What was I made for by Billie Eilish

Looked so alive, turns out I'm not real. Just something you paid for.

For the rest of that week my new friend group all sat together at lunch. We were quickly becoming inseparable and comfortable sharing personal things about ourselves with each other. 

I knew almost everything about them in only a week. They knew a lot about me but not the truth about the Hawthornes. I'll tell them at some point but I don't have any interest bringing them up at this point.

Rachel, Hayden and Wyatt all end up sleeping on Maddie and I's dorm floor for half the week. I slowly pry my eyes open only to see everyone else already awake and quietly gossiping. 

"Oh my god Paris. You were there weren't you. Back me up. On Wednesday we walked passed Professor Morden's office and he was having a wank." Wyatt laughs in his thick accent. 

"I don't really know what a 'wank' is but he was jacking off to a photo frame on his wall. We need to know what the photo was." I giggle as I sit up on my bed. 

"No fucking way." Maddie gasps as she throws her pillow at me in shock. "Yes fucking way. We need to somehow get into his office and find the photo." I suggest. 

"You think he has a partner?... I doubt it. He's so fucking boring." Rachel laughs. 

"You guys need to get a comfier floor by the way, my back is so sore." Hayden groans in pain. "Or maybe you could just stop sleeping here every night." I suggest jokingly.

"Well I'm not actually sleeping, Paris. That nightlight you have keeps me up all night." He fires back sarcastically.

"It's not a nightlight!" I yelp defensively. Everyone laughs, "What is it then?" Maddie raises a brow.

"It's an adult flashlight box.." I improvise. Everyone tries to hold their laughter at me but all burst out laughing. "Oh give her a break, she's only sixteen." Rachel scoffs, swatting Maddie's arm.

"I'm almost seventeen." I hug my covers close to my chest. "You're adorable Rooney." Maddie grins.

The boys eventually leave to brush their teeth and shower, giving us time to change. We all showered at night so our hair would dry naturally. 

We don't even bother looking away when we change anymore. 

"Holy shit, Paris!" Maddie gasps in horror, her eyes spotting my scar from where I was shot. "What the hell happened?" She asks.

I quickly rush to put the rest of my clothes on, trying to hide it. "That looked pretty serious." Rachel comments. 

"It's fine, just a minor accident." I shrug. "Looks a little more than a minor accident." Maddie laughs, lifting my shirt up so she can see it again. 

"I was shot like 4 months ago, I'm fine now." I explain. Both of them look shocked. "Oh my god. I'm so sorry, i shouldn't have-" Maddie apologises. I can tell my her tone and facial expressions that she feels terrible.

"No its fine. It's a thing of the past, it doesn't bother me anymore and I'm completely healed." I explain. 

"If you don't mind me asking, what happened? If you're not comfortable telling us it's totally fine, i completely understand." Maddie offers.

"It's a really long and complicated story that I never really told you so I guess I should probably explain all that now. But long story short it was my ex boyfriend who was jealous of the guy he thought was my boyfriend. I got to the hospital in time and it was fine. But then my ex killed himself.. It's actually a really long story. But long story short I survived." 

They both glance to each other in shock. "I seriously cannot tell if you're joking." Rachel says. 

"Deadly serious.. see what I did there? Deadly.. because I was almost killed several times-" I laugh with a pained expression. Laughing through the trauma is fantastic.

"Are you living in a soap opera?" Maddie's mouth hangs agape. 

"Sometimes I do wonder if I'm just living in some fantasy world where everything that can possibly go wrong will." I laugh. 

The two boys walk in fully dressed a moment later. 

"I think we have a lot we need to talk about." Rachel says. "Yeah. Want to head to the cafe and I'll explain everything?" I offer.

"Yeah, definitely." Maddie nods in surprise. Once we brush our teeth and make sure we're ready to leave we head across the street to the cafe. 

'Kings Row Coffee' is known to all MAD students as just 'the cafe'. It's a place I recently got a job at for weekends and after school. We get students from all three nearby schools (MAD, Harvard and Lesley University) as well as locals and visitors. It's usually pretty busy but my friends and I always manage to get a table.

We get a table in the corner, far from anyone else's ears. I begin telling them everything. Well not everything, I disclose the whole Sheffield Grayson thing, and the Toby Hawthorne thing, and Skye being behind my attempted murder.

