Pay the Price for Paradise (standard:drama, 2682 words)
Author: L.M.Penswick	Added: Jun 03 2006	Views/Reads: 3107/2216	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Danielle had been surrounded by drugs for as long as she could rermember. She vowed she would never turn to them but will she keep that promise when her world is transformed into a place of turmoil, addiction and death?

A story written for a health assessment. 

a/n:This story contains drug reference, drug use and themes that may
upset some people. 

L.M.Penswick 

*** 

Danielle had been around smokers since as long as she could remember,
her childhood had been spent in smoke-clogged houses and putrid 
smelling bars. She had promised herself as she grew up, that she would 
never succumb to the wretched things, that she would move out and get a 
family and get a nice respectable job in a law firm somewhere...if only 
fate had been as kind. 

Besides being a chain smoker, her mother was an abusive alcoholic often
flying off at her for nothing at all and her father was hardly much 
better, often staying out with friends at night-clubs and street 
corners, injecting or whatever it was he was doing that night. She had 
a few close friends who were always there for her and she talked about 
everything to them. Her best friend was Rebecca and the two promised 
that no matter what, they would be best friends. When they were eight 
they made a blood pact that they would never smoke or drink or do any 
drugs like Danielle's parents did. 

It was at high school when it all fell apart. Her father was a tax
evader and he and her mother decided to move houses. She was taken away 
from her good friends, to a new place. She knew as she waved sombrely 
out of that rear window, the cool, clear drops of rain trickling down 
the windows, just like the tears that were falling freely down her 
cheeks; she knew then that the good days were over, gone forever. She 
was right. 

Danielle's new school was a rundown old shambles; the dark grey walls
were peeling, exposing the rust coloured almost metallic walls behind. 
She did not know who would ever go to such a place, where the teachers 
were cruel, the buildings worn and even the sky above always seemed to 
be a dark, eerie black colour, resembling the heavy cloud she felt had 
smothered her heart since her arrival. 

Her classes were terrible and difficult, not that her teachers helped
her at all. She smiled to the people in her class, but they merely 
scowled at her and joined their other friends to talk about her. She 
felt their eyes upon her as she walked past them, heard the snide, 
sarcastic jeers that they said in murmured whispers as she tried to 
find her classroom. Some even to her face. Twice they had told her that 
the classrooms had changed and she had scurried over to Room I9 to find 
that there was no such place. 

During lunch she would look around for a place to sit in the cafeteria,
giving hopeful glances at a seat but it would always be ‘taken'. 
Instead she sat upon the school steps outside the school hall, leaning 
her head against the wall wishing she were someplace else, and crying 
silently for someone to take her away from there. 

She did not know why she started using drugs. She didn't care. Anything
was better than the torment she suffered at home, or the miserable 
loneliness she felt at school. It was wonderful being able to get 
herself away from everything: the hurt, the torment, and the pain. 
Everything that had ever caused that hole within her to grow into a 
mass of anger and resent to everyone. Her teachers for being so 
laid-back, so uncaring when they caught people smoking in front of the 
baseball field, at her classmates for not trying to be nice to her and 
hating her for existing. Most of all she hated her parents, for being 
irresponsible and imperfect, not caring if she arrived home at four 
o'clock in the morning, her eyes bloodshot, her face gaunt and worn, 
huge circles under her eyes, barely able to walk. 

Danielle started hanging out with people along her street, the ones that
stood on the corner snorting and smoking, shooting passing cars with BB 
guns and stealing from people they ‘helped' with shopping bags. It was 
a great game. On the street end, there was a large supermarket and 
frequently people came for their weekly shop. She and her friends would 
offer to ‘help' the shopper with the large plastic bags. While one was 


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