Casey Kochawski was 15 years old, and she was sitting on the hood of a strange mans car as it was parked on the side of very tall bridge. The man in question, whom she only knew by the name of Nick, was sitting beside her and staring out over the water that seemed to stretch endlessly before them. Anyone passing by might just assume this was a father/daughter outing, but this man wasn't her father, and just scant moments previous they'd been in the backseat of his car having sex. He was just one of the many man men her mother sold her to for afternoons and evenings, but by now, Casey had become so numb to it.
"...you shouldn't have to do this," Nick finally said, "this is wrong."
And yet you benefited from it, Casey thought to herself.
The absolute hypocrisy of some of these guys was astounding. Most of these men would have sex with her and then be on their way, but some of them would get morose, would start trying to distance themselves from the other men who did the same thing, as if there was a difference. There wasn't. They were still disgusting monsters. They just wanted to believe they weren't. Wanted to act as though they had some kind of moral high ground. And the sad thing was, because what he was saying was true, Casey did agree with him.
"I'm a bad person," Nick said, shaking his head, "and I recognize that. I recognize this...this is awful. This is unforgivable. I'm not asking for forgiveness, either, by the way, just stating a fact. I'm sorry."
That was the difference though, about Nick and the others, was he apologized. None of the others, even the ones who did seem to feel some twinge of guilt, ever apologized. Nick did. And she truly believed he meant it. Didn't excuse it, didn't justify it, but it was a nice little parting gift all the same. And a month later, when local authorities would pull Nick's car out of the water after he careened it off the side of the bridge and drowned himself and a little girl he'd stolen right out of her front yard to, presumably, do the same monstrous acts with that he'd done with Casey, Casey couldn't help but feel as though Nick had the right idea. If nobody is going to like you, if nobody wants you around, why not exit?
So now, standing here on the edge of a bridge herself, Casey couldn't believe she was somewhat sympathizing with such a degenerate. But hey, she had been a degenerate too. At least in the eyes of society. She'd been a drug addict. Casey sat down on the rail and sighed, wiping her face with her long flannel sleeve, trying not to cry. It wasn't fair. All she wanted when she was a little girl was a family who protected her, not sold her. And now, as an adult, she still couldn't find that solace in others. There was no protection, she realized, for certain people. Some people were just left to their own devices. And sometimes their own devices were a means to an end.
***
"Sometimes," Casey said, "when I am about to do something, I like to close my eyes and fantasize about a different outcome. Like, if I'm in a car with a guy, or in his apartment, or wherever we are, I'll close my eyes and I'll pretend someone comes in at the last minute to stop it from happening. So pathetic."
Casey was sitting in a diner, in a booth, across from an older man. This man, another one of her mothers "clients", was a man in his early fifties named Steven, but unlike the other men, Steven didn't want sex with her. Steven liked to take her out, get food, just talk. Casey figured he just enjoyed the company.
"I don't think that's so pathetic, we do lots of weird things to cope with unbearable situations," Steven said, "for example, when my wife left, and took my daughter, I'd lay in bed at night in total silence and darkness, and I'd shut my eyes and I'd think about them coming home suddenly, without warning, surprising me. I'd be so upset when I'd inevitably wake back up the next morning and they were still gone."
Casey actually liked Steven. He was the only one she genuinely enjoyed being around, because he just was a nice, normal guy. He didn't ask for anything from her but her company, her time, and he never made any kind of advances towards her. Casey thanked the waitress as she set down another glass of iced tea in front of Casey, and then Casey turned her eye back to Steven.
"I'm sorry they left," Casey said.
"Eh, I wasn't a great husband. I'm a great father, but not a very good husband," Steven said, "and you have to find a balance, it can't just be one or the other. One can't be neglected while the other is adored. That isn't fair."
"Wish my dad was a great father," Casey said, sipping on the straw in her drink, "he's just as gross as the men they make me go out with."
"Well Casey, one day, when you're older, you'll have escaped this life and you'll look back and realize how strong you actually were. You'll be thankful for having survived it. Not that you should've had to endure something so awful to begin with, but I like to think it's a silver lining of sorts. That's the kind of thinking that gets me through, anyway."
