Tempest.

Being sixteen, one could say that Evangeline had all of the normal, teenage angst and feelings that she was supposed to. She felt invisible, inferior to her older sister, Emmaline. Emmaline was on to great things, changing the world once she leaves high school. Evangeline... well... all she had was her writing. Books and books full of poetry she never got tired of. Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and all of the greatest poets in history. Notebooks full of stories and journal entries from characters not her, but achingly similar in certain aspects. Each character in her stories took on part of her. The living in someone’s shadow. The rich parents who don’t seem to care. The creative ability that she possesses. No character was 100% new and fresh. There was always a recycled piece of her.

And as she recycled another trait she possessed into a character, her sister called for her to wake up. Secret? She hadn’t even slept yet. It’s 7:00 AM and she’s been up for 26 hours. She was an insomniac. Always had been, she thought.

“Yeah!” She shut her notebook and shoved it into her bag, going over to pull on jeans and a hoodie since she didn’t feel like putting effort into her appearance today. She pulled her hair up messily and shuffled down the big wooden staircase into the kitchen, bypassing the foyer where her father stood as her mother tried to fix his tie. It was like this every morning. And, like always, she grabbed an apple from the basket on the counter, and carefully sliced it into 8 equal pieces with the shiny paring knife before dropping them into a small plastic bag and sneaking out the back door, not even waiting to acknowledge her sister.

Evangeline cut across the yard swiftly before finally making it around the block a moment later, She was still a few blocks away from the school, not being able to see it because of the trees casting over each side of the street and around the houses along the way. Most people thought this town was absolutely gorgeous (their words, not hers) but she hated it. The small minded rich people who don’t actually care about their children and let them go party every weekend and get addicted to meth without their parents knowing.

Her mind whirred with a new idea for a story; the plot already playing in her head with fully developed characters acting the parts out. It had always been a bit strange to her, how fast she could just conjure up characters and storylines, but that was what she breathed. What she loved. She got lost in her mind a little, walking without really taking things in or paying attention, and before she knew it, she was at the front door of her school, pulling it open and sliding in unnoticed by all of the kids sitting in The Commons. Getting to her locker, she spun the dial combination and grabbed her French book before going to the Library. She was in Study Hall first period, so she was lucky enough that she could just write more and not worry about actually doing anything else. She did all of her homework right when she got home so she could write. That’s always how it’s been.

By the time lunch rolled around, she walked through the front door of the school to sit out back in the tiny little garden they had. It was for the science classes. Every year, each class had a certain section to take care of. Flowers, fruit, vegetables, herbs, stuff like that. Last year, she had to grow onions. She would go home afterwards and scrub her hands as hard as she could but never get the smell off. She hated that class.

“There you are!” Evangeline turned her head to catch Ryan walking through the door with a smile, his bright yellow skinny jeans fitting into the surroundings somehow. He sat next to her with an exaggerated sigh and pulled the candy bar from the front pocket of his backpack. Ryan Turner was Evan’s gay best friend. He was a crazy good artist, mostly sketching and using chalk and pastels, but when he grabbed a canvas and some paint, he could create the most beautiful pieces that Evan had ever seen in her short life. Instead of replying, she pulled out her notebook and started writing again, enveloped in the silence that usually took over their lunch period. Neither of them minded, really, it gave them time to think about their respective projects.

“So…Alex asked me out today…” Ryan broke the silence with a nonchalant loll in his voice. Evan’s eyes widened

“Please tell me you said no. He’s a freaking stoner who always had his ass hanging out of his jeans. And I’m sure no one cares about what kind of underwear he wears…besides you.” The boy next to her just gave her a stern look.

“Of course I said yes. Evan, he’s more than you think he was. I’ll bring him tomorrow so you can actually talk to him and get to know him, okay?” And Evangeline reluctantly agreec, just so she could go back to her writing.

Her walk home was as uneventful as ever, kids from the elementary school zooming by on their bikes and giggling loudly, which pulled her from her story making process. And it pissed her off. She really didn’t like kids. The rest of the school day was as uneventful as her walk. They watched The Great Gatsby in English, learned…something in Math (she wasn’t paying attention), and played wiffle ball in PE, which she got out of, thanks to Ryan, for forging a note from her mother about how she hurt her ankle the night before. She hated school. She didn’t want school…didn’t need it to write. All she needed was her imagination. Her creativity.

She reached the house a few minutes later, pulling up her sleeves and going up to her room, dropping her bag on the floor before collapsing to her bed and pulling her notebook out. She turned to a fresh page and wrote the date at the top.

“I haven’t slept in 33 hours and I haven’t eaten in 3 days. This is my normal. It’s routine for me. I’ll be up for days, down for a week, up for days, down for a week. I don’t eat for a week, I eat a tiny portion that would be fit for a toddler, only to feel sick and throw it up. Eating is…completely unappealing. I don’t understand why some people just eat…all the time. It’s gross. I just…ugh. I don’t even know. I threw that apple away when I got to school; just like all the other ones. Ryan doesn’t even know. It’s not an eating disorder. There’s no way. I’m safe…just weird. All teenagers are different, right?”