butterfly effect. until dawn x reader

2. aftermath

(suicide attempts) 

After the incident, I hit what I guess is rock bottom. No one really talked to me. Mike broke up with me, and I don't blame him. Jessica and Emily both blocked me, I don't know why, and I wasn't even sure if it made me sad. I rotted in my bed in the same clothes for days on end. My parents knew what happened. Almost everyone at school did. I dropped out as soon as the death threats started. My mom tried her best to support me but I knew she was disappointed. Probably disgusted. They raised me better than that. She preached to treat everyone as you would want to be treated. I was a bully. I never really noticed until after the incident. People left comments under the articles and my social media, which I ended up deleting, about how awful me and my friends were. We were ruthless. We were mean. I watched the recording of when the news covered their disappearance over and over and over again. 

I started drinking hardcore for awhile. I smoked every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I had watched and rewatched the same shows 14 times. It didn't interest me. Nothing did. When I was high, I felt a little bit at peace. It made me sleep without the nightmares about Hannah and Beth that plagued me every night. 

And no matter what did actaully happen to them, it would have been my fault.

I potentially killed the girls who were my friends because I was jealous of Hannah. My insecurity might have costed lives, including my own. There was one night in particular that I woke up from a nightmare about Beth dead and frozen in the snow. I cried for hours. I realized I just couldn't deal with it anymore. Everyday I regretted waking up. I didn't even think as I was walking to the bathroom and pulled out a bottled of painkillers. I downed them in a few gulps of water. My mom was the one to find me passed out and covered in puke. I was transported to the ER and later, put in rehab for a month. I turned 18 two months later and didn't celebrate it. Josh messaged me happy birthday.

Josh tried to reach out to me a few times. I would read his messages but was never able to gather the courage to respond. Sometimes it was a simple "hey" or "how are you doing" or sometimes it was a "i need to talk to you. i just want to understand."

The first time I talked to him was when I got drunk and called him. I was sobbing hysterically. He picked up with a "(Y/N)? Is everything okay?" I apologized profusely. I told him I was so fucking sorry. That Hannah was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. I told him that I never wanted to hurt her or Beth. I told him about the suicide attempt and became hysterical about how it should have been me who went missing and I just went on for about 2 hours. He listened the whole time. At the end, I asked him why he cared, why does he even want to speak to me. "I don't know. I feel guilty too. No one else is responding."

Josh and I continued message, and eventually we were facetiming and texting all day. He told me lots of things. We shared memories of the girls together and we recalled the times we all were together with our friends. No one talked to us anymore. Josh still kept in contact with Chris and Ashley but that's it.

"Josh?"

"Yes, (Y/N)?" He said not looking up from whatever he was writing..

"I know this is probably the wrong time to ask this but...why? I don't understand why you don't hate me. You will talk to me, but won't talk to anyone else."

He paused for a second. Thinking hard. "I think it's because I've always liked you. I could tell you weren't like Jessica or Emily. They were actual bitches. You always seemed detached from most of them. Any time we were alone or it was just me, you and Chris, you seemed to let your guard down, I saw that you were really passionate about things and you were anxious about things. When I texted you for the first time since the incident, I just needed to understand why. But when you called me that night, I couldn't find it in myself to be angry at you. What I wish was that, instead of putting on a front and pretending to like your friends and your boyfriend, you had found me or Chris or Ashley a lot sooner."

I was silent for a few minutes. "That's...that's so....Josh. I don't even know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything. Can I tell you something? Something that only Chris and my parents know?"

"Of course!"

"I've tried to kill myself too."

"What? When?"

"A few years ago. I had stopped taking my meds, and the voices got bad again."

"The voices?"

"I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was 16. Before that it was Major Depressive Disorder. Things got a lot better when I got put on the right medication. But the voices I would hear, they would tell me to do really fucked up things. It all got too much to handle so, I tried to hang myself in my closet. Beth got home just in time because I had texted her goodbyes and stuff. She walked in on me choking and got me down. Things seemed to improve after that."

I paused. "I'm really sorry Josh. That sounds terrible. I'm glad things are better for you."

"I am too. After the incident, I was off my meds for a few weeks before my parents and my therapist held an intervention and told me they would stick me in a residential center if I didn't stay on my meds and start expressing the voices or thoughts."

After that call, I realized I was falling for Josh. 

Our friendship kept growing. We hung out a few times. Sometimes just us, we would go somewhere. There was once with Chris and Ashley; they had never stopped talking after the incident. I got closer with Ashley. Chris too. I had an actual friend group. And for the first time in months, I was happy.