too fuelled by anger to care. “She was in a fucking accident, and she is dying! The hospital ran out of O–, and her life now depends on that one shitty bag of blood!”

  “I will not donate my blood to her.” Blake crossed his arms across his chest, his face completely expressionless. Standing beside Wesley, Winnie gasped in shock, her eyes widening as Wesley paused for a few seconds. He would have thought that as Avery’s ex-best friend and ex-boyfriend, Blake might have had the decency to try saving her life. Yet he proved Wesley’s assumptions wrong.

  Blake Ryder had a heart of ice, and Avery had been foolish to think that she had cracked it open.

  “What? Why?” Wesley was seeing red now, consumed by his fury, snapping back from his momentary stun.

  “I am not obliged to.” Blake stormed out of the waiting area clutching a file. Wesley had yet to fully process what Blake had said. He just absolutely couldn’t believe his ears.

  If his worst enemy were in an accident and needed blood badly, Wesley would’ve given up if asked. He wouldn’t wish death upon anyone, not even someone who might harm him. However, Blake was challenging his opinions, pushing him to his boundaries. Nobody wanted Blake Ryder dead like Wesley did at that moment.

  “Fuck!” Wesley screamed and kicked a nearby trash bin. He sank back into his chair, burying his head in his hands.

  He didn’t hear, nor notice, the scrambling of the nurses’ feet as they scurried back into the operation room. He didn’t hear, nor notice, his older brother take a seat beside him. It was only when Nathan placed a hand on Wesley’s shoulder did he look up, his eyes red with tears. He had honest to God tried so hard to keep the tears in, but even men break sometimes, and that’s okay. It shows that they are still human and can still feel for the ones they love.

  “It’s Avery…She’s…”

  “It’s okay, Wes. Are you forgetting I’m an O–?” Nathan patted his younger brother’s back, and this lightened the tense atmosphere almost immediately. Wesley sighed as his brother told him the news. Nathan walked into the hospital overhearing the nurses talking about O– blood, and he immediately donated about two bags of it in one go. He didn’t know at first that the blood was for Avery, but when he did, it made him even happier that he saved the life of someone he actually knew.

  Wesley never felt relief like this before as if some heavy stone was finally lifted off his chest.

  “Thank you so much, Nate.” He couldn’t help but wrap his arms around his older brother as if he was a child again. Nathan’s arms felt so much like home and reminded Wesley of his childhood memories. Of how even though they lived a life of near-poverty, they always had loving friends and family who looked out for each other. Of the games Nathan always played with the triplets so that they wouldn’t feel too upset about their less fortunate lives. Nathan was a savior in Wesley’s eyes, and more than once at that. His debt to his brother could not be paid by mere wads of cash. “Thank you.”

  ***

  It was painful for Wesley to watch Avery lie on the bed motionless with tubes and bandages wrapped around her. The soft beeping of the machine beside her was the only thing that settled Wesley’s mind, telling him that she was still breathing, still alive. The operation had been too intense, taking almost eight hours on top of the initial four-hour wait, and Wesley’s eyes were still swollen and red from all the crying.

  He hardly ever cried, but there was one person he will cry for. And that was Avery, the only girl who could move his heart of stone. She was just an absolute ball of purple sunshine, and Wesley didn’t know how would he pass his days if Avery hadn’t made it out of the accident alive. He was thanking each of his lucky stars as he held Avery’s fragile hands in his own rough ones, stroking them gently as if willing her to wake up.

  The others had already gone back, especially Nathan since he did donate a lot of blood and needed his well-deserved rest. Winnie and William had gone along with Nathan, telling him that he wasn’t allowed to drive, and both of them promised to be back in two hours’ time. Wesley didn’t want to leave Avery’s side, though, so he sat there on the uncomfortable armchair and waited for the sleeping beauty to wake up from her coma.

  She was going to wake up soon. Wesley already knew it.

  Why?

  Because he just couldn’t live without her by his side.