Casey smiled and nodded as the waitress returned with their respective lunches. After this, Steven would take her to a local arcade and they would play Skeeball and other games together, and then he would take her shopping for new clothes for school, and then back out to dinner before going to his apartment, where she slept in the spare bedroom. It was nice to have one small escape now and then, her own space, where nobody intruded or violated it. Her time at Steven's was lovely, and she appreciated every minute of it, perhaps a bit too much.
***
The very first time Casey's mother had turned her out was when she was 9, or at least that's the first time Casey could remember. Sitting on the bridge, Casey thought back to this moment. She often went back to it when she was feeling particularly hopeless. It was before there was a system, and any kind of setup. The man was someone her mother had met in a clinic, who had offered her hard drugs and money in order for her daughters "company". Casey had been in her bedroom when he entered, and she could remember feeling confused and scared, simply by the size of his shadow that was cast on the wall when he entered. Her mother could hear her crying, shouting, but she didn't stop it. If anything, she only encouraged the man to keep going for as long as he wanted. After it was done, her mother cleaned her up. Casey, sitting on the toilet lid while her mother wiped her down with a wet sponge, all Casey could think was how much she hated her mom, and how she couldn't believe she would let this happen.
"Everyone has a role to play in their family," her mother said, cigarette hanging, ashing, from her lips as she wiped her down gently, "and this is yours. We need the money."
Casey always heard this. That they 'needed the money', and yet she was confused because they always seemed to have enough for drugs, for alcohol, just not for the things she needed or wanted. Casey often wore free clothes left at the church donation box or bags left on the street. Her parents always gave her morning after pills on the occasions the men didn't wear protection. And when she was finally old enough to, she started using her parents drugs to grant herself even the smallest bit of serenity from the hellhole that was her life. It was the least she could be given. Casey thought about how her mother never really saw her as a person, but a tool, something she could use to further get what she wanted. There was one night in particular when Casey came home after a surprisingly rough session with a man her mother had sold her to for the evening, and Casey was bruised, battered, looked like hell and felt like shit. When she walked into the house, she found her mother passed out on the couch, and she stopped and stared.
It would be so easy, she thought.
All she would have to do would be to get a knife from the kitchen and stab her thirty, fourty times, and nobody would blame her and even if they did, even if she did face some kind of justice, well, being in juvenile hall or prison for life would be better than the everyday hell that she currently existed in. Casey walked into the kitchen and grabbed the sharpest, biggest knife she could from the butcher block and came back out, standing over her mother, staring down. She felt her knuckles tighten around the handle, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it, because, unlike her mother...she wasn't a monster. Casey finally sighed, let the feeling subside, and went to put the knife back before attending to her pain in the bathroom alone. Nights like this, with men like that, made Casey actually miss Nick. He had never been rough with her. He'd always been gentle. Still unwanted, but hey, she had to take her wins where she could get them she figured.
Casey, partway through cleaning herself up, glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror, her makeup completely ruined, her face red and stained with nail marks and hand prints, and she promised herself that one day...one day she would get away from this. And she did.
But distance, as it turns out, wasn't the answer. Running only solves so much.
***
"I can't even imagine," Justine said one afternoon at lunch, as Casey told her horror story after horror story about her adolescence, "that sounds just awful. How anyone could treat their own child like that, I am so fucking sorry you had to live through that."
"The worst part," Casey said, biting into her burger and chewing, "is that I miss it, for some warped reason. A therapist at rehab told me it was because it became so normalized to me that to not have it feels wrong, and I built a lot of my self worth around my attractiveness to the men who used me. Made me feel special, like I had a purpose."
"Yeah but that's just fulfilling their needs, not yours," Justine said, "your needs were a safe home with a loving family and you weren't given that. That isn't fair to you."
"It's just hard to build self worth around me because I don't know who I am, even, outside my drawings," Casey said, shrugging. She'd tried very hard for many years now to try and discover who she was, the things she liked or enjoyed, things she could be proud of, but she'd yet to discover any of them outside of her art, and even her art she had a hard time finding pride in because it had been created as a way to cope with being abused so it just felt like an extension of her grief, not an actual escape or rebirth. Just another reminder.
