The Tattooed Devil Wears Chucks

Chapter 38: A Shift in Normality

Gabby.

It still hadn't happened. That moment. The one that changed everything. The one that told me there was nothing around me that was normal anymore.

I thought the day everything changed for me was the day I met Jax. The day that I lost my breath by just the sight of him. The day he pushed me up against a counter, turning me on, yet scaring me...

I suppose this was still true. It started the day I met him. It was like a chain reaction after that. My life was spiraling. The domino affect.

Since that day, the one where he pushed against me with his tattooed body... almost everything was different.

My normal family. Were they normal anymore? All three Brooks children were in trouble. Grounded for being disappointments. My dad looked as though he had aged ten years in a few short months. My parents argued, mostly about us, but still... they rarely argued. Now it was almost daily. Then there were my siblings. My little sister that once drove me absolutely crazy was now one of my only friends. A fourteen year old was the only one I could talk to and trust anymore. The one sibling that I loved more than anyone on this planet? I hated him. He blamed me for his own faults. He tore Jax away from me. Felix and I's relationship was burned to the ground.

My normal friends. This subject was a joke. It had to be right? I had two of the very best friends in the world, or so I thought. Every time I saw Morgan I wanted to throw up. She abandoned me first. She stopped talking to me first. Then after she attempts to sleep with Jax, knowing that I liked him, knowing I had slept with him... then she tries to talk to me? No. Not interested. Cole always seemed as if he wanted to talk, to reach out. I could see it in his eyes. But he didn't, and that's what hurt. Maybe he was trying to maintain ground with Morgan, deep down I knew he liked her too, but this still hurt. Then there was Kane. One minute we'd be fine, the next minute we wanted to rip each other to shreds. The worst was that I still wanted these three friendships. I missed my friends. I had Courtney, and god I don't know how I would have gotten through my year without her. She was the only one who didn't let me down in some way.

Me. Was I normal anymore? I was a disaster, that was for sure. I was in trouble constantly. My family looked at me like a fragile object instead of a daughter. My friends abandoned me. I was assaulted. I cried more than I slept. My anxiety controlled my every movement. But after all of this... I was in love. I loved Jackson Alphonse Parker more than anything in the world. And once again, he was breaking me. He pulled away, again. He was the reason I was crying, again. My criminal bookworm was so hellbent on me going to school and keeping my dad in the dark about him sleeping with me that he would do this. My Alfie was destroying me.

One thing. One thing in my life remained the same. Town.

Luxberg was always vicious. As much as I wanted to hate it, because I felt that it had turned its back on me, I couldn't. I knew that this was just the way this town was. Gossip, whispers, pettiness, all of it. It may have been escalated a bit, but this was the same town I had always lived in. There was still green and gold pride for the Luxberg Lions. There was still a riff between the two bars, there was still gossip. There was still a beautiful lake that brought everyone together. I actually was in complete denial that this could ever change. I would never hate this town. I loved my town. I was a Luxberg-lifer after all.

This changed on the Sunday after graduation. This was the exact moment when my life shifted from being normal to completely fucked up. This was when I lost my town.

Luxberg changed on Sunday, May 28, 2017 at roughly 10:30 PM.  That's what the reports would say, they couldn't pin point the exact time.

That was the estimated time of the first Luxberg murder in town history. 

That was the moment all sense of normality was lost.