I'll Help You
Audrey never wore short sleeves anymore, it would show too much.
Even now, as some fictional girl shoved a knife into her unsuspecting friends abdomen, she was wearing long sleeves, with her black and red striped vest draped over it, and buttoned up, even though the uniform called for a short sleeved shirt. No one ever said anything to her about it, so she figured it wasn’t that big of a deal, and this way no one knew what covered her arms. Although once, a kid who couldn’t have been any older than six, asked her ‘What are those lines on your arms?’ it was an innocent question, but it scared the shit out of her. She hadn’t noticed that her sleeve had ridden up her arm slightly, exposing the scars that decorating the once smooth skin of her arms. If anyone other than the little kid had noticed, they hadn’t said anything, and she was grateful for that.
The onscreen victims screams mingled with the crashing sound of glass breaking as she was violently shoved out a window, and the majority of the people in the crowd gasped, and lurched back in their seats, whilst shoveling popcorn into their faces. Audrey, on the other hand, wasn’t impressed, she’d seen this movie about eleven times in the last three days, one of which was her seeing it with Noah, and in all honesty, it wasn’t even that good. She brushed her hair out of her eyes, just as her phone vibrated in her hand, which startled her slightly. It was a text from some unknown number, which would’ve been terrifying, if it was three months ago, when Piper was murdering everyone she knew. But now, it just meant that some kid wanted to prank her, and apparently someone she knew, since the message was ‘GOING TO THE PARTY TONIGHT?’. Probably just Jake being an ass, this was his kind of thing anyway, she just replied with a cliche ‘Who is this?’.
‘YOUR CONSCIENCE.’ Audrey furrowed her brow, what did they mean by that? whatever it was she was certainly not amused, so with an annoyed look on her face, the typed in ‘HAHA. Funny. Not.’ and sent it. Not her best work, but she was tired, she had been at work all day and her brain was starting to get relatively sluggish. If she was fully awake and up to arguing with some stupid kid, she probably would’ve come up with something much wittier, and she probably wouldn’t have gotten the vague response that she got. ‘YOU’RE RIGHT. IT’S NOT FUNNY.’ The first one rolled onscreen, quickly followed by another that read ‘DEAD SERIOUS’ She was about to type up a response, something like ‘Does your mom know you’re doing this?’ or something to make fun of his age, since there wasn’t much else she could think of, when Noah’s name popped up onscreen. Without hesitation, she slide her finger across the screen, successfully answering the call, and bringing it up to her ear.
“Hey, did you just send me some creepy texts?” She asked, giving him no time to tell her whatever he wanted to say, which was rude, but she wanted to know if he was just being a jackass. Which she knew very well he would do, probably not to her, but for his podcast, he would go to extreme lengths that even she didn’t know the extent of.
“I wouldn’t put it past a creepy guy like me, but, no.” Noah admitted, as Audrey began walking around, collecting trash that people had decided to just leave atop the display cases, instead of using the trash can that was only three paces away. “What were they?” Noah asked curiously, but Audrey didn’t want to worry him, so she just shrugged, only to remember that he couldn’t actually see her. She pinned her phone between her ear and her shoulder so she could continue talking even though her hands were full.
“Some sleazoid texted me, he was, trying to scare me.” She told him, perfectly aware that she hadn’t actually answered his question at all, but Noah seemed satisfied, because he didn’t press the matter any further, which was a huge relief to her. She threw the garbage she was holding into the can, and grabbed her phone with her hand again, watching people file slowly out of the theater. She knew that she should be excited, but, she had a feeling something would happen to make her feel guilty.
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Jake picked up his phone, since it was ringing with notifications nonstop, and saw multiple text from people he hadn’t talked to since his ‘Jackass Jock’ year, as he likes to call it. A lot of them were ‘Have you seen it’s or ‘Dude she destroyed him’s. Only one of them really caught his attention, it said ‘The lezbeast strikes again!’ it was from a guy named George that was a complete asshole as he remembered. But 'Lezbeast' was what he called Audrey during his ‘Jackass Jock’ year, so, he couldn’t help but wonder what Audrey did to grab this dicks attention. Pasted under the text, was a bright blue, underlined link, that he was almost scared to tap. They hadn’t been friends before Piper, but, as much as she acted annoyed at his presence, she was his sarcastic soulmate.
