[no silent readers please]

𝗠𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗮 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗶 should really stop promising her brother things. He's a bad luck charm. Seriously. The second she promises him something, she goes and does the exact opposite. So when she promised she would keep Lexi, she did the exact opposite. She and Lexi haven't spoken a single word since the conversation on the swings, and Montana finds herself feeling weirdly pretty lonely.

She shouldn't feel this way, though. She cuts ties with people all the time. When things start going good for her, she gets those scissors and cuts the ribbon for no reason at all. And she never misses the person she leaves behind. They miss her of course — who wouldn't miss her, she's Montana fucking Lestari — but she feels absolutely nothing for them in return. In her mind, she just made her funeral a little cheaper.

But like all things lately, when it comes to Lexi Howard, it's different. She thinks about the brunette girl at least ten hours of her day, and the last two hours she spends with her finger hovering over Lexiʼs name on her phone, while she fantasies about writing a suicide note and blaming Lexi for it to make her feel guilty for bailing. And she knows it's crazy, maybe even a little psychotic, but she doesn't know how else to deal with these feelings. She has never felt them before and it terrifies her to the state of panic attacks.

During her time away from the world — if the world was Lexi Howard —, Montana has participated in the binge of her life. Empty delivery packages of Mcdonalds, KFC, Five Guys, Chick-fil-A, Wendy's, literally every fast food restaurant in America, lie on the floor of her bedroom at Fezoʼs. Then, when she runs out of money, she moves onto the snacks around the house. And when she picks one snack, she can't leave the kitchen until all the snacks are gone. She wants to stop, she really fucking wants to, but she physically can't.

Many teen TV shows glamourise the act of binge-eating. They make it seem like you put on sad music, cry a little and just dig your hand into a cake and begin to stuff it all down your throat, then it's over just like that — all while having your makeup done up and nails freshly painted. But no. They've got it completely wrong.

If they had it right, if all binge-eating was was eating a cake with your bare hands, then Montana would've stopped eating days ago. However, this is reality, and while there is food surrounding her, she can't stop until it's all gone. She's not even hungry, but she can't stop.

The worst part isn't even the eating. Montana really wishes it was. But the worst part is what comes after. What comes when you realise you've spent a whole week laying on your ass and licking BBQ sauce from greasy plates. What happens when the guilt finally attacks you.

Montana has done this before. Montana has been hospitalised for this many times. Montana dreads seeing the dentist because they're the first people to call her out on it. But she's filled with so much shame and she knows no other way to get rid of it.

When Ashtray finds her, she's passed out on the bathroom floor, hair greasy and face pale. "Yo, Fez!" he calls. "We gotta problem."

❤︎

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁 thing Montana wants to do when she's feeling this shitty is go to a carnival. But, of course Fezco and Ash don't trust her enough to leave her home alone for the time being, and because they've got some good money coming in tonight, so she has to come with. To a place jam-packed with horny, bitchy and drunk teenagers. How perfect for her.

Monty holds onto his big sisterʼs hand as they walk past all the entertainment around them, unaware of what has been going on the last few days. She doesn't like keeping things from him because she knows he knows when something is wrong, but he's still just a kid; she needs to protect him from the darkness of the world as much as she can. Especially when the darkness is in her own mind.

"I want a go on that," he says excitedly, shaking his sisterʼs arm as he points at a hook the duck.

Like all children, he does not want to play carnival games for the experience. He wants the prize. But the thing is about Monty is that his room is currently drowning and suffocating because of all the stuffed animals in there. He's obsessed — addicted, even. And no matter what anyone says, no matter how many bribes you feed him, he will not get rid of a single one of them. He's not an angry kid, he's far from being one, but he's still his sisterʼs brother, so when one of their old foster moms tried taking a single, tiny stuffed toy from him, he smashed up their entire home. Montana helped him, of course, like the supportive sister she is, but it was all his idea.

So she knows that when he sees this huge — and I mean this thing is taller than Fez — gigantic cuddly duck, he will scream and cry and have a full meltdown if he doesn't get it. Montana sighs, prepares to win this thing for him, and walks him over to the stand.

But then he stops. "Wait. Tana, there's Lexi," he says, and points right over to where the brunette girl is sitting with Jules, Gia and Rue. "She can do it for me, I bet she'll be better than you — she's got longer arms."

"My arms are perfect," she tells him, mouth open as if she's offended. But her eyes linger on Lexi, the way her outfit makes you go soft, the way her eyes make you feel like you can tell her everything, and every little detail about her is perfect.

