FIDELITY JONES

CHAPTER ONE
FIDELITY JONES


“Mandy, look, there’s that girl that Jane was talking about.”
Mandy turned her head quickly and discreetly to the corner of the lunch room, then back at her friend.
“Why does she always sit alone over there? Doesn’t she not like people?”
“I don’t know, she’s kind of a weird one,” said Molly.
“What’s her name again?”
“Her name’s Fidelity. Fidelity Jones.”
“Oh right, Fidelity; that’s so unique”
“Get this,” said Molly. “I heard her mom named her that because she found out the father was having an affair the same day she was born.”
“Oh my...” said Mandy, with her lids wide open. “That is like, so tragically poetic.”
“Totally.”
“I don’t get it Molly, Why is she such a recluse? I mean, I don’t think she’s gorgeous but she defiantly isn’t the ugliest doll on the toy shelf. plus, look hows she’s dressed. Those skinny jeans must have cost at least three hundred dollars. Girls like that usually have people swarming over them. Maybe she slept with some rich guy for them.”
They both laughed then glanced over at her simultaneously, then quickly back down at their processed cafeteria food.
“Totally, like, that white silky blouse is to die for.” said Molly. “I’d give anything for that.”
“I’m like, so jealous.”
“Me too.”
“I hate her.”
“Oh, but you want to know something sad?” said Molly with a whisper, leaning forward.
“What?” said Mandy, lowering her eyebrows and leaning in to hear.
“Jane told me her parents were like, killed...right in front of her.”
“Are you serious?”
“Ya, when she was little too, like four or five.”
“That is so sad.”
“I know, They were like, shot to death by some guy. Then he shot himself right after.
Mandy’s jaw dropped.
Oh, and now she has to live with her rich godfather on the big hill, who apparently is drunk all the time and beats her,” said Molly.
“NO... really? How do you know that?”
“Have you looked at her face? She does a good job with the makeup, but I can tell.”
“I can’t tell at all.”
“It’s pretty obvious if you look closely. Look at the way she uses her bangs. It just falls over to one eye like a blonde water fall--- total cover up, if I ever saw one.
Mandy couldn't resist, she looked over her shoulder again as fast as she could, took in a good detailed look, then resumed her position.
That time Fidelity looked back.
“Well, that godfather is probably where she gets all the money,” said Mandy. If it were me, I wouldn’t mind taking a few punches for an outfit like.”
“Oh! you are so bad.”
“I know,” said Mandy. “You would too though, don’t deny it.”
“Ya, you’re probably right.”
Oh, speaking of beatings, I heard Jonny talking about her in the boy’s locker room the other day.”
“Why were you in the boys locker room?
“It Doesn't matter.”
“Did they say anything about me?”
“Anyways, it turns out that Brad tried to land a big wet one on her once and he ended up in the hospital!”
“Um, Brad? Brad Dumphy?”
“Yah, and he still wont talk about it either; to anyone.”
“That’s like, almost scary.”
“Yah, you know what else is scary? I heard she’s some sort of crazy genius too.”
“What, really? Like, what kind of genius?”
“Like the weird creepy, blow your mind kind.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know how my mom works for the school district?”
“Ya.”
“Well, I heard her talking about Fidelity once with a co-worker friend on the phone. She said all her state test scores were through the roof, especially in applied electronic sciences and Math.”
“Ah, I hate math.”
“Ya, me too. Then she said something about the government doing an investigation to make sure she didn’t cheat or anything.”
“You think she’d do my homework for me?”
“No. I don’t know, why don’t you go ask her.”
“No way, she’d probably rip my head off.”
“Yah, like she did to Brad.”
“Yah, like she did to poor Brad. Like, I don’t get that at all. I mean, Brad is so hot...
“He’s also a rapist,” said Fidelity,
Both of the girls jumped out of their seats from surprise.
“Oh, hi Fidelity, I didn’t, um, see you there,” said Molly, her heart pounding in her chest.
Mandy was silent.
Fidelity didn’t say anything for a moment. She just stood there next to them. Then she raised an eyebrow and gave them a flat smile. She pick up a black waterproof backpack and flipped it over her shoulder and tucked her arms through the straps. “You know who else is a rapist?
Both Molly and Mandy looked stunned at the question.
“Principal Thatcher,” said Fidelity. “And if he’s on time, which he always is, he’s leaving his office right now to go ‘pork’ Mrs. smith because she needs the extra cash to put her kids through college.
