Bullied, But not Broken

2. Creating

*TW: Substance abuse*

Sasha

When Sasha walked into the house after her long day, she found her parents passed out with new alcohol bottles spread out around them and the needles still sticking from their arms. She’d just cleaned up the last lot before she left that morning.

Where did they get the money for their new drugs and alcohol?

Shaking her head to herself, she went up the stairs and then froze. Her door hung ajar and her room was a mess; she’d forgotten to lock her bedroom door. She hadn’t forgotten to do that in a while; she was always so careful about it. With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she rushed into her room.

Her bed had been upended and the mattress leaned awkwardly against the wall, all her drawers had been emptied onto the floor and they had managed to find one of her hidden stashes of money hidden in the pages of a book. Did they get it all?

Rushing forward with threatening tears, she opened the book, even though she already knew the answer. They had taken all the money she had hidden between the pages. Fortunately, she had learned a long time ago to hide her money in small stashes in many different places, but the money she had hidden in the book would still be sorely missed. It would have bought her a few meals on her way to her new future, maybe a tank of fuel.

Plus, she had to find a new place to hide the money she had made that day. With a heavy sigh and threatening tears of frustration, she quietly closed her bedroom door and locked it, before she started putting her room back to what it was before. She didn’t have much and nothing was new; it was all she could salvage from dumpsters or the side of the road; but it was hers.

This was the closest place she had to a haven, and though she had old furniture and other things she had picked up from people’s trash for years, it was hers. First, she put her bed back together and then started to pick up everything that had been tossed out on the floor.

When she had picked up everything, she started methodically looking at her hidden caches. The money in the hollow leg of her bed, hidden by the rubber footing placed over the pipe, was still all there, but she would have to open an account or something, since it was getting to be a lot.

The loose floorboard at the bottom of her closet, hidden under the bottom drawer, was also still intact, just like the bag with money in the light fixture on the ceiling. The hidden panel behind her mirror was also untouched, just like the money hidden inside the old video tape of her favorite childhood cartoon. She knew her parents wouldn’t try to sell that like everything else, because no one would buy video tapes anymore and the tape had been so relentlessly watched that it had become all but useless with time – except as a hiding place for her money.

Her parents probably thought she was sentimental, but it was a good hiding place for some money. She should probably find herself a place to hide her money that was not inside the house, so she could be sure of some of her money. Taking about three quarters of the money from each stash, she put it into her combat boots, since she would see about getting a safety deposit box at the bus station, so she just had to hide a key and she could keep that on her person.

Sasha decided to do that first thing in the morning, so she could feel a little safer with the money she did have there. It would be most of the cash she made from now on; she would just keep small amounts in her hiding places for emergencies. She refused to fund her parents’ addictions with her hard-earned money. It was the money that would fund her escape from hell.

With her room back to what it was before and her caches still safe, she felt like she had a good idea for her art project. Taking off her stained T-Shirt, she started by cutting out the stain and sticking it to the cardboard she had salvaged into the form of a biologically realistic human heart that she referenced from her biology textbook; then she used the charcoal she had picked up from a field that had been set alight during a lightning storm and started drawing the images.

She had no real idea of how it would come out, but when she had drawn all the charcoal figures, she decided the heart needed to be a more intense red than cranberry juice on a grey shirt and she took the old red lipstick and gloss that she had found in her neighbor’s trash one night and used that to enhance the color of the heart.

Thankfully, the T-shirt sucked up all the fluid and she was sure it would be completely dry by the morning. So she put it aside and then made herself a pair of socks out of the back of the shirt. Then she knotted the remaining piece of the body together with that of another old T-Shirt in black and she made herself an infinity scarf for the winter, so she would not be as cold as she had been last year. The sleeves she cut up in strips and weaved together to make elastic ties for her hair, which she could carry on her wrist in case she needed to tie her hair up.

Finally, when she had all that done, she hid the muffins Mabel had given her, only putting two in her backpack for the next morning. Once she had done everything she had intended to do, she brushed her teeth and took a quick wash in the sink because she didn’t look forward to another cold shower so she could lie shivering in bed.

Then she made sure she had locked her bedroom door and got into bed, setting her alarm on her ancient phone once more, to face another day. As a last thing before she would go to sleep like she did most evenings, she logged into the chat site where she usually went to talk to someone normal and pretend to be just that; normal.

PonderPanda logged into the chat site.

Steele-Ground: Panda!! Where have you been all night? You very nearly missed me.

PonderPanda: Like anyone could miss you LOL

Steele-Ground: Ouch, that hurts.

Steele-Ground wants to chat in private.

PonderPanda: What do you want to say that you can’t say in the general chat room?

Steele-Ground: I want to ask your number, so we can chat more.

PonderPanda: And why would you want to do that?

Steele-Ground: Coz I like you and I want to chat with you more than the occasional late night when you log in.

PonderPanda: Wow, you just came out and said something like that? What do I get out of that?

Steele-Ground: You get the pleasure of my marvelous company and my awesome jokes.

PonderPanda: LOL

Steele-Ground: I’m serious, Panda. Gimme your number and I promise to only text you; I won’t make it weird at all.

PonderPanda: If you phone me I won’t answer anyway. I’ll give you my number but I have to go. Got to get up early tomorrow.

Steele-Ground: Awesome! You won’t be sorry, Panda.

After she gave him her number, she logged out of the chat and crawled into bed to get some rest.

***

The next morning, she rushed through her routine and made sure to grab her fake ID before she rushed to the bus stop. Yes, she had a fake ID, but only for things where she needed to be older than eighteen; she had no taste for alcohol like her parents, so she would not need it to get drunk. She cleaned up a few hundred messes caused by alcohol, there was no way she’d want anything more to do with it.

But she also didn’t have parents who cared at all, so she had to be able to see to some things herself, like getting a safety deposit box at the bus terminal, so she could have some of her money safe when she couldn’t get a bank account yet. They would know instantly that she was underage.

Once she had opened the safety deposit box, after the attendant stared at her for long tense moments after looking at her fake ID, he finally gave her the key. With a huff she rushed to the box that was thankfully somewhat out of the way of the general public passing by and also fairly quiet this time of the morning.

So she unlocked it and put the envelope with cash inside before locking it again and then adding the key to the necklace where she also kept her room key. At least she remembered to lock her room this morning.

Feeling a little bit better about the majority of her cash, she started her walk to school, using her usual route so she could share her bounty on her birthday with the homeless man. No one else would celebrate her birthday anyway. It wasn’t like anyone cared about her.