  ***

  It took exactly three hours and forty-five minutes before someone else, other than the usual rounds of nurses and doctors entered the doors to Avery’s hospital ward. Anderson Chase, Avery’s father, had been rather reluctant to step into the room.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t love his daughter. In fact, his reason was quite the opposite. He had already been waiting in the hospital nearly an hour before, but his reluctance was induced by a rather large fear of loss. His daughter, along with his new son, Peter, were the only ones in his life whom he could never afford to lose. His wife had separated from him after a nasty case of infidelity, and though that haunted many of his sleepless nights, Avery had always been there to help him pull through.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” she would say as she braided some strands of his graying hair. “I know you still love, Mom, but the both of you shouldn’t let the bitter past guide your heart anymore. She’ll learn to forgive you, just like I did.”

  Avery had just entered her teenage years then, and though it had been said that teenagers were the most rebellious of all, Anderson Chase found his daughter a very open and kind-hearted person, always willing to see past everyone’s flaws. She accepted each person as a unique individual, always looking at the brighter side. Had her break up not been so impactful, he was so sure that the old version of Avery would’ve never left. But then came the possibility of losing his daughter as well.

  “Dad, when are we going in to see Avery?” Young Peter Chase fiddled with the zipper on his jacket, his earthy brown eyes gazing questioningly at his new father as Anderson ruffled his son’s hair. It had been a long and grueling adoption process, but that night before Avery’s accident, Peter was finally an official member of the Chase family. It was a shame that such joyous news had to be dampened in such a way.

  “We’ll go right now, okay?” Anderson tried his best to smile, standing up as he took hold of Peter’s much smaller hand. “Let’s go visit your sister. I’m sure she would love to see you there with her.”

  Peter was young, but he wasn’t naive. He knew that Avery might not know that he was there by her side, but he prayed she did. He prayed that she would pull through the nightmare she was in. For the first time in his life, even through all the torture as an orphan, he prayed for the girl to whom he had finally opened up and accepted as family.

  ***

  She knew that she had promised to be back within two short hours, but Winnie Jerald had other matters on hand. After driving her eldest brother back to his house, she had the job of driving the brother she was closest to back home.

  William was not a very easy man to please in the dead of night. The poor man had been close with Avery, and like his siblings, he didn’t want to have such a close friend in a life-or-death injury. Upon setting foot on their property, William didn’t hesitate to reach for the high alcohol content spirits, downing them straight f
rom the glass bottle as Winnie looked on in horror.

  “Will! Get yourself together!” she yelled, stomping over to him to rip the bottle out of his grip. “We still have to go back to visit Avery. What if she wakes up and we’re not there for her? What type of friends would we be?”

  “No need for that, baby sis,” William slurred before tilting his head back, chugging the vodka down in large gulps. “You ain’t saying it out loud, but we all know that she isn’t going to wake up from this tonight. It isn’t a one-night thing, you know? To wake up from an accident like that.”

  A frown curved Winnie’s angelic face as she peeled the bottle away from William. He had always been the sibling with the lowest alcohol tolerance level, and yet he was the one who turned to it the most in times of grief.

  “Don’t say that. It’s not true. Avery will wake up from it fine and dandy. At most a week.”

  “Keep lying to yourself, baby sis.” He was already too far drunk, having already unforgivingly downed half a bottle of vodka just like that. “We pray for good things in life to head toward us, and we pray the hardest when we know that they will never arrive. Even miracles need a miracle to happen.”

  Winnie was seeing red. Though she knew that William didn’t mean it, she couldn’t help but feel indignant. Avery would’ve been there for him in a second, never leaving his side unless forcefully towed away. Even at that, she would’ve scratched and kicked at the nurses and doctors pulling her out of the ward. That was the type of friend she was, and Winnie would gladly return the favor.

  “Well, if you’re not going back to the hospital to visit Avery, then I will.” With quick paces, Winnie stormed to her room and stripped off for a hot shower to awaken her nerves. It took her no more than fifteen minutes to be ready, not even bothering to properly dry her hair off or apply any makeup, not that she needed it. “Make sure you don’t drive in the morning. You know where the Advil is when morning comes.” Just like that, she made her way toward the door, eager to get to the hospital to be by her best friend’s side.

  Before she left, however, she thought she had heard William’s drunken words from the living room. His voice was near incomprehensible, but she still made out what he said, and it was something William would undoubtedly say. This made Winnie’s heart squeeze painfully.