Status: Cautiously Active
Crazy Girl
Her.
There is a fly invading my personal space.
It is flying back and forth in front of my face daring me, just daring me to reach out and swat it away with its beady little eyes. The fly lands on the far end of the wall in my house and stares at me, from my vantage point on the staircase it is all I can stare at.
She is moving in today, her and that son of hers. She is moving boxes, acting helpful and making my dad smile, something that normally I might appreciate but don’t today because she is encroaching on my space, on my heart.
My dad has asked me three separate times if I am okay with this, with them moving in and each time me answer is the same, ‘whatever makes you happy’ because it has been so long since I have genuinely seen my father happy. But the truth? Well the truth is that my heart is slowly breaking apart.
I am slowly breaking apart.
With each box they move in another piece of me dies. A large part of my dies and I am scared I am going to have nothing left when they are done. Around me workers and my new family move to make sure that that one last box is moved before night time falls and we tumble into a deep sleep, exhausted physically from today.
I am exhausted mentally, I had promised myself that I would not feel anything today, that I would not let them moving in affect me so but it does and I have. I had promised myself with the late night cold air flowing in and out of my lungs that I would not feel a thing, and I have broken that promise, it hurts more than I can understand.
My father is struggling after his pack a day addiction, that up until a week ago he was still enjoying, to walk back and forth to the moving truck and into our house, my house, their house, with a heavy box of someone else’s belongings that really have no business being in my house.
A heavy body squeezes past me on the stairs carrying a box and wearing a Lombard support belt. He is one of the movers they hired late last week who smells like cheap cigarettes and even cheaper whisky. He bumps me lightly and apologises, quickly moving to get the next box in the truck outside. I slide over on the stairs slightly not wanting to be in the way like my father thinks but out of the way.
A keen observer.
If I turn my head slightly I can see into the kitchen, where one of the new residents of my home stands, an older woman in her early forties with frosted tips, starts mixing up a batch of lemonade.
I have never, in my entire sixteen years, known anyone to actually make lemonade from scratch before. I consider yelling out and telling her we have some of the pre-made stuff but I don’t. I don’t want to help her. I don’t want to talk to her and I don’t want her living here making home-made lemonade.
But I don’t get what I want… ever.
I blink twice like I used to do as a child, my mother having told me that is the way to wish, and wish with all my mