UNtouched: a bay falls high novel

by Kidman, Jaxson

  UNtouched

  a bay falls high novel

  Jaxson Kidman

  Contents

  Welcome to

  UNTouched

  prologue

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  Want more #bfh?

  What is #bfh vs #hch?

  More from Jaxson

  Welcome to

  He didn’t say a word to me.

  He brought the cigarette to his mouth again and took another drag.

  Putting his head back, he parted his lips and let the smoke slowly lift from his mouth. His throat… mygod… it was fucking hot in the worst way possible.

  When he lowered his gaze to me again, he extended his right hand and offered me the cigarette.

  * * *

  Written by Jaxson Kidman

  UNTouched

  I’m just the dirty, poor girl …

  … with a junkie for a mother.

  Now I’m the new girl.

  My mother’s in rehab and the last person I expect to see takes me in so I don’t end up on the street.

  Except… BAY FALLS HIGH is like nothing I know.

  Rich. Power hungry. A$$holes around every corner. Liars. Cheaters.

  And if that wasn’t enough…

  I have three of the hottest and baddest guys in school after me.

  I didn’t mean to see what I saw to get their attention.

  And I swear to them I won’t say a word.

  But they don’t believe me.

  I’m not a prize.

  I’m a toy.

  I know once I’m broken they’ll leave me alone…

  … but maybe for the first time in my life I’m done with being broken.

  Plus, when I find out what they really want from me, I realize that maybe I can be the bitch calling the shots.

  prologue

  (all your fault…)

  the crunch of metal

  the sound of breaking glass

  this is everything you’ve ever wanted boys

  so now you can kiss my ass

  I wrote that in my head.

  Knowing damn well what was going to happen if I didn’t slow down. This wasn’t like I was still the new girl around here. I mean, technically, I was, but I knew enough to know enough. The push and the pull was like that of the ocean. Something you’d see from afar and think… beauty.

  Right?

  I mean, who doesn’t do that?

  It’s the way life goes.

  Like the one year I lived on the east coast.

  For the entire winter all everyone did was complain about the cold and the snow. They talked about the beach. They talked about summer. They talked about the sun, the sand, the surf.

  Guess what?

  It happened.

  Summer came.

  School was out.

  And even I fell for the bullshit tricks.

  Getting excited about the beach.

  Packing up my little broken bucket and faded purple shovel. Thinking I was going to build a giant sand castle. Or catch a crab and name him Herman.

  Guess what happened?

  Everyone complained about the beach. About the heat. Wishing it was cooler.

  And for me, the water was cold, tasted bad, the sand got everywhere, and my sand castle sucked. I never saw a crab.

  That was the push and pull of the ocean.

  And what the fuck does it have to do with me sitting behind the wheel of a stolen car that’s just been wrapped around a tree?

  Simple.

  It’s the push and pull of BFH.

  Bay fuckin’ Falls High.

  You think you know what you see, but you don’t.

  And it was amazing thoughts still worked in my head after getting punched in the face by the airbag. Or the searing pain of the car losing the fight with the tree, leaving me as a junked toy to get thrown around the car.

  There was only pain.

  But I was used to it.

  And there was only the Rulz.

  But I was used to that too.

  Their names floated through my head and I groaned.

  I hadn’t hit the tree hard enough.

  Because… well… between you and me…

  I crashed the car on purpose.

  one

  One time when I walked home from school with Ruby, her mother was asleep on the couch. With a bottle of cheap wine on the table, a glass tipped over, blood red wine dripping to a black carpet. Ruby rolled her eyes and didn’t care. Which I understood. I mean, her neighbor was selling drugs from the front porch that they shared as Ruby lived smack dab in the middle of a row home. And that was the nice part of the neighborhood.

  But I remembered going up to her room to listen to music and not do our homework only to hear her father come home from work and go crazy. He screamed and yelled and woke Ruby’s mother up to argue with her.

  Ruby just opened her bedroom window and smoked a couple of stolen cigarettes from Garcia who lived across the street from her. They had a little boy across the street thing going on but Ruby was terrified of having a baby so she never did that. Which I always laughed at because there were ways to make sure you didn’t have a baby.

  To her, she’d rather remain a virgin until she was thirty-two if it meant getting the hell out of her house and out of this town.

  Which I totally understood.

  Her father screamed so loud the house shook.

  He called her mother lazy. A lazy drunk. A lazy whore drunk. A lazy whore bitch drunk.

  And he just kept going, adding a word each time, but there was a loud shatter, followed by silence.