And Montana hates herself for ruining for whatever they could've had. Friendship, a relationship — she doesn't care, she just wants Lexi Howard all the time. Before anything else can be said, Monty runs forward, dragging Montana with him as he races towards Lexi.

Seeing the kid run at them, Rue Bennett laughs and raises her hand for a high five. "Yo, Monty," she greets, not having seen the kid in a while.

Jules, clueless as to who he is, smiles kindly at the young boy. Gia does the same.

But Monty ignores both of them, and wraps his arms around Lexi, who looks up from her phone and stares behind at Montana, whose eyes don't leave the ground. Something hits her chest, and all she wants to do is pull the girl into a hug and whisper sweet nothings into her ear, tell her everything is going to be okay, tell her it's okay to open up. But Montana had her chance to open up and she chose not to.

However, despite their friendship being on a pause, all week Lexi has been waiting for Montanaʼs arrival at school. All week, she has been waiting to see her, to hear her voice, to listen to her laugh. But she didn't turn up at school once. Lexi even went to the liqueur store to see if she was there, but Fez said she was taking some time off. She knows it's all her fault Montana has fallen bad, but she doesn't know how to fix it. Still, after knowing her for a whole month, all Lexi wants to do is fix Montana Lestari, but she has run out of ideas. Maybe she simply can't be pieced back together. Maybe she isn't even broken, maybe this is genuinely just her.

"Can you win me the duck?" Monty asks, mood a lot brighter than the last time she seen him, as he points back to a huge stuffed animal. "Please, please, please — Montanaʼs arms are too short."

"They are not."

"Yes, they are!"

Lexi chuckles, shaking her head and trying her hardest to shake off the undeniable feelings she has for Montana. She will do this for Monty and that's it. She can't go on trying to help somebody who can't be helped. It will eventually ruin her. Like all of the others who have tried. She knows how far Montana pushed them — three even tried to kill themselves because she made things so difficult, she screwed with their heads too much — and although Lexi doesn't want to judge Tana on her mistakes, she doesn't want to hurt herself by caring too much.

Montana and Lexi don't speak to each other when they leave the others to go to the hook a duck stand, but the uncomfortable silence is filled by Monty who chats away like nothing is wrong. But like I've said before, the kid's not stupid; he knows something is up with the girls, but he really doesn't want Lexi to leave Montana, nor does he want Montana to push away Lexi. He's seen it all, from start to finish. He's watched Montana drive people into permanent states of anxiety, he's watched people worry so much about Montana that they can't sleep for weeks on end. He is one of those people.

But Lexi is different to the others. Lexi makes her feel something. Lexi is the first person Montana Lestari sees as a prize, somebody she actually wants to keep — and like all things, her mind is trying to throw that all away.

"Alright, which one do you want?" the Howard girl asks the boy as they approach the stand.

"That one," answers Monty, pointing up high at the duck hanging from the stallʼs ceiling.

A man wearing a fanny pack walks towards them, waving to the little kid who is shaking in excitement, and sends them all a kind smile. "Five dollars for three turns," he tells them. "You want the big prizes, you gotta catch the middle ones."

Montana nods and goes to hand him the cash, but her hand bumps into another. It's warm and it makes her stomach knot and her heart stop. Lexi looks at her, she looks back, and for a moment the world disappears and it's just the two of them.

But Montana, scared of the feelings she finds herself caught up in, is the one to snap herself out of it first. She shakes her head and hands the man five dollars. "I'm paying," she tells Lexi, not turning back to look at her.

A wave of guilt hits Lexi hard, and she feels nauseous. She doesn't want to spend her life worrying about one person, she doesn't want to kill herself to stop another from doing the same, but she cares about Montana — she cares a lot — and she isn't sure that feeling is going to go away anytime soon.

Montana steps back and plays on her phone to allow Lexi to fish for the prize her brother wants. Montyʼs eyes are all over the place, he just wants the two girls to communicate. But they're both too afraid of rejection — Lexi rejecting their relationship and Montana rejecting any sanity she could claim.

And within minutes, the prize is won and Lexi is walking away.

"You promised," is all that Monty mumbles before storming off from his sister and searching for Ashtrayʼs truck.

Which leaves Montana alone again. In the carnival, where shit hits the fan for every teenager in East High.

Montana sits on her phone for a little while, but doesn't actually do anything on it; she swipes through her home screen to make it seem to everyone around like she's actually got something to do, to make it seem like she's not completely lonely and screwed in the head.