Molly and Mandy were speechless.
Fidelity squatted down to Molly and Mandy’s level and spoke to them like a passive aggressive parent would to a mentally ill child. “This is the world we live,” she said as she nodded her head.
Both Molly and Mandy nodded blankly back.
“Now,” continued Fidelity, clapping her hands together. “The only way to fix this problem is to get some really explicitly graphic proof. But you see, he always locks his office door before he leaves.”
“Wait, um okay, hold on--- what?” said Mandy
Fidelity looked down at her watch. “Oh, You might want to hold that lunch trays above your heads, girls.”
“What, why?” Molly said, breathing hard.
Fidelity stood back up. She was looking put out and slightly bored. “You only have a couple seconds Molly, I’m telling you.
“What are you talking about?”
“I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that It’s extremely important to you, that you keep those pretty curls fluffy and intact, right?”
“My hair? what bout my hair. Are you...”
Fidelity cut her off. “Did you know that this school has an automatic unlocking mechanism that opens every door on campus at the same time if an explosion ever were to occur?
“Explo...? Curls? what the hel...”
“Oops, Sorry you guys, I’m out of time,” she tapped her watch and started to leave. “Oh and by the way, you know the difference between us is?” said Fidelity pointing at both of them. “It’s the fact that that I have a brain, and good taste in clothing.”
“Huh?” Molly and Mandy said together.
There was a bright flash and a loud booming sound that came from the cafeteria kitchen. It came flaring out, shaking the floor and everyones rib cages, followed by a burst of black smoke. The sprinkler system in the cafeteria went off and immediately everyone flew into a sudden lash of panic.
Molly looked up at the poring water. Her curls were gone in an instant, and so was Fidelity. Before Mandy or Molly could scream she was sprinting out of the cafeteria and down the hall towards Principal Thatcher’s office.
The office staff and student aids flooded out of the door like a swarm of honey bees getting their nest bashed in.
Fidelity was hardly noticed. She slid through the soaking wet hallways and opened the big door to the big office in the back.
She smiled.
It was unlocked.
She threw her back pack on his desk and pulled out a giant umbrella that opened on a quick spring. She smashed the handle into the pen holder next to his perfectly alined Mont Blancs. It held perfectly.
Principal Thatcher’s laptop computer still worked despite the water, that was good. She didn’t need it to with the equipment she brought but it made the process go smoother.
She pulled a hard drive out of her bag and stuck it in, typed a few things and was done. She watched the screen spin through all it’s files, downloading as much information it could find. Anything with her own name or Mrs. Smith’s was automatically highlighted.
When she was done, she ripped it out and packed everything away.
Then she heard a voice screaming out in the hall.
“I’ll be right there!”
Fidelity knew that voice.
She ducked under the desk just in time for the door to fly open.
Big brown shoes splashed towards her in a hurry followed by a string of profanity and angry throat sounds.
She slowly reached into the side pocket of her bag and grabbed the handle of her stun gun that was capable of emitting eight hundred thousand volts in one blow, just in case. That was almost enough to kill, but not quite.
She knew what would happen if she was caught here. She knew what kind of a man he was. She knew she had to be prepared.
Fidelity took a quiet breath and tried to keep her heart from pumping out of her chest. She heard the laptop slam shut and the big brown shoes splash back out the door again, followed by more swearing and exclamations.
Fidelity just sat there soaking wet and shivering, taking it all in for a moment. She didn’t feel cold, on the contrary, she felt as warm as a summer day in the most perfect place on Earth.
She thought about Molly and Mandy. Stupid girls, If only they really knew; if only they could feel what she felt. They had know idea what it was like to be her.


The next day Fidelity laid in bed and watched the news. An asian woman with a strong new england accent and a stern face spoke while straightening a stack of papers in her hand. She said a bomb was planted at St. Julius High school and yesterday it went off. A few food handlers were pretty shaken up but no one was severely hurt.
Fidelity ate noodles and watched intently.
Unbelievably, that same night, the new station was emailed incriminating evidence about the principal of that school, which linked him to five accounts of rape, two accounts of money laundering and one account of assaulting a minor. They even found evidence that the explosion was orchestrated by his hand. He was arrested shorty after at his home.
Fidelity smiled. Today was her eighteenth birthday, but only she would know that. What a great present, she thought to herself.
Then for an hour straight after that, she cried.