  That’s when Ruby looked at me. “They’re done now. She broke something. Or threw something at him. You should leave though. Once they’re done fighting, they make up…”

  Ruby put the cigarette between her lips and then made an O with her thumb and pointer finger of her right hand and slammed the pointer finger of her left hand through that O.

  I curled my lip.

  Old people doing it…

  Gross.

  Point being, anytime Ruby or me or Amelia or whoever went home, you never knew what you’d find. Sometimes Ruby’s mother would be singing to music in a different language. Sometimes she’d be passed out drunk.

  Now for me, it was sort of the same.

  Anabel Ditkiss.

  My mother.

  And, yes, that meant my name was… Tinsley Ditkiss.

  I was born on Christmas day. My mother wanted to name me Tinsel but I was forever thankful she didn’t. Not that it helped much that our last name was so fucking weird. The nicknames basically wrote themselves. (If you need a minute to make your list, have at it. I’ll wait.)

  I hated calling her Mom because she never really was one. But if that was one of the little things I could do to save her from herself, then so be it.

  It had been a shit day.

  My ex - Devin - acted like a total jackass. For some reason he decided now would be a good time to tell everyone that he and I never slept together. I wasn’t sure what he planned on getting out of that. Other than convincing everyone I was a prude and didn’t do stuff. Again, I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to hurt me. Because in the blink of an eye I went fr
om Titty Dipshit (told you the names wrote themselves) to a conquest. Guys - excuse me, BOYS - looking at me wondering what they could say to get my panties off as though they were held up by some secret code.

  (Hint: first part of the code is to maybe not be a total jerk off fuck head asshole…)

  So that was basically my entire day.

  Ruby was on her period so she was a bitch.

  Amelia was out sick, which meant she skipped to go hang out with her twenty-two year old thing.

  I got through the day and then walked home listening to music.

  I always paused at the piece of shit building I was forced to call home. To me, the entire building was crooked. And I was sure that someday it was going to fall over. Like right in the middle of the night too. We would be those people on the news talking about how it happened out of nowhere. Looking like poor trash so people in their nice homes could shake their head and feel bad for a second only before the news went to a story about a giraffe that could play the fucking piano.

  And that was my life.

  Not that I had ever seen a giraffe play piano.

  I walked into the building that smelled like old eggs and wet cardboard. It still made my nose sting for a few seconds but sadly it had become home. The smell of home. Not dinner cooking. Not some cheap smelly thing plugged into the wall. Just this bad smell.

  I climbed the creaky steps and walked by Mr. Anderson’s door where he had the news blasting like he always did. I was pretty sure the egg smell came from his apartment.

  I dug my key out of my pocket but found the door to our apartment already unlocked. The door slightly open too.

  Trust me, it didn’t scare me. Nobody was going to be breaking into these apartments. Not unless they wanted to collect change from the couch cushions and a decent amount of depression.

  “Mom?” I called out. “It’s just me. I’m home.”

  I knew what I was walking into.

  Or at least I thought I did.

  I smelled something burning.

  I dropped my bag and ran to the kitchen. So narrow you couldn’t open the dishwasher all the way. Not that the dishwasher actually worked though.

  On the stove was a pot of boiling water with noodles in it. It was foamy and smelled terrible. It had been sitting there for a while.

  I shut my eyes.

  If the building wasn’t going to fall then Mom was going to burn the building down with this stuff.

  I turned the burner off.

  “Mom?” I called out again. “You left something on the stove again. You can’t do that. I know it makes you mad when…”

  I walked down the hallway and pushed open the bathroom door. It was empty but the sink had stuff in it. I called it stuff because drugs made me angry. And it hurt me. Like in the morning before school I couldn’t even use the sink sometimes. I was not going to be touching needles and baggies just to scratch eyeliner on my eyes.

  When I left the bathroom, I turned and saw the closet directly across from the bathroom. It was a large walk-in closet that we used for everything. Food. Cleaning stuff. Clothes. Whatever.

  That door was slightly open, the light on.

  I lowered my head and knew I was going to find Mom sitting there, wasted away. She’d look at me and say something stupid or funny or cry. She’d ask to hold me and I’d end up holding her. Then she’d promise me she’d never do it again.

  The same old bullshit routine.

  I readied myself and opened the door.

  “Mom…”

  I was right.

  Sort of.

  She was in the closet.

  She was wasted.

  But she was extra wasted.

  On her side, mouth open, foam coming out of her mouth.

  I covered my mouth to scream.

  And then I waited for Mom to just die.

  two

  Mom didn’t die.

  Thankfully?