"Oh" Rachel says in horror once I'm finished. "Yeah, 'Oh' pretty much sums it up." I laugh. 

"Hey Rooney, you're shift starts in 5. Finish up that gossip sesh and get to work." My boss Mandy takes away our empty coffee cups.

"Yes sir." I give her a salute and finish my 'gossip sesh' as instructed. 

"I'm sorry, what? I don't even know what question to ask first." Wyatt asks. 

"It's a lot. I'm sorry. But I've seriously got to go if I want to keep my job." I finish as I stand up and start to head for the kitchen. 

I get to the kitchen and scan myself in, taking my apron of the hook and wrapping it around myself. 

I'm usually put behind the counter with one or two others to serve people and make drinks, mostly because I'm one of the few people who doesn't struggle to use the cash register. When I'm not behind the counter I'm usually cleaning up in the back, I've never been given the responsibility of waiting because the time I tried it I ended up spilling every drink off the tray.

Today I'm on cleaning duty so I head to the kitchen and begin washing the dishes. There's only only one other worker back here, Richard, who is currently cooking blueberry muffins. 

Richard has gray hair that is slowly falling off with his age, he has a really sweet smile and wrinkles that sit all over his face. He and his wife were the original owners of this cafe back in the 60's when they were only in their twenties. Unfortunately his wife passed away a couple years ago and he decided to pass the cafe down to his daughter Mandy. For some reason he wanted to keep working here instead of retiring so he works in the back, cooking all the pastries, cookies and cakes he created back in the day. 

"Oh Paris dear, would you pass the flour over?" Richard speaks in a croaky voice. I smile and pass him the flour from the opposite side of the room. "Thank you, my backs getting worse and worse every day." He laughs.

I laugh as well. "You know you don't have to polish every single plate? The customers don't notice if all the plates shimmer or not." He comments. 

"Well I get paid to clean dishes so I'll make sure every customers reflection smiles right back at them." I grin. "That's the kind of etiquette we need in this place. I like the way your mind works." He points his finger with a chuckle. 

I finish my shift at 10pm that night, a 12 hour shift. I have to stay behind and lock up.

I finish cleaning the tables and throwing out all the uneaten goods and go back to the kitchen to get my things and check myself out for the night. 

I take my apron off and hang it back up for tommorow. I pick up my phone and open the messages. Nothing. Everyday I hope for something. Anything. But they've all pretty much ghosted me. I shouldn't expect it but I can't help but hope for it. I've not been sending them anything but I sort of hoped they would at least keep me updated. Instead just a few weekly texts from Libby, some from Xander and Max but nobody else. I hope I never gave them the wrong message when I said I was leaving, maybe they thought I didn't want them to keep in contact. But I did. I just wanted space.

I turn all the lights out and lock the doors. I begin my walk back to MAD, the air is cold and the sky is dark. A group of guys across the street who are all smoking catcall me and they all start laughing. 

I frown and subconsciously pull down my dress that isn't even short. 

I give the group the finger and begin jogging back to school.

The wind blows in my hair until I stop jogging when I'm far out of their site. I bite my cheek anxiously until I reach campus. I head inside and make my way up to my dorm.

"Paris!" Maddie squeals excitedly. "Wyatt's rich Uncle's moving back to England and has offered his house to Wyatt. It's got five bedrooms.. Do you see where I'm going with this?" She smiles excitedly. 

"No. No I do not. You need to explain these things to me I'm pretty slow." I smile sarcastically.

"My Uncle said my mates and I could move in for free because if not it would just rot there for five years until his son could legally live there alone." Wyatt explains.

"Shit.. Are you serious? We would surely have to pay something would we not?" I ask sceptically. 

"No. And it's literally right across the street so we're literally right next to school." He laughs. 

"Oh my god!" I squeal. Then Rachel, Maddie and I all start screaming together. "We're gonna live together!" Maddie shouts. 

(a/n. Not loving the filler chapters without any Hawthorne House action but not long left now. I've started creating all the possibilities for endings so soon enough it'll be decided who Paris ends up with. I'm doing a double upload tonight because I'm bored. Also thanks so much for 55k reads. It means so much to me. Thanks for everything.)