CHAPTER TWO
TOM

Fidelity ran upstairs to get Tom’s gun. She knew where he kept it because he’d been threatening to kill her with it ever since he started drinking; when he was forced to take her in when her parents died six years ago.
That night he had gotten angry over a small business deal that went bad and decided to let it out on her.
Fidelity’s lungs pumped air out like an over-heating engine about to blow. She ran into Tom’s vaulted ceiling bedroom and over to his nightstand and tore into it.
A drunken gibbering version of Tom's voice echoed from down stairs.
She had the upper hand here though, because in his intoxicated condition it would be difficult to climb half a staircase without falling and breaking some skull bones.
The gun was in a little wooden safe box. She didn’t bother trying to pick the lock, throwing it across the room at a wall worked just fine.
Her bottom lip was split, right in the center. It dripped a thick line, fresh and hot and red, sprinkling the white carpet. Having sported over a dozen busted lips, Fidelity was used to the potent metal taste of blood. It was as familiar to her as breast milk is to a newborn. The skin on her face still stung from Tom’s hands and her ears were ringing, but the thoughts inside her head rung even louder:
If only father knew about you and mother.
You’re a liar. It wasn’t my fault they died, it was yours.
I hate you...
I HATE YOU!
Bending down over the broken pieces of wood, she picked up a Beretta M92F/S hand gun. She knew how to check if it was loaded because Tom once popped it open and told her that if she ever ran away, he wouldn't have to run after her, he’d just let the bullets do that.
For Tom, scarring her was almost as fulfilling as hurting her.
Fidelity rolled her thumb over the top bullet. There were nine of them in the cartridge, all lined up, ready to do their jobs like good little soldiers. The only down side to this was that she could only shoot him nine times, and she had no idea where he kept the rest off the ammo.
Tom's screams were getting louder.
She locked the weapon back together, grasped the handle tight and stood up.
As she headed out, her reflection on a golden framed wall mirror caught her attention. This young girl was looking more and more like someone she didn’t know. Sure, she was still pretty, but somehow she seemed darker, more pale and colder than she was used to. She leaned forward and examined her face. It was once a smooth, gorgeous work of art that boys would admire with wanting eyes. Now it was bloody mess with bleached blonde hair smattered on top and fake eyelashes somewhere in the mix. She thought about Mandy and Molly as she spit as hard as she could at the mirror and watched the bloody saliva drip down her refection. Then, just to make sure she still could, she smiled. That was something Fidelity checked regularly, she feared one day she would loose it completely, but that day wasn’t today. She recalled the song lyrics of her mother from long ago.

They can take your hopes, your dreams, your light.
They can make you cry, all day and night.
But if you can keep your grin from dying.
Then in the end, it is worth the trying.

Fidelity could still smile, no matter how fake it was.
She looked at the gun. It was now or never. she took in a deep breath and flew downstairs.
Tom was holding himself up with one hand on his Kuhn- Bösendorfer piano. In the other he had a golden glass of scotch that splashed around two ice cubes. On average, his scotch to blood ratio was way too much to just enough to survive and at that moment, it was even worse.
She could smell him from where she was, more than twenty feet away. He stunk like a dead man and looked like an expensively dressed pile of GQ magazines smothered in fake tan grease.
“Come sing for me Fiddle,” he said, “while I play.”
She hated when he called her ‘Fiddle,’ her name was Fidelity.
Tom squinted his eyes and took a sip. He sat down at the piano and started flipping through the music in front of him. Blood was poring out of a tear on his button down cardigan where she had used a kitchen knife to free herself from him earlier. She didn’t know if he was too drunk to notice, or if he was just past the point of caring about anything. Either way wouldn’t have surprised her. Learning how to defend herself though, was something she had quickly picked up from fighting with Tom. In a strange way she was thankful for that.
This was was typical of Tom. One moment he would be swinging fists and the next giving out hugs, cash, or making jokes. If she were a doctor she would diagnose him with an extreme case of Bipolar-Depression and schizophrenia that can only be cured with a hefty dose of rat poison.
With both hands, she pointed the pistol.
When he heard the cock of the gun pull back he looked at her. He stared for a moment trying to focus his blurry vision. Then he began laugh hysterically. The long hissy kind from the back of the throat.
“You gona’ SHOOT ME?”
She wanted to say yes, but she knew how this game worked. He could take anything she said, turn it around and use on her; make her feel like she’s the one in the wrong. So she held her tongue and held her aim.
