Chapter 1

Lexi

September 28th, 2016 | 10:30 am

Today was the day. Today was the day Lexi would finally be released from rehab. It had taken two months of painful nights, unimaginable detoxing, and boring therapy sessions, but she had finally managed to do it. She was clean and she would finally be out of the facility today.

The first thing on her list was to find Austin. The facility was clear on a few things, one of them being no phones. So, all summer Lexi woke up each morning hoping that she would get a visit from Austin. She hoped that she would walk into the common area and find him waiting for her. She would hug him and he would grab her waist and hold her tightly. He would kiss her and make everything okay again. Austin would whisper in her ear that he loved her and she would feel whole again. However, it never happened and instead, Lexi sat by herself during the visiting hours.

However today, Lexi was finally ready to leave. But first, she had to get through her last therapy session. The meetings were awful, as most people shared their stories and others just offered their minimal wisdom. Sometimes Lexi wondered if this was a form of punishment. Lexi sat through it though and when her turn came she was prepared to answer whatever Macy asked.

The therapist, Macy, was good to Lexi. Macy was in her late twenties but still found a way to connect to her patients at their level. Over the course of two months, Macy helped Lexi through the worst of the rehab and tried her best to understand Lexi. She knew Lexi's deepest secrets and maybe that meant she knew her a little too well because when it was her turn, Lexi was not expecting the question she got.

"Lexi, how are you going to adjust to your old life when you return and there is no one to hold you accountable but yourself?"

Well that was a loaded question. Lexi thought she would have gotten a generic parting question so it took her a while to think of an answer.

Eventually, Lexi thought of something good enough to say. "I'll make better choices and get help when I need it."

If anyone else had heard that answer, they would've moved on and left Lexi alone. However, Macy knew her better so as soon as the meeting ended, Lexi bolted to her room and grabbed her bag, but wasn't surprised to see Macy waiting for her at the exit. She glumly made her way over to her therapist.

"How do you plan on making better choices and getting help when you need it?" she asked.

Lexi sighed. She didn't know the answer, she just wanted to leave. "I'll go to those group meetings you hold at the rec center."

"Really?" she said skeptically, crossing her arms.

"Sure, whatever."

"You don't sound like you will actually be there."

Lexi didn't have time for this. "What do you want me to do?" she asked exasperated.

"I don't want you to leave when you're clearly going to fall back into bad habits," she said.

"I'm clean, remember?"

"You're so young, you don't even realize how easy it is to get addicted again."

"Relax, I have mandatory drug testing at least once a week, how can you forget that? You're the one that required it."

"I don't just mean drugs, Lexi."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"I mean all the bad things around you. The company you keep, the choices you make, the life you build for yourself. How are you going to stay on the right path?"

Lexi stared at Macy for a long time. "I don't know," she whispered finally.

"Please tell me you aren't leaving just so you can go see Austin," she said. "You can stay here for a little more, you can start school from here."

"No," Lexi said adamantly. "I'm clean, I did my time, I'm leaving."

"Just to get sent back here in a couple of months?"

"I'll be fine," Lexi said confidently.

"Yeah, you will be if you stay away from Austin."

That angered Lexi. "He's my boyfriend."

"Lexi, we've talked about this," Macy gently reminded her. "If he really cared about you then why didn't he ever come to visit?"

"He had to have had a reason," Lexi said.

Macy shook her head sadly. "Here," she said handing Lexi her business card. "You're going to need to be able to reach me."

"How do you know that?"

"Who else do you have left?"

Lexi thought about what Macy had said as she walked to the bus stop. There might have been a little truth in what Macy had told her, but she had to find Austin, she had to know what happened.

When Lexi finally arrived home, she wasn't surprised to see the lights were off, it was a good thing it was still nice and warm outside, the gas was off too. Lexi walked into the small two-bedroom house and again wasn't surprised to see the mail piling on the kitchen table. At least her father had brought it all in while she was gone.

Lexi took a look around assessing what had changed in the two months she had been gone. The kitchen was untouched, but empty bags and to-go boxes were scattered all around. The television was smashed on the ground in front of the couch. That was new. She walked by her father's bedroom and found him passed out in bed.

Lexi went into her own room and found it untouched. There was some dust on her desk but the sheets were in the exact position she had left them the night before she had been arrested. She wondered how her father had survived without her. She half expected to find him missing or dead. Lexi decided that right now, she needed to help her dad out before she could find Austin.

She sorted through the mail and grabbed the stack of most recent bills, her finance notebook, and headed off to the library. When she arrived, she immediately went to the computer and pulled out the bills, she opened her father's bank account and was grateful to find he had enough money for the bills, he just hadn't paid them.

Lexi paid the utility bills and whatever other payments. When she was done with that she checked to make sure there was enough money to get groceries. When she had finally finished and shut down the computer, she looked up to see a couple of girls staring at her. They were whispering as she passed. Lexi made eye contact and they immediately looked away and left.

Strange, Lexi thought to herself. Did they know about her stint in rehab? It was nothing to be embarrassed about, almost every other kid from this side of town had spent time in jail or rehab.