This lunch had taken place a few weeks ago, and now, Justine was waiting at a cafe she and Casey often had breakfast at, texting her, trying to see if she was going to show up. The night Casey had shown up on her porch, during her get together, Justine felt awful that she hadn't stuck around, hadn't just talked to her, and since last night she'd been trying to get a hold of her, but to no avail. Justine sighed and sipped her coffee, looking around. She knew Casey was sick, damaged, but she also knew she was extremely talented, and a good person, and she deserved the success she was seeing now. Not that Casey would ever agree on these points. Justine exhaled and set her phone down after sending yet another text, then tapped her perfectly manicured nails on the table top before picking up her muffin and biting into it.
"Justine?" a voice asked, and Justine turned her head to see Michelle and Eliza standing there in line.
"Hi!" Justine said, smiling, as she got up to hug Michelle.
"What are you doing here?" Michelle asked.
"Waiting for Casey, we're supposed to have breakfast but she hasn't texted or call me back," Justine said.
"She...she was not in a good headspace yesterday," Michelle replied, shaking her head, "I'm worried about her."
"I mean, I am too, but I also know how strong she is. Probably just needs some time to herself. I know she'll be okay," Justine said, smiling.
Justine would remember this conversation 24 hours later.
***
Casey pushed Steven's bedroom door opened just a small amount and crept inside. He sat up in bed, groggy, as she climbed in with him. Steven smiled as she curled up beside her and pulled his arms around her. Steven closed his eyes and exhaled.
"You have a bad dream?" he asked.
"I just wanted to be with you," Casey whispered.
On occasion, when she slept over, Casey would wind up in Steven's bed if she was scared or had a nightmare, and Steven was always nothing if not a complete gentleman. Always proper and polite, always had boundaries. He was more than happy to just serve as a safety net for her in these dark times. Steven nodded in response, and tried to go back to sleep as Casey wrapped one of her hands around his wrist and slowly dragged it down between her legs. Steven's eyes snapped open and he jerked away, confused.
"The hell," he said, confused, "Casey, what are you-"
"Please," she said. Steven climbed off the bed, wrapping the sheet around him as he did, backing away. Casey got on her hands and knees and crawled across the bed towards him; she sniffled and batted her eyes to get the tears out of them, "please. You're the only one who's good to me. Take me in. Don't send me home. I can...I can make you happy, make you feel good."
"I don't want that, you're a teenager," Steven said, "and my friend, Casey, not...I'm not..."
"But...but you're the only one who treats me like a person," Casey said, starting to cry, "how...you don't...what's so wrong with me that you don't want me but all those awful men do?"
"That's the difference," Steven said, "they're awful, they don't care how their actions affect others. I'm not like that. I'm just lonely. I miss my daughter, I miss my wife, I'm not looking to supplement either of those with a fucking teenager, Casey, this is wrong. You of all people should know that. I understand getting attached to the one person who treats you well, but I don't do it for sexual favors for god sakes. I do it because you deserve a brief respite from the awfulness that is your everyday life."
Casey couldn't believe she could be so stupid. She should've known he was better than them. Better than her. She had begun to equate herself to the men who used her, nothing more than a perverted weirdo. Casey curled up on the bed and pulled her legs to her chest, hugging them, crying. Steven approached the bed, sighing, and seated himself down beside her, reaching out and putting a hand on her back as she sobbed.
"Casey," Steven said, "you don't-"
"The only good one doesn't want me," she cried, and Steven's heart broke.
He didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. Instead he just sat there and comforted her best he could. And to his credit, he didn't cut her off because of this, because he knew she was confused, making mistakes. She was a teenager. She was struggling with so much, she needed support, and he wasn't going to hold this against her, but he did define some boundaries afterwards. Things were never the same though, and after a bit she stopped taking his calls and seeing him. Steven hurt for her. They were two sides of the same coin, after all. He knew all she wanted was to be wanted, which was all he wanted too.