“Hey, Brooke.” He called as he strode over to where she stood in the kitchen, she was piping the words ‘Welcome Home Emma!’ onto the cake in bright red icing that stood out against the plain white icing that covered the rest of the cake. Brooke peered up at him for a second, looking unamused as she focused on making the curve of an ‘O’ as perfect as she could get it. “Take a look at this.” He said, and clicked on the link, it brought him to a video, that was apparently a live stream at one point. Brooke set the icing bag down next to the unfinished cake, and leaned her head, shock filled her face as she saw Audrey in the thumbnail, looking distraught. Brooke reached over, pressing the ‘play’ button, and letting it buffer for a moment, before watching the video on-screen intently.
A hand from someone off-screen showed to camera the keys to the front door of the theater, displaying that everything had gone according to plan. The hand disappeared off-screen, and the cameraman peeked around curtain, with a fake knife held tightly in their right hand. The camera came around the curtain, and There was Audrey, standing in the middle of the theater, with her hand above her eyes, and peering into the projector room. She turned and said something inaudible to her left, just as the cameraman came out from behind the curtain
“What is this?” Brooke asked rhetorically, and grabbed the phone from him so that she could get a better look. Jake gave her his best bitch face, even though she wasn’t paying any attention to him, but didn’t take the phone back. She kept her eyes glued to the screen, watching as her friend ran as fast as she could away from her the cameraman, knocking down some boxes in an attempt to slow him down.
Audrey ripped the fire extinguisher off the wall, and swiveled on him, spraying at him directly in the face, and successfully distracting him, even if was only for a few seconds. She ran into the front looking around frantically in search of anything that she could fight against him with, her eyes eventually settled on an icepick that was displayed in a glass case. Before the camera even knew what was happening, Audrey slammed the butt of the fire extinguisher into the glass, shattering it, and grabbed the ice pick from the rubble. She whipped back around, and without thinking about what she was doing, stabbed him in the abdomen.
“Holy shit!” Jake said, laughing through it, as the knot in his chest loosened and the video cut out. Brooke elbowed him in the ribs, making him rub where she hit, her bony elbows hurt a lot more than she knew. He looked down at his phone scrolling through the comments, and laughing, “Dude, Audrey just broken the internet again.” He boasted, much happier than before, now that he figured out that Audrey wasn’t the victim this time, well she was supposed to be, but she kicked ass instead. He was actually quite proud of the girl that had become one of his closest friends, behind Brooke of course. He shoved his into his back pocket and looked back up at Brooke, with a large smile on his face
“And not a word to Emma!” Brooke demanded, putting the finishing touches on the ‘A’ at the end of ‘Emma’ on the cake. Brooke set down the icing again and picked up bowl to put out on Kieran’s coffee table. She motioned for Jake to do the same, and he quickly obliged, following close behind her. “It’s her first night back, we don’t want to freak her out into another melt down!” Brooke added quickly, giving him her best ‘if you scare my best friend you’ll regret it’ face.
“She probably already saw it! I mean, my phone’s been blowing up for like an hour.” Jake argued, trying to playfully defend himself without pissing her off. He set the bowl onto the table, flashing Brooke one of his cocky grins as she turned and left to go into the kitchen. He was about to follow her when he heard the front door open, he turned and saw Noah walking through it, followed by a very tense Audrey.
“Hey! I’ve got our internet hero!” Noah cheered, although Audrey didn’t seem to share his level of excitement, she just tailed behind him, lugging a six pack of beer in her left hand. She was obviously upset, and rightly so, and he didn’t doubt that Noah was trying to cheer her up by acting more happy about it than he actually was, even if he was kinda happy.
“That was awesome, beeotch.” Jake said walking up to her with a large grin on his charming face. “Up top!” He added happily, putting his hand in the air for her to high five, but she just kept her hand on the back of her neck. She looked relatively annoyed with him, which confirmed his suspicions that Noah had, in fact, tried to cheer her up on the way here.