She wishes she could be the kind of person to beg for forgiveness, to tell somebody exactly how she feels and to allow herself to be in love. She wishes she could find Lexi, tell her exactly how her mind works, how every little thing about herself is confusing and that she really knows nothing about herself, but what she does know is that she needs her. Because Montana Lestari is in love with Lexi Howard. And her mind simply will not allow it. She wishes she could just smash her head off the wall and get a brain transplant. Maybe then she'd work a little differently.

After a while of sitting alone, two girls finally approach her. Cassie Howard and Maddy Perez. They've spoken to Tana a couple of times, gone out partying with her a fair amount, and she's pretty fun to be around — she usually makes parties a little more interesting, she's the perfect person to do molly with when they're feeling crappy about their boyfriends.

"Hey," says Maddy, towering above Montana who sits on the bench, "wanna get high with us?"

No. No. No. Montana should totally say no. If she says no, then she can prove to Lexi that she can do the right thing. That way, she won't have to beg Lexi to take her back as a friend. That way, Lexi will just come to her. That way, Lexi will be proud. She should totally say no. If she says no, everything can go back to normal.

But Montanaʼs mind says, "Fuck yeah, I wanna get high."

Cassie giggles and pulls the girl up from her seat on the bench, and the three girls link arms as they walk towards Ashtrayʼs truck.

"Shit," says Montana, "he won't serve me."

"So hide," Maddy tells her, pushing the girl to the floor underneath the truck.

All three hold in laughter as the boy obliviously sells molly to them while she listens from below. But when she jumps up as they leave, Ashtrayʼs eyes go wide.

"Wha — hey!"

"Quick, he's gonna catch us!" Cassie giggles as the three girls run away with their arms linked.

"Not with those little legs, he's not," says Maddy.

They bin the pretzels and get on with the drugs, and Montana turns back into the person everybody knows her as. Without Lexi Howard by her side, Montana Lestari carries on with her reputation of not giving a shit.

❤︎

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 girls stand around the magic mirrors, checking themselves and each other out as they spectate their whole lives. Being high together, Cassie and Maddy really opened up on their situations with Nate and McKay, to which Montana responded with a rant about why she hates men and suggested that they skin their families alive and feed the boys their mothersʼ flesh. You know, that casual friendly support stuff.

"What about you, Tana?" Cassie asks as she slowly spins around in front of the mirrors.

There is a reason Montana usually sticks to pills, cocaine, ket and acid  — things like weed and molly make you all in touch with your emotions. "I think I'm in love with your sister," she admits aloud for the first time ever. But her mind doesn't process her words given her current state.

"Oh..." The blonde Howard rests her head on Montanaʼs shoulder. "That's nice. I think she likes you, too."

"Bitch, who isn't in love with Montana?" Maddy speaks up, taking her time to pose differently in front of every single mirror.

"That's true, I'm hot," the girl says, running her hands through the curves of her waist, down to the top of her thighs. "But Lexiʼs, like, you know...different. She makes me want to like myself."

"Why don't you like yourself?" asks Cassie, twirling around in front of the mirrors again.

"Because I don't deserve to be liked," Montana answers.

She can feel the room spinning, she can climb on all the walls, and she doesn't know if she wants to smile or cry. Everything is confusing and she isn't having a good reaction to this drug. Even on it, the only thing she can think of is Lexi.

"I feel like this is a turning point," Cassie states as the three girls walk around in circles, staring at a thousand versions of themselves through the a million mirrors.

"Totally," agrees Maddy.

"Mhm," hums Montana.

"We should just pick the hottest, most confident, bad bitch version of ourselves, and be that for the rest of the school year."

"Yo," says Maddy, and all three burst into giggles.

❤︎

𝗠𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗮 𝗶𝘀 hurling into a trash can when Fezco finally finds her again. Somehow, after feeling all the love the molly have her, she managed to get herself some things that made her feel good. Vodka, sex and LSD. But the girl she fucked shortly ran away when Montana listed all the ways she was going to hurt herself tonight — and bought herself a gun to prove  it. She's pretty scary when she's on drugs, and totally self-damaging, and way too open about her bad thoughts.

"Yo, Tana, we're goin' now, you're done," the man announces, taking her by the arm and practically dragging her back to the van, where Ashtray and Monty are currently passed out together on the couch.

Montana pushes Fezco back and runs away with wild giggles. She finds herself at the chili stand. Maddy has just made her grand entrance, and exit when Nate took her away, and the Jacobs family are beyond pissed. And it's not just the main family there.

Brian Jacobs and...Nyla Lestari stand side by side, smiling and kissing each other. Montana freezes and Fezco catches up to her.

"Tana," he tries, but she's still frozen.