She shook it off and went to the grocery store. She bought as much food as she could with her limited budget. Lexi would need to get another job if she and her father were going to make ends meet. She highly doubted her job as a waitress was waiting for her after disappearing for two months. At the checkout lane, the teenager working was also staring at her. What was going on? As she paid, the boy mustered up the courage to talk to her.

"You're Lexi Cross," he said more as a statement than a question.

"Yes," Lexi said.

The boy's jaw dropped. "You came back?"

Lexi's eyebrows furrowed. "Why wouldn't I?"

The boy suddenly looked very uncomfortable. "I just thought, I don't know, maybe you would have disappeared or something."

"Why?" Lexi repeated a little angrier than before. The boy looked scared.

"Because of what went down with Austin," he mumbled, rushing to bag her groceries now.

"What do you know about what happened that I don't?" she asked angrily.

"Nothing," he sputtered. He quickly handed Lexi her receipt.

She grabbed him by the collar. "Listen you twerp," Lexi said directly in his face. "Tell me where Austin is right now or I'll hit you so hard you are going to wish you never opened your damn mouth."

Now the boy was really scared. "He's at the old skatepark, he and his friends have been hanging out there all summer," he said, clearly terrified of what Lexi would do to him.

Lexi was starting to get looks from the other customers. She let the boy go and grabbed her bags. The whole way home Lexi was fuming. Was the whole town talking about her? What had been revealed about that night that had made everyone stare at her as she walked by? Once Lexi had put the groceries away, she got ready to go find Austin at the skatepark.

Lexi looked up from tying her shoes and saw her father standing in the hallway staring at her.

"Hello," she said.

He didn't say anything back, he just nodded and left for work, right on schedule as always. Lexi waited for him to go into his room and then left for the skate park just as the sun started to set.

She wasn't surprised to hear they were hanging out there. Lexi was the one who had found the skate park, they couldn't actually skate in it. It was long since abandoned and the park was fenced off. Unless you were one of the few people who knew there was a hole in the fence by the trees. So Lexi got in with no problem and looked around for Austin. She heard voices coming from the skate pool in the back. As she walked closer the voices got louder not only could she hear them, she recognized the voices.

"I'm telling you, she saw her at the library," a girl said.

"No way, the bitch doesn't have the balls to come back."

Lexi recognized the second voice, that was Rick, Austin's best friend. She didn't remember him hating her though. They were talking about her as if they hadn't all spent the last year hanging out together.

"She's not back, there's no way she'd be back in town."

Lexi's heart skipped a beat. All those nights longing to hear his voice, craving his touch, desperately trying to remember the way he smelled, and yet the words she heard come out of his mouth made no sense. He didn't sound like he wanted her back.

Lexi felt like her whole world was collapsing around her. No this wasn't happening, Austin was her everything, he was her boyfriend, he wouldn't do this to her.

"I'm telling you Austin, she saw Lexi," the girl insisted.

"Whatever, we'll know tomorrow if she shows up for school."

Lexi's heart ached. She moved closer to the edge of the pool. She had to see his face. If she didn't see him she would never come to terms with what was happening. She peaked over into the pool and found them smoking. The girl who had been talking about Lexi was laying with her head in Austin's lap. Rick was now making out with some girl Lexi didn't care enough to know. Her eyes were on Austin who finally looked up and realized she was there.

They stared at each other for a moment. Austin looked genuinely surprised to see her, he didn't look like he missed her though. He looked down at the girl in his lap and kissed her. Lexi looked away before she started crying. She wasn't going to let him see her upset. She backed away and left the skate park. Lexi walked back home in a daze. All this time in rehab, the only reason Lexi survived was remembering Austin and her love for him.

What was she supposed to do now? She had done everything to come back and for what? Was she just supposed to start her senior year and go to class with him like everything was fine? How could this have happened? What had she done? Why had Austin left her?

Lexi got into bed that night and tried to put these thoughts aside. Except then she thought about having to start school tomorrow. She thought about how she had to get a new job. She thought about how she was currently sleeping alone in this empty house and wondered what she had done for her life to be so damn hard.

***

Lexi's day began earlier than she would have liked. Every Monday at seven in the morning Lexi was expected to report for drug testing. It seemed pointless to Lexi, where was she going to get drugs anyway when her only plug had shattered her heart last night? Still, it was one of the requirements of her release so Lexi showed up at the center and pissed in the cup.

"It's clean," she mumbled as she handed it to the lady at the desk.

The woman smiled faintly and took the cup from her. "It probably is," she said. "Still, who do I send the results to?"

"Macy," Lexi stated.

The woman nodded. "She's one of our best you know?"

"Yeah, I know," Lexi said a tad bitterly.

After all, she had been right, Austin didn't care about her. He moved on and left her. For a brief moment, Lexi even considered calling Macy but stopped herself when she saw the time. She only had twenty minutes to get to school on time and it would take at least fifteen minutes for the bus to get to school, assuming she made it to the stop on time.