Just not from her.
***
Casey sighed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve, finishing her cigarette and flicking it off into the water.
She exhaled, waving at the smoke in front of her face, before reaching out to the metal of the bridge and helping herself stand up. Her breath was shaky. She trembled a little in her fingers. This was for the best. This way she wouldn't disappoint anyone again, and nobody could hurt her anymore either. It wasn't fair that she didn't get the chance she deserved, but not everybody does, it wasn't personal against her. The universe didn't have a vendetta towards her. Some people just had shit luck, and she was one of them. Casey braced herself, steeled herself for the descent to the water, and shut her eyes. That's when she heard a car pull up and a door slam behind her, arms wrapping around her waist and pulling her back down.
"What the hell," Justine said, almost in tears, "I have to go to a meeting with a publisher, I just happen to be crossing this bridge, and here you are, ready to jump? Why didn't you answer?"
"I don't...I don't deserve to answer," Casey whimpered, "I don't deserve...to live."
"Bullshit," Justine said, "that's bullshit, utter bullshit, Casey. I was in a plane crash. I didn't have a choice when it came to almost dying, but you do. Please don't opt in. We can fix this. I will help you."
Casey smiled and nodded, hugging Justine, who patted her on the back.
"This is what you always wanted, isn't it?" Justine asked.
"I did want a friend," Casey whispered.
"No, not that," Justine said, "to be rescued at the last minute. You always wanted to be rescued at the last minute."
And Casey realized. She opened her eyes, feeling the wind around her as she plummeted down towards the water, staring back up at the bridge where she'd been standing. She started laughing, crying. This stupid fucking coping mechanism. Always hoping to be saved before something awful happened. That being said, she'd always heard that people always regretted it the second they jumped, but she didn't feel regret, she felt relief. For the first time in her entire life, she felt like she knew what peace actually was. Freedom. CHOICE. That was the thing. She'd never had choice, and now she did. She chose to do this, and she didn't regret it. But she also knew she was an unlikely statistic, and that most people wouldn't feel this way. Still, it was nice, she had to admit, to pretend she'd be saved at the last minute. But that didn't happen. Not in real life. There was no knight in shining armor, and some people are just eaten by the dragon.
Casey hit the water.
"...you shouldn't have to do this," Nick finally said, "this is wrong."
And yet you benefited from it, Casey thought to herself.
The absolute hypocrisy of some of these guys was astounding. Most of these men would have sex with her and then be on their way, but some of them would get morose, would start trying to distance themselves from the other men who did the same thing, as if there was a difference. There wasn't. They were still disgusting monsters. They just wanted to believe they weren't. Wanted to act as though they had some kind of moral high ground. And the sad thing was, because what he was saying was true, Casey did agree with him.
"I'm a bad person," Nick said, shaking his head, "and I recognize that. I recognize this...this is awful. This is unforgivable. I'm not asking for forgiveness, either, by the way, just stating a fact. I'm sorry."
That was the difference though, about Nick and the others, was he apologized. None of the others, even the ones who did seem to feel some twinge of guilt, ever apologized. Nick did. And she truly believed he meant it. Didn't excuse it, didn't justify it, but it was a nice little parting gift all the same. And a month later, when local authorities would pull Nick's car out of the water after he careened it off the side of the bridge and drowned himself and a little girl he'd stolen right out of her front yard to, presumably, do the same monstrous acts with that he'd done with Casey, Casey couldn't help but feel as though Nick had the right idea. If nobody is going to like you, if nobody wants you around, why not exit?
So now, standing here on the edge of a bridge herself, Casey couldn't believe she was somewhat sympathizing with such a degenerate. But hey, she had been a degenerate too. At least in the eyes of society. She'd been a drug addict. Casey sat down on the rail and sighed, wiping her face with her long flannel sleeve, trying not to cry. It wasn't fair. All she wanted when she was a little girl was a family who protected her, not sold her. And now, as an adult, she still couldn't find that solace in others. There was no protection, she realized, for certain people. Some people were just left to their own devices. And sometimes their own devices were a means to an end.