And then it happens. That moment when you can't breathe, when you're so focused on something that the rest of the world slowly blurrs away. You're trapped all alone in the darkness and the only thing you can to is clutch your chest and beg for breath.

Sweat runs down Montanaʼs forehead, tears slip out of her eyes, and her legs give out as she slides to the ground, gasping for air.

❤︎

𝗠𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗮 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗶 has had her fair share of public meltdowns — she's practically famous for her fire starting and fight ending — but Lexi Howard still has yet to witness one for herself.

Until now.

She goes so crazy that not even the drug dealer can pull her back from the chaos that erupts from her body when she spots her mother with Brian Jacobs. When she looks that man in the eye for the first time since court.

"EVERYBODY, FUCK OFF!" Montana screams from the bottom of her lungs out of nowhere, taking everybody by surprise.

Hearing her furious voice, Lexi flinches and looks up from the bench she's sitting at. Montana stands at the front of the chili stand, and in her hand is a gun. It shines under the moonlight and everybody can see it. Children, teenagers and adults scream and run as she shoots into the air, but Lexi stays where she is.

Montana steps closer to the family behind the stand, and all they see is fire in her eyes. Her mom approaches her first, her face as angry as her daughterʼs. They look so much alike, their faces mirror one another, but the deep hatred they share is clear when the first fist is thrown.

"Montana, go away," Nyla tells her furiously. "You've ruined enough for us, now go back to wherever it is you came from." Her daughter ignores her words. "Montana, I will call the police, you're dangerous."

Everything goes silent for a moment, and everyone around waits for something, anything.

Then, Montana finally bursts through the haunting tension. "I'm fucking dangerous?" she asks hysterically, pointing the gun to her chest in a way that terrifies Lexi. She throws her arms out to point at the man standing beside her mom. "Do you even know the man you're standing beside?"

"You mean the man who has done nothing but protect my from your psychotic meltdowns?" Nyla retorts, getting up in her daughterʼs face.

Montanaʼs mouth drops. "He's the reason I'm like this!" she cries, standing on her tip toes. "It's all his fucking fault!"

Nyla shakes her head. "No, it's your fatherʼs fault, Montana — he's the one who exposed you to things you shouldn't have been exposed to at such a young age. Blame your worthless, piece of shit dad, but don't you dare blame my family."

Montana just scoffs. "The irony of your words, Nyla, it's truly laughable."

Brian then takes a daring step forwards. "I'm calling the police, I don't feel safe around you," he states, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

Like, who says weird shit like that? Obviously, he's just wants to make himself look innocent for the audience. Hiding the fact that he's really the most dangerous person here.

This is it. This is when she truly looses her shit. She ditches the gun, grabs her mom by the hair and throws her to the floor, repeatedly punching her in the face in front of an audience of a hundred people. Nobody tries stopping it, everybody is scared.

Lexi watches with her mouth open. This is Montana Lestari, this is the girl she has heard so much about.

Brian leaps forward and peels the girl off her mother, but in return she grabs the closest thing to her and slaps him over the face with it. A burning hot, metal spatula — enough to make him wince and cry out in pain as he drops her.

"This was all you!" she cries, getting up into his face, the cooking equipment still in her hand. "This is what you fucking created!" She takes the spatula and brands her arm, not even flinching with it burns straight through her skin.

"I did nothing wrong, I will not have you spreading false —"

His hands are now bubbling in a fryer. He screams in pain as the boiling water tears apart his flesh, and to everyone listening it feels like a slasher movie.

"You feel that?!" she asks, tears running down her face as she yells at him. "You feel the burning of your whole body?! You feel yourself thinking death could be better than this?!" She grabs his neck and throws him off the table, smashing his head into the hot metal of a tin full of chilli. "That's how you made me feel!"

Sirens scream, flashes of blue and red pass. Everything goes by so quick. Nlya pulls her daughter off her husband and begins violently attacking the teenager, screaming about failed abortions or some shit, and the cops slowly drag both girls away from the scene.

Hearing all the commotion outside, Monty is awoken from his sleep and leaves Ashtray on the couch as he leaves the van. Then he sees what's going on. "Tana?" he asks sadly. "Mom?"

"Monty, go back in there," Fezco tries telling him, but the kid shakes his head and sprints towards the noise.

"Montana!" he cries as she is pulled into the back of a cop car. "Tana!"

A gentle hand is placed onto his shoulder. "Come on," says Lexi Howard, voice soft and quiet. "We'll be better help if we meet her at the station."

(a/n: i absolutely despise this chapter. like everything about it is just ew. i hate writing dramatic scenes but i love the drama. i apologise for the shittyness) — tay <33