“Yeah, get this all out of your system now, their is no post gaming when Emma gets back.” She said, her voice stern as she gestured to him, but that’s not what concerned him. When she had moved her hand away from her neck, the sleeve of her leather jacket rode up on her arm slightly, and exposed her wrist the tiniest bit. Jake wouldn’t sworn that he had seen something on her wrist, he wasn’t sure, but he had a bad feeling that he knew what it was. Before he could say anything to her, she walked off into the kitchen to drop off the beers. He would have to talk to her later, and he promised himself that he would.
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Jake pulled open the back door of Kieran’s house, holding three empty beers in one hand, Brooke had sent him out to recycle them while she and Emma caught up in the living room. He shut the door behind him, and when he turned around, there was Audrey, sitting on the edge of the porch, with her legs dangling off the edge, and a beer in her right hand. She turned around when she heard the door open, checking to see who had come out, Jake just smiled at her and lifted up the beers to signify what he was doing. Without saying anything, she turned back towards the woods that sat next to Kieran’s house, and took a long swig of her beer. Sighing, Jake walked over and sat next to her, throwing his legs off the edge as well, and setting the empty beers next to him.
“Why aren’t ya in there with everyone else?” He asked, it was innocent question, but for some reason he felt like he was being invasive. He did want to figure out what that it was that he saw on her wrist, and he wanted to be wrong, he wanted to be so, so wrong. Audrey took another quick sip of her beer, and shrugged, but other than that, she didn’t respond. Jake licked his lips, not sure how to bring up what he wanted to know. “That thing at the theater, did freak you out much?” He asked eventually, trying to be discreet, but also figure out as quickly as possible.
“Mostly just pissed me off.” She said bluntly, sipping her beer and turning towards him with a strange look on her face. “Why’re you trying to be my therapist?” she asked, with one eyebrow raised at him. He meet her gaze with a soft one of his own, trying to relay his message through his eyes, but he didn’t to understand, so he was going to have to just do this quickly, so she didn’t have a chance to react before it was too late.
“It’s just…” Jake bit his lip, she was not going to be happy with what he was about to do, but he wanted to help her if something was wrong and this was the only way he would find out. Quickly, he grabbed the hand that didn’t have a beer in it, and yanked the sleeve of her jacket upwards, exposing the scars that covered her arms. Jake couldn’t stop himself from gasping, not only had his fears been confirmed, but it was so much worse than he thought, and none of them even looked that old, yet there were so many of them. So, so many of them. He wanted to vomit at sight, not because of how it looked, but because of the thought of her doing that to herself. “Holy shit.” He breathed, staring dumbfounded at her arm, meanwhile she was frozen in terror. Once she composed herself, she ripped her arm out of his grasp and elbowed him directly in the nose. She jumped quickly to her feet, accidentlally dropping her beer in the process, she pulled her sleeve back down and started breathing heavily, terrified of what Jake would do with this new information.
“Audrey…” He started, not really sure what to say, he stood up, reaching out to her, but she only took another defensive step away. “Audrey, what did you do to yourself?” he asked, his voice was quiet and a tiny bit shaky. He was approaching her like she was an injured deer, that he was afraid of scaring off.
“It’s… it’s nothing!” She said, resting her hand on the wrist he had seen, feeling incredibly self-conscious about the whole thing. She gulped, knowing the he knew that she was bullshitting him. It felt impossible to meet his eyes, since she had no idea how to answer any of his questions other than just deflecting all of them. She wanted to run but she couldn’t get her legs to move, all she could do was stand rigidly, and stare. Jake sighed, and grabbed her hand, tight enough that she couldn’t just bolt, but not tight enough that it hurt her. Gently, he pulled her back over to where they’re were originally sitting, and she let him, because she wasn’t sure if she could move on her own anyway. He sat back down, gently pulling on her arm to make her make her sit down beside him.