***
"Sometimes," Casey said, "when I am about to do something, I like to close my eyes and fantasize about a different outcome. Like, if I'm in a car with a guy, or in his apartment, or wherever we are, I'll close my eyes and I'll pretend someone comes in at the last minute to stop it from happening. So pathetic."
Casey was sitting in a diner, in a booth, across from an older man. This man, another one of her mothers "clients", was a man in his early fifties named Steven, but unlike the other men, Steven didn't want sex with her. Steven liked to take her out, get food, just talk. Casey figured he just enjoyed the company.
"I don't think that's so pathetic, we do lots of weird things to cope with unbearable situations," Steven said, "for example, when my wife left, and took my daughter, I'd lay in bed at night in total silence and darkness, and I'd shut my eyes and I'd think about them coming home suddenly, without warning, surprising me. I'd be so upset when I'd inevitably wake back up the next morning and they were still gone."
Casey actually liked Steven. He was the only one she genuinely enjoyed being around, because he just was a nice, normal guy. He didn't ask for anything from her but her company, her time, and he never made any kind of advances towards her. Casey thanked the waitress as she set down another glass of iced tea in front of Casey, and then Casey turned her eye back to Steven.
"I'm sorry they left," Casey said.
"Eh, I wasn't a great husband. I'm a great father, but not a very good husband," Steven said, "and you have to find a balance, it can't just be one or the other. One can't be neglected while the other is adored. That isn't fair."
"Wish my dad was a great father," Casey said, sipping on the straw in her drink, "he's just as gross as the men they make me go out with."
"Well Casey, one day, when you're older, you'll have escaped this life and you'll look back and realize how strong you actually were. You'll be thankful for having survived it. Not that you should've had to endure something so awful to begin with, but I like to think it's a silver lining of sorts. That's the kind of thinking that gets me through, anyway."
Casey smiled and nodded as the waitress returned with their respective lunches. After this, Steven would take her to a local arcade and they would play Skeeball and other games together, and then he would take her shopping for new clothes for school, and then back out to dinner before going to his apartment, where she slept in the spare bedroom. It was nice to have one small escape now and then, her own space, where nobody intruded or violated it. Her time at Steven's was lovely, and she appreciated every minute of it, perhaps a bit too much.
***
The very first time Casey's mother had turned her out was when she was 9, or at least that's the first time Casey could remember. Sitting on the bridge, Casey thought back to this moment. She often went back to it when she was feeling particularly hopeless. It was before there was a system, and any kind of setup. The man was someone her mother had met in a clinic, who had offered her hard drugs and money in order for her daughters "company". Casey had been in her bedroom when he entered, and she could remember feeling confused and scared, simply by the size of his shadow that was cast on the wall when he entered. Her mother could hear her crying, shouting, but she didn't stop it. If anything, she only encouraged the man to keep going for as long as he wanted. After it was done, her mother cleaned her up. Casey, sitting on the toilet lid while her mother wiped her down with a wet sponge, all Casey could think was how much she hated her mom, and how she couldn't believe she would let this happen.
"Everyone has a role to play in their family," her mother said, cigarette hanging, ashing, from her lips as she wiped her down gently, "and this is yours. We need the money."
Casey always heard this. That they 'needed the money', and yet she was confused because they always seemed to have enough for drugs, for alcohol, just not for the things she needed or wanted. Casey often wore free clothes left at the church donation box or bags left on the street. Her parents always gave her morning after pills on the occasions the men didn't wear protection. And when she was finally old enough to, she started using her parents drugs to grant herself even the smallest bit of serenity from the hellhole that was her life. It was the least she could be given. Casey thought about how her mother never really saw her as a person, but a tool, something she could use to further get what she wanted. There was one night in particular when Casey came home after a surprisingly rough session with a man her mother had sold her to for the evening, and Casey was bruised, battered, looked like hell and felt like shit. When she walked into the house, she found her mother passed out on the couch, and she stopped and stared.
It would be so easy, she thought.
