Crash the Gates [PG 13] (Chapter 3 Up!)

[ahlageek]

CHAPTER 3

Gerard's POV

This girl may look pretty, but I think she might be a little dim in the head. I mean, at first she was all guarded and witty but then once I started making small talk with her, it was like I cracked some shell of hers - and the inside is hollow.

Honest to God, Noelle looks absolutely clueless as to how to respond to anything I've said. Maybe she's stupid...or maybe just shy. Who knows?

After a few moments of no response, I finally decided to just answer my own question to hopefully lead her to open up.

"I'm in for drinking," I explained, "I got too attached to it and my little brother began to get worried so he told Mom. She sent me to this place."

Those beautiful pale green eyes stared cautiously into mine for a mere second before she actually spoke.

"I'm in for prescription addiction." She said quietly and slowly as if she was afraid to say a wrong word, "I overdosed on some sleeping pills and pain medication one night and Luanne dropped me off here not too long afterwards."

"Then we're really not that different then."

Noelle's eyebrows furrowed, "How so?"

"We both have an addiction. Yes, to different substances, but the effect is still the same - a strong, unignorable desire that helps you soar above life. It helps you escape."

A slow nod answered my statement and her eyes fell onto her hands in her lap. She seemed to be thinking something over ever so carefully before she looked back up at me.

"It started as just an experiment..."

For the next hour or so Noelle spun a tale of a girl, controled by her mother, who turned to pills to deal with it all. The pills became part of what she needed to survive - like the air she breathed or her heart beat.

She started off taking only two pain killers a day but then gradually made her way up to astonishing combinations of sleeping pills and other medications - most of these stolen from her clueless mother's medicine cabinet. The pills helped her escape from everything. It made her feel like "there were no strings attached", she said. Noelle had a way of making addiction sound poetic, despite how tight and unforgiving it's hold was on its victims. I couldn't stop listening as she described all the feelings the meds brought her:

Freedom.

An alternate reality.

A break from the mental pain.

The same reasons why I drown myself in alcoholic poison.

Maybe we're even more alike than I thought....

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Noelle's POV

I don't know what made me speak up like that - what made me spill my heart out.

It may have been the fact Gerard said that we were alike. I would've never thought I was like another person - especially since I barely classify me as one, but he does. He doesn't see the girl Luanne created or the famous celebrity plastered across magazines everywhere. All he sees is the real Noelle - whoever she is, and I want to be able to see that too. I want to see what he sees when he looks at me. I want free from these puppet strings so I can be that real Noelle. So I can BE what he sees.

The only way I knew how to do that was to start showing the real Noelle, but the one thing of my life that is part of her is the pills. So that's what I told him. I told Gerard of the addiction that kept me alive, but at the same time brought me down.

And of course that's all I revealed. He doesn't need to know the truth of my fame and existence. Gerard is already blind to my plastic exterior, so why draw his attention to it?

Besides, this was one chance I wasn't about to let go. This was my chance to break those puppet strings that bind me.

"Alright, It's time for your first therapy session Noelle. Let's go."

I looked up to find a blonde woman with a too-big smile and obviously fake breasts staring at me and motioning for me to follow her. A feeling of resentment came over me as I reluctantly stood up.

"I guess I got to go." I muttered.

"No problem. I'll see you at dinner." Gerard replied with a grin.

I just shrugged off the thought and followed the woman. As soon as we were out of the rec room, she proceeded to tell me every single detail of how she was pursuing her own modeling career. She talked of all the plastic surgery's she's done just to get where she's at, which is still not even a dot in the modeling circuit.

This woman was almost as fake as I was. Almost. You see, she still had herself on the inside. She had that bright personality that was uniquely her and it stayed there no matter what she did to her body on the outside. But with me, I was fake in and out. Outside, I had the fake appearance, and on the inside I was a hollow machine regurgitating words and smiles drilled into my head by Luanne.

Once again I found a resentment towards the woman - but this time it wasn't because she was stealing me away from Gerard, but because I envied her. I envied how she knew who she was, what she liked, and what she wanted. All I knew is that I wanted that confidence in myself. I wanted that self-assurance in who the real Noelle was.

Maybe I would be able to find that here.

We approached a door labeled Dr. Kurhat and I was left alone to walk inside.