  But she refused to answer any questions as to what happened. In a sick way she was too good at it to take too much. Unless she wanted to take too much and end her life. That made me angrier. If I was sucking up living a life of shit then she could do it too.

  There were a few problems lingering though.

  First off, Mom was in the hospital. And from there…

  I didn’t exactly know.

  And that left me on my own.

  I was too old to be thrown into the system, which was good. There was no way in hell I was going to be bounced from house to house. And if anything, maybe this was the big wakeup call for both of us. I could finish school online or something. Or maybe - and don’t judge me for this - I could use Mom’s sad life as a way to get into college too. I was already a year behind everyone. A lot of people I knew were begging to turn eighteen to buy cigarettes or get a tattoo. That was so last year for me. Even though I didn’t smoke and didn’t have any ink.

  I should have taken up smoking though.

  I stood outside the hospital and paced.

  Back and forth.

  Watching people come and go from the hospital.

  It was amazing yet scary.

  That people in the building were dying, undergoing surgery, getting casts for broken limbs, being rushed in from a car accident… all the way down to the craziness of babies being born.

  A gigantic black SUV pulled up to the curb, stopped right at the no parking area, and sat there.

  I scoffed.

  “Asshole,” I whispered.

  The back passenger door opened and a woman climbed out. She was dressed in white with black hair and large black sunglasses on her face. She was old but had that fake young look to her. Her skin an orangish leather from all the real and fake tans. She looked more injected than Mom… too soon?

  Best part was she took her sunglasses off, looked at me, and smiled.

  “Tinsley,” she said. “Look at how beautiful you’ve become.”

  I curled my lip. “Who the fu…”

  My voice trailed off.

  I stepped back, wishing I had a seat behind me because my legs were about to give out.

  I knew exactly who this lady was.

  * * *

  “Here. Not sure caffeine is the smartest thing since you’re already so jumpy, but I guess there are worse things.”

  My eyes followed Claire as she put the coffee down in front of me. She pulled a chair out and sat down.

  The hospital cafeteria was gross.

  And so was the coffee.

  “Tinsley Ditkiss.”

  “Miss Claire,” I said.

  “Claire,” she said with a smile.

  “Claire,” I said.

  “It’s been a while, huh?”

  “I think so.”

  “I remember you about this tall…” Claire reached for the floor. “Wearing the same dirty dress. Grape jelly around your mouth. But those eyes of yours. Bright blue. Always curious and always happy.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong but you kicked us out,” I said.

  “That I did.”

  “I remember it. Very clearly. Sitting on the sidewalk while Mom walked back and forth making phone calls to the guys she slept with that month, hoping one of them would let us stay.”

  Claire nodded. “I know.”

  “And those gross men had the nerve to sometimes look at me…”

  Claire put a hand to mine. “I know.”

  I ripped my hand back. “So what the fuck are you doing here right now?”

  Without hesitation, Claire started to laugh. “I see you’ve got your mother’s fire.”

  “Let’s hope that’s all I pick up from her.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Tinsley.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I took care of you when you were a baby,” Claire said. “Not sure if you remember it or not. But your mother worked at a bar.”

  “Big shock.”

  “I owned the bar, Tinsley. I gave her the job. I made sure she was safe. And I made sure she didn’t do an
ything stupid. You know, I raised you for the first two years of your life. It was just you and me. All the time. You were my little buddy.”

  I swallowed hard. “That still doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”

  “I’m here to help,” Claire said. “Like I’ve always done. You may not know it, Tinsley, but every single time your mother has gotten into trouble I was the one who bailed her out. Including this time.”

  “This time?”

  “She’s going to get herself cleaned up,” Claire said. “Once she gets the okay to leave the hospital she’s going straight to rehab.”

  I pushed away from the table and stood up.

  I shook my head.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “You’re just the land lady. That’s it, Miss Claire. The lady who showed up to collect the rent check from us. The lady who yelled all the time. The lady who put us out on the street.”

  I swiped the coffee off the table and walked out of the cafeteria.

  I stood in the corridor of the hospital where there were plaques on the walls. With pictures of doctors who made the hospital what it was. People with prestigious lives and purposes. And their kids were rich, spoiled, asshole brats and bitches.

  And I stood there with a cup of horrible tasting coffee and nothing to offer the world.

  “She stole my mother’s ring.”

  I rolled my eyes and turned to face Claire.

  “What?”

  “She stole my mother’s ring. And I was so angry I threw you both out. She took side jobs where I couldn’t help her. And it was always my fault. I was the one who set her up with your… well, the guy who made you.”