All she would have to do would be to get a knife from the kitchen and stab her thirty, fourty times, and nobody would blame her and even if they did, even if she did face some kind of justice, well, being in juvenile hall or prison for life would be better than the everyday hell that she currently existed in. Casey walked into the kitchen and grabbed the sharpest, biggest knife she could from the butcher block and came back out, standing over her mother, staring down. She felt her knuckles tighten around the handle, but she just couldn't bring herself to do it, because, unlike her mother...she wasn't a monster. Casey finally sighed, let the feeling subside, and went to put the knife back before attending to her pain in the bathroom alone. Nights like this, with men like that, made Casey actually miss Nick. He had never been rough with her. He'd always been gentle. Still unwanted, but hey, she had to take her wins where she could get them she figured.
Casey, partway through cleaning herself up, glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror, her makeup completely ruined, her face red and stained with nail marks and hand prints, and she promised herself that one day...one day she would get away from this. And she did.
But distance, as it turns out, wasn't the answer. Running only solves so much.
***
"I can't even imagine," Justine said one afternoon at lunch, as Casey told her horror story after horror story about her adolescence, "that sounds just awful. How anyone could treat their own child like that, I am so fucking sorry you had to live through that."
"The worst part," Casey said, biting into her burger and chewing, "is that I miss it, for some warped reason. A therapist at rehab told me it was because it became so normalized to me that to not have it feels wrong, and I built a lot of my self worth around my attractiveness to the men who used me. Made me feel special, like I had a purpose."
"Yeah but that's just fulfilling their needs, not yours," Justine said, "your needs were a safe home with a loving family and you weren't given that. That isn't fair to you."
"It's just hard to build self worth around me because I don't know who I am, even, outside my drawings," Casey said, shrugging. She'd tried very hard for many years now to try and discover who she was, the things she liked or enjoyed, things she could be proud of, but she'd yet to discover any of them outside of her art, and even her art she had a hard time finding pride in because it had been created as a way to cope with being abused so it just felt like an extension of her grief, not an actual escape or rebirth. Just another reminder.
This lunch had taken place a few weeks ago, and now, Justine was waiting at a cafe she and Casey often had breakfast at, texting her, trying to see if she was going to show up. The night Casey had shown up on her porch, during her get together, Justine felt awful that she hadn't stuck around, hadn't just talked to her, and since last night she'd been trying to get a hold of her, but to no avail. Justine sighed and sipped her coffee, looking around. She knew Casey was sick, damaged, but she also knew she was extremely talented, and a good person, and she deserved the success she was seeing now. Not that Casey would ever agree on these points. Justine exhaled and set her phone down after sending yet another text, then tapped her perfectly manicured nails on the table top before picking up her muffin and biting into it.
"Justine?" a voice asked, and Justine turned her head to see Michelle and Eliza standing there in line.
"Hi!" Justine said, smiling, as she got up to hug Michelle.
"What are you doing here?" Michelle asked.
"Waiting for Casey, we're supposed to have breakfast but she hasn't texted or call me back," Justine said.
"She...she was not in a good headspace yesterday," Michelle replied, shaking her head, "I'm worried about her."
"I mean, I am too, but I also know how strong she is. Probably just needs some time to herself. I know she'll be okay," Justine said, smiling.
Justine would remember this conversation 24 hours later.
***
Casey pushed Steven's bedroom door opened just a small amount and crept inside. He sat up in bed, groggy, as she climbed in with him. Steven smiled as she curled up beside her and pulled his arms around her. Steven closed his eyes and exhaled.
"You have a bad dream?" he asked.
"I just wanted to be with you," Casey whispered.
On occasion, when she slept over, Casey would wind up in Steven's bed if she was scared or had a nightmare, and Steven was always nothing if not a complete gentleman. Always proper and polite, always had boundaries. He was more than happy to just serve as a safety net for her in these dark times. Steven nodded in response, and tried to go back to sleep as Casey wrapped one of her hands around his wrist and slowly dragged it down between her legs. Steven's eyes snapped open and he jerked away, confused.