Then he yelled something that sounded like a string of profanity and excuses for his behavior, blended into one giant dare for her to pull the trigger. When he was angry and drunk, his screaming never made sense. It came out sounding like some off color dialect of French.
Fidelity didn’t like his French, she didn’t like it at all.
Fidelity had never killed anyone before. Most of the time she was against the practice, but given the circumstances, and the fact she was on her period, it seemed like a really good idea.
This was it, this was her chance. This was for Mom.
She pulled the trigger and the glass in his hand burst into a hundred pieces. The bullet grazed the underside of his sleeve, no harm done.
He looked stunned for a second. Then he laughed again and began to slump towards her. He lost his balance but quickly regained it by slamming his hand down on the high notes of the piano.
The loud musical shrill from the instrument made Fidelity jump. A tear came sliding down like a knife over her cheek. She closed her lids and pulled the trigger again.
The bullet flew over his shoulder, skimming his ear, and hit one of three crystal chandeliers hanging above the piano which sent it spinning, crashing into the other two, snapping off and splashing onto the marble floor.
“My EAR!” shouted Tom. He covered it tightly with both hands and screamed at her again. Blood oozed over his fingertips in waves as his veins and arteries pulsed it out. The look on his face was a paralyzing gesture of how could you; like he didn’t think she would do it.
“Wow, Your aim is incredible,” he said with a growl.
Fidelity wasn’t sure if it was her aim that was the problem, or if it was her sincere lack of commitment to execute. Just like her smile, it was there, but not really. Her mother would have said that that kind of a hesitation is what still kept her human.
It only took Tom a few more seconds to get close enough to wrap his hand around her neck.
Tom had huge hands, and at the moment they were dripping with the blood from his ear. She could feel the red liquid sticking to her skin like warm glue as he took her. He could almost stretch his thumb and fingers all the way around her throat and touch the tips together on the other side, thats how big they were.
Her eyes were the size of pomegranates and her gun was trembling now, barrel deep in his abdomen. She noticed his shirt pocket was protruding out. It looked like he had all the car keys hostage in there, even her red volts wagon bug. He must have just grabbed them and stuffed them in there in case she wanted to run.
With his other hand Tom grabbed her wrists and told her to fire. He told her to do it. “Trust me,” he whispered. “You will feel so much better when I’m gone, when I’m with your mother again.”
Tom always knew what to say to save his own life, even if he didn’t want to live. It was then she lost the appetite completely. The thought of sending this man to her mother, wherever the dead people went, if there was such a place, sounded a million times worse then getting life for murder.
She dropped the weapon and another tear seared its way down.
If there was ever a moment that felt classically timeless, frozen and unpredictable, it was this one. She didn’t know what would come next. Another scar? A broken arm? Jaw? Maybe this was it for her?
Tom fell to his knees. His caps made a cracking sound on the marble floor and his dinner and alcohol came whirling up out off his stomach onto Fidelity’s Christian Dior boots.
Fidelity tumbled backwards and tripped over a hallway tabletop and fell on her tail bone. She watched him as he slowly blinked his eyes open, found the pistol, wiped the digested Filet Mignon off and pointed it.
Amongst all the irrational thoughts that came flooding into her mind at that moment, only one logical one stood out above all the rest.
Run...
She got to her feet and booked it down the hall. Chunks of drywall spit at her face as Tom’s bullet flew over her head and punctured the wall behind her.
It took her a good full minute or so to maneuver through the mansion to the front door. She purposely knocked over some victorian styled wall chairs and tipped over a century old grandfather clock on her way out. More obstacles for Tom equalled more time.
Something on the ground caught her attention as she opened the door. It was a book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. That was the book Mother would read to her every night at her bedside as a kid. She didn’t know why it was just laying there and she didn’t know why she picked it up, but she did.
She heard Tom blurt out something that sounded like: come back, I’m so sorry, before she slammed the door behind her.
Hitting the cold, wet, midnight air felt like getting shrink-wrapped in ice and thrown into a coffin full of little needless.
Putting aside the fact that she was just shot at and despite how much like Molly and Mandy it sounded, Tom throwing up on her boots and legs was the last straw, the final deal breaker. She could take a few broken bones and couple bloody noses, like a good girl should, but if you puke on any love deprived, rich girl’s, brown leather Dior’s, you can turn her into an instant track star. Chances are, you’d never see her again either.
