Tainted by Hate

By Patrice M Foster

Forbidden friendship takes guts to continue. Especially in a world where generational breakdown and parental aggrieved still continue. Add depression it can make life at home a strain for teenagers. For this teen adult life at home dictate how she should behave. Until one teen take the painful step to change. Either loose the only friendship or go against the only love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrice M Foster
• Release date: Dec 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9780998187426

Patrice M Foster

About The Author Patrice M Foster is a Registered Nurse in Childhood and Adolescence Psychiatry, with more than 30 plus years of clinical experience. She blogs and writes about issues that affect kids' mental health

Book preview

Chapter One

Yes, Angela? Mrs. Latifa asked, exasperated at the need to interrupt her lecture on The Crucible and

McCarthyism for the third time in fifteen minutes.

I need to use the restroom, Angela Forrester declared in a flat voice.

Mrs. Latifa rolled her eyes, nodded her head, and waved to the bathroom pass hanging by the door. You’re sophomores in high school. You guys don’t need to interrupt and ask permission every time you need to use the bathroom. If the pass is there, grab it and go.

Angela slipped from her seat, shoved her hands into the pouch on the front of her oversized hoodie, and walked out, reaching to grab the bathroom pass as she headed through the door.

But Mrs. Latifa, Jared Dutton spoke up, most of the other teachers won’t let us go unless we ask or sign out or something.

Angela sighed with relief to be that conversation again. Much as she appreciated the way it slowed down the class— putting them behind and reducing their homework load as a result—she wished someone could come up with an original topic to get Mrs. Latifa babbling about instead of the school’s restroom policies.

She pushed the door open and listened briefly—silence echoed back to her. Perfect. The facilities were empty, which meant she had plenty of privacy. She walked over to the row of sinks and picked the one on the far end before crouching and pulling up her pant leg until the top of her boot was exposed. It took a second to hook her finger around the top of the plastic Baggie and pull it up, but when she succeeded, she sighed with relief.

The clear sandwich bag held at least fifteen small, round white pills. Angela shook the Baggie to get them to settle in the bottom so she could open the bag without them spilling everywhere. As satisfying and reassuring as it was to hear the pills tumbling around in the plastic pill bottle, it simply wasn’t practical for sneaking them between classes—they made too much noise.

Slipping her fingers into the bag, Angela tapped on several of the pills before selecting one—she had to ration them carefully. She didn’t know how long it would be until she could find more and replenish her stash. She placed the pill on her tongue and languished as her mouth filled with saliva. It was a small matter of pride for her that she could swallow the pill without a sip of water to help wash it down. Closing her eyes, Angela concentrated on the pill, mentally following it as it glided down her throat and into her stomach. She liked to imagine that she could feel it when it reached its destination, and her digestive juices began to break it down and pass the relaxing chemicals into her bloodstream. It was more potent when she took the pills on an empty stomach but she had to be careful too, or they might make her pass out. It was a delicate balance that she had to strike between getting the right high and keeping herself together enough to evade detection.

She leaned against the sink and opened her eyes an inch or two away from the mirror, watching her pupils pulse as they began constricting. She’d watched the process before— not just with her mother’s oxy but while she rode the highs and lows of other substances as well.

She’d been smoking weed the day she found the pills. It had been in her little compact mirror that she’d watched her pupils dilate, laughing with amazement as it happened right before her eyes.

Only bits and pieces lingered in Angela’s memory now—flashes of feeling, moments that lacked the sense of belonging to her but where the visuals she conjured had the clarity of watching them happen on a television or computer screen, everything sounding foggy, like she had cotton in her ears, which was the reason she’d taken the risk of lighting up while her parents were home in the first place.

Her youngest sister, Julie, was teething and crying at the drop of a hat. Angela’s mother was exhausted from staying up with her and had put Angela in charge of her other siblings—Ricky, Sammy, and Chrissy.

Listen to Angie, Mom snapped at them as Julie screamed in her ear and grabbed her hair. Don’t fight, play nice, and don’t wake your father, she warned.

He’d come home from an overnight shift—which her mother had reminded him he was supposed to have given up and he’d barked at her about shutting her mouth and keeping the kids quiet, it wasn’t his fault his bosses had screwed with the schedules—and was trying to sleep before he had to head out again.

Luckily, there was a movie marathon on television—she couldn’t remember what series, but knew it was one her younger brothers and sister were all a little too young to watch.

If I hear a peep from you guys, she warned, glancing over her shoulder to where her mother was pacing with Julie in the kitchen, I swear I’ll come right in and turn it off. And if you breathe a word of this to Mom or Dad…

The three of them shook their heads solemnly, and Chrissy drew an ‘X’ over her chest.

Great, Angela had said, flipping to the channel in question and setting the volume at ten—enough so she could hear that the television was on but not loud enough to pick up the dialogue, which meant it wasn’t loud enough for her parents to hear at all. Ricky, you sit in the blue chair; Sammy, you can lie on the floor; Chrissy, you take the couch. I want to be able to come back here in ten minutes and see you guys haven’t moved a muscle. Got it?

Nods and then she was free, closing the door of the den behind her and slipping into the bathroom to retrieve the stash of