"The hell," he said, confused, "Casey, what are you-"
"Please," she said. Steven climbed off the bed, wrapping the sheet around him as he did, backing away. Casey got on her hands and knees and crawled across the bed towards him; she sniffled and batted her eyes to get the tears out of them, "please. You're the only one who's good to me. Take me in. Don't send me home. I can...I can make you happy, make you feel good."
"I don't want that, you're a teenager," Steven said, "and my friend, Casey, not...I'm not..."
"But...but you're the only one who treats me like a person," Casey said, starting to cry, "how...you don't...what's so wrong with me that you don't want me but all those awful men do?"
"That's the difference," Steven said, "they're awful, they don't care how their actions affect others. I'm not like that. I'm just lonely. I miss my daughter, I miss my wife, I'm not looking to supplement either of those with a fucking teenager, Casey, this is wrong. You of all people should know that. I understand getting attached to the one person who treats you well, but I don't do it for sexual favors for god sakes. I do it because you deserve a brief respite from the awfulness that is your everyday life."
Casey couldn't believe she could be so stupid. She should've known he was better than them. Better than her. She had begun to equate herself to the men who used her, nothing more than a perverted weirdo. Casey curled up on the bed and pulled her legs to her chest, hugging them, crying. Steven approached the bed, sighing, and seated himself down beside her, reaching out and putting a hand on her back as she sobbed.
"Casey," Steven said, "you don't-"
"The only good one doesn't want me," she cried, and Steven's heart broke.
He didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. Instead he just sat there and comforted her best he could. And to his credit, he didn't cut her off because of this, because he knew she was confused, making mistakes. She was a teenager. She was struggling with so much, she needed support, and he wasn't going to hold this against her, but he did define some boundaries afterwards. Things were never the same though, and after a bit she stopped taking his calls and seeing him. Steven hurt for her. They were two sides of the same coin, after all. He knew all she wanted was to be wanted, which was all he wanted too.
Just not from her.
***
Casey sighed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve, finishing her cigarette and flicking it off into the water.
She exhaled, waving at the smoke in front of her face, before reaching out to the metal of the bridge and helping herself stand up. Her breath was shaky. She trembled a little in her fingers. This was for the best. This way she wouldn't disappoint anyone again, and nobody could hurt her anymore either. It wasn't fair that she didn't get the chance she deserved, but not everybody does, it wasn't personal against her. The universe didn't have a vendetta towards her. Some people just had shit luck, and she was one of them. Casey braced herself, steeled herself for the descent to the water, and shut her eyes. That's when she heard a car pull up and a door slam behind her, arms wrapping around her waist and pulling her back down.
"What the hell," Justine said, almost in tears, "I have to go to a meeting with a publisher, I just happen to be crossing this bridge, and here you are, ready to jump? Why didn't you answer?"
"I don't...I don't deserve to answer," Casey whimpered, "I don't deserve...to live."
"Bullshit," Justine said, "that's bullshit, utter bullshit, Casey. I was in a plane crash. I didn't have a choice when it came to almost dying, but you do. Please don't opt in. We can fix this. I will help you."
Casey smiled and nodded, hugging Justine, who patted her on the back.
"This is what you always wanted, isn't it?" Justine asked.
"I did want a friend," Casey whispered.
"No, not that," Justine said, "to be rescued at the last minute. You always wanted to be rescued at the last minute."
And Casey realized. She opened her eyes, feeling the wind around her as she plummeted down towards the water, staring back up at the bridge where she'd been standing. She started laughing, crying. This stupid fucking coping mechanism. Always hoping to be saved before something awful happened. That being said, she'd always heard that people always regretted it the second they jumped, but she didn't feel regret, she felt relief. For the first time in her entire life, she felt like she knew what peace actually was. Freedom. CHOICE. That was the thing. She'd never had choice, and now she did. She chose to do this, and she didn't regret it. But she also knew she was an unlikely statistic, and that most people wouldn't feel this way. Still, it was nice, she had to admit, to pretend she'd be saved at the last minute. But that didn't happen. Not in real life. There was no knight in shining armor, and some people are just eaten by the dragon.
Casey hit the water.