Down the long stretch of pavement she went. When she got to the end of the driveway she snuck through a secret door in the black steel gates. A loud clang of a bullet ricocheted off the fence just feet away from her. She screamed and almost slipped off a rocky ledge but caught herself on a tree. The metal hummed from the bullet as she slammed the door shut and took off into the night.
It was all downhill from Tom’s house either way you went. She ran and ran and ran and ran; cutting through neighbor’s yards, avoiding the streets as much as she could in fear of seeing those beaming Ferrari Maranello headlights of his. She knew he would come after her. Maybe not tonight, but he would.
She knew that no matter how much he hated her, he needed her. He wasn't alone when she was there. Not to mention it was like a knife to his Jupiter sized ego if he let her get away with something like this, that’s just the way he worked. But she knew that the biggest reason he would come after her was for something else---her song-voice.
She could build bombs, hack complex computers, plan elaborate schemes to bring forth justice; but her greatest talent and biggest secret of all was something that was quite practically useless and honestly only good for one thing: pacifying her godfather. Not even Molly and Mandy, the gossip queens knew that she had an amazing voice.
Once when Tom was sober, he told her that her voice was the only thing that could make him cry, and he couldn’t live without crying. Crying, he said, was the only thing that let him sleep.
Some nights he would play the piano and she would sing. He would tell her she sang like an angel, that she would be a big star one day. He’d tell her she was given to him to heal him, to help him be a good person again. Then he would say how much she sounded like her mother, and how much she looked like her. Then he’d start ranting about her mother in a way that would make Fidelity sick. Later he would fall asleep on the couch and that was that.
Those days were over, she thought, and good riddance to all of them.
She tried her hardest to keep any lyrics from creeping into her head as she ran. She could think of a hundred songs that would go nicely with her situation. There were so many of them stored up in her brain amongst the mathematical formulas and chemical bonding equations. But as soon as they surfaced she nipped them in the bud because she knew that that was what he would want right now, he would want her to sing. Especially anything that had to do with hope, love, or forgiveness. That’s what he would want to hear the most of.
It’s funny, how in your darkest moments, the songs designed to uplift and inspire you only set you off worse. Its like a stranger telling you that everything is going to be okay, just after you’ve told them your horrible, terrible, laughable life story. It’s a nice gesture on the surface, but really, you just want to call them a liar and punch them in the face because you know it wont be. You know they are just saying that to be nice and shut you up. Songs like that are ironically had no substance for her, at not right now.
She ran for the better part of the night, only stopping a few times to to cry her guts out and prevent her lungs from exploding.
She threw up the first time she stopped to catch her breath. The second time only gag sounds and bad tasting air came out.
She was wearing a silky red shirt with a wide cut collar that showed the top of one of her shoulders. She had on a pair of Acne Kex Fade skinny jeans with decorative tears in them and a thin white belt with studs lined on it; in short, not the best attire for running, especially in this weather.
‘A hot mess’ most likely wouldn’t be the best term to use to describe her at that moment, but it fit. A high fashion icicle covered in blood on a runway full of tragedy in heels with a genius mind and a dark vendetta would be probably a better one.
Death started to enter Fidelity’s mind. She had always wondered how she would go. Freezing wasn’t one of the top five ways on her list, that was for sure. Rescuing someone from a speeding train or at some sort of protest sounded a lot more interesting; doing something, standing for something, meaning something. Running away from home and dying because it’s cold just sounded a tad bit anti-climatic.
Then the singing came. Despite how hard she tried to hold it back, it came. She couldn’t stop the lyrics from coming out anymore, it was just what she did. It was the only thing that made her feel like she mattered.

Come what may and never go home.
What ever will be, will be.
Come what may and look back no more.
What comes is a mystery to me.

The words of the old gospel song came out of her mouth in the form of quick breaths that bounced off her tongue with the thumping of her footsteps.
If she were to die young, she would want it to mean something. She would want it to impact the heartless and those who were blind to her pain. She had not mattered to anyone for a long time and if it was going to take death to get someone to care, well, she wasn’t quite there yet. Not while Tom was still alive anyway, and definitely not wearing this outfit.
She had to get somewhere warm and safe, and she had to get there quickly. She wouldn’t want to go breaking into any houses, it wouldn’t work, the’ve got alarms up the whazoo. She could probably dismantle them or rig them up so they go off extremely quietly, but that could take a while and with out the proper tools it could take all night. Fidelity didn’t have all night.