“We survived, we survived that hell, why are you doing this to yourself?” Jake asked, his voice little above a whisper, but it was practically silent outside aside from the crickets, so he wasn’t hard to hear at all. She almost wished she couldn’t hear him, so that she wouldn’t have to answer, because she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t tell him that she brought Piper hear, that she was the reason his best friend was dead, and the reason his girlfriend had almost died in that freezer.
Audrey tried weakly to pull her arm away, and to her surprise, he actually let her pull away. She pulled her knees up from the edge of the porch, and hugged them to her chest, hiding her face with her knees. She was well aware of Jake’s eyes on her, full of pity and for her, pity and worry that she felt she didn’t deserve, not from him, not from anyone. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, but at the same time, she didn’t want to show Jake that side of her. The only person that had ever seen that fragile side of was Noah, and previously, Emma, but things changed. Jake moved his hand a gently rested it on her back, trying to be reassuring but he just ended up making her tense up even more. She smacked his hand away, making her boundaries very clear.
“Audrey, talk to me, please.” He begged, wanting so badly to help her, but knowing that it was impossible to do without her compliance. And, he knew her compliance was going to be nearly impossible to get in the first place. She shook her head as her tears won the fight within her and spilled out of her eyes, leaving a track down each side of her face. She buried her face in her knees hiding her tears from him. She felt so weak, and vulnerable, sitting there with tears she couldn’t stop, in front of a friend she had hated just a few months prior.
“Okay… okay I get it, you don’t wanna explain, I get that. But, if you ever feel the need to…” He didn’t want to say ‘cut yourself’ because that sounded so harsh and accusatory, it just didn’t sound… right. “Do this again, call me, I’ll answer anytime, night or day, and I’ll listen, or I’ll talk, or I’ll come over, whatever you need.” He explained, watching the tension in her shoulders subside slightly. It took her a moment, but eventually she nodded slowly, eliciting a small but genuine smile from Jake, who then patted her shoulder.
“Come on, I think Emma would like to see you.” Jake said pulling on her elbow slightly, making her get to her feet, even if she was a bit wobbly. He started to lead her inside, when he felt a stronger resistance against his gentle pull, he turned back and saw that she had stopped in place. He was about to say something when she met his eyes with her watery ones, and shook her head lightly.
“No, I’m kinda tired, I think I’m just gonna head home for the night,” She said, pulling her arm away from him. “Tell everyone I said, g’night.” She started to make her way off the porch, going quickly down the steps, trying to make sure that Jake wouldn’t come after her, but he did. He ran up behind her, and stepped in front of her as she tried to keep walking. “Move Jake, I’m going home, nothing’s gonna change that.” She said, trying to walk around him , but he kept blocking her.
“Noah drove you right? You’re house is a long way from here, let me drive you.” Audrey was prepared to refuse his offer, but he made a good point, if she walked, she wouldn’t be home until morning. She sighed, not really looking forward to him asking her about her scars again, but knowing that going with him was the better option.
“Whatever.” She said, gesturing for him to go to his car, she followed close behind, but when he started unlocking his door, she went to the other side, so that she could sit in the passenger seat beside him. She looked at him from the other side of the car, giving her a thumbs-up to signal that he had unlocked the car. She clambered into the car, sliding into the passenger seat, and shutting the door, but not bothering to buckle up. Jake did the same, but in a more graceful way than she had done. He stuck his arm out, pulled his door closed with a quiet ‘thunk’ sound, and looked over at her for a second.
“Anytime?” She choked out, turning to look at him as well, she was being vulnerable, and this was all new to Jake, maybe that’s why he felt he had to baby her. He gave her a confused look, wondering what exactly she was asking. “I can call you anytime I feel… like… that?” She finished, answering his unspoken question, and every part of her was hoping he would say yes, because so far, she hadn’t talked to anyone about anything, and she need to talk to someone, but she’d been too afraid to tell anyone about what she did. It was mostly because she knew how they would look at her, and then they would ask questions she just couldn’t answer, or maybe just wouldn’t.
“Anytime, Audrey, whenever you need it.” he said softly, smiling as Audrey nodded in response, turning to look at the rode as he started the engine. She really hoped he wasn’t just saying that to comfort her, because she might actually hold him to that.