She couldn’t go ringing doorbells, begging for a room, because no one in this neighborhood would help a runaway. They were all heartless rich snobs like Tom. If anything, they would turn her back in and expect a hefty tip.
There weren’t any hotels near by either. The only thing that she knew of was a dirty old gas station that was open twenty-four seven. She’d have to trek it for a few more miles. Could she make it? Maybe, hopefully, probably not.
Remember what Mother said, she said to herself. Determination was the key. She was just glad that her boots had the two inch heals instead of the usual three. Three inches would just be unbearable.
When she saw the gas station sign finally popping around the corner it felt like seeing the pearly gates of heaven. For a moment she wondered if it was, then she reminded herself that her chances of going to heaven were almost as slim as getting an apology from Tom.
Then, she tripped. Fidelity didn’t usually trip but when she did, it was usually pretty bad.
How embarrassing.
She tumbled over in the parking lot next to the fuel pump, landing face down into a puddle of something that wasn’t water. She slid a good part of a yard and came to a messy halt.
Somewhere deep down inside she felt like laughing, but the pain and exhaustion were doing their best to keep her sane. Her legs had completely given out and her head had given its all. Every little bit of her had given its everything. She couldn’t cry anymore and she couldn’t scream for help, not that she would want to. She had become numb all over; through and through to the core of her little damaged song filled heart.
She looked up at the gas station doors. A giant word burned red in the black window.
CLOSED.
When someone hits the peaks of their emotional and physical staminas, their mind goes blank, and they tend to see stars. Its not death but its somewhat of a preview. Fidelity was traveling at light speed.
The same way your arm wakes you up in the middle of the night with a dull pain because you’ve been sleeping on it, completely numb, the nerves tingling inside it; that was Fidelity’s whole body. She had become so much the definition of emptiness in all its aspects it was uncanny. It would seem to the uncaring passerby, that she couldn’t be anything less than dead. But as sad and pathetic as this scene looked, she was still breathing.
Rich.
Talented.
Genius.
Dirty.
Helpless.
Hopeless, and horribly dressed for the occasion.
This couldn’t get any worse, she thought to herself. And like a joke from the heavens it started to down poor. Now she couldn’t hold back the laughter and searched her brain for a song to fit this moment. Nothing sick enough came to mind. Then, as if it was God saying sorry, she heard a screeching sound of large tires and metal axels come rolling in.
A new wave of energy over took her as she lifter her head. A reserve battery kicked on she didn’t know she had. It was a bus headed out of the city, making its last pick up at the bus stop across the street.
With every ounce of life, with every shaking limb, she pulled herself to her knees, then to her feet. She stumbled backward then caught herself. This was probably what it felt like to be as drunk as Tom, but with all the pain and a different kind of hang over waiting for her the next morning.
Seven passengers lifted their faces in ultimate curiosity as she climbed in. Their expressions were hilariously indescribable.
If she wasn’t so out of it, she probably would have laughed at them.
Yes there is hand print of blood on my neck.’
Yes I’m half naked and covered in mud.’
‘Thank you.’
She didn’t have any cash to pay the over weight driver with the dropped jaw so she gave him her Datejust special edition Rolex off her wrist and sat in the first seat she could find.
Then that thought hit her like a ton of bricks. That thought that was always there in the back of her skull, always eating at her; That thought she couldn’t help but fall back on during tiny peaceful breaks from the storm of her life; that thought that scarred her even more than Tom did:
She’d been alive for eighteen long years and not once had she ever been in love. Not like the meaningless high school dramas she knew way to much about. No, the ruthless, passionate kind that takes sacrifice and hard work. The kind her mother used to tell her about. The kind where you would take a bullet for the other person with out a second thought. The kind that mattered.
What a stupid thought; she hated how her mind always went there. She hated how that made her feel. Love stories and Fairytales were for little girls who had happy endings to their life stories. Fidelity's story was not a fairytale, and no way was it going to have a happy ending.
Sorry Mother, thats not for me.
Fidelity looked at her reflection of the bus window and smiled, the kind of smile a cancer patient gives while being slowly eaten by their chemotherapy.
Just checking, she thought to herslef. Then she made her mother a promise that if she got out of this one alive, she would go to a shooter’s range and get some hard core gun handling lessons.
Cold.
Beautiful.
Empty and loveless, she laid her head back and passed out, not quite sure if she was going to wake up again, and not quite sure if she even cared to.


CHAPTER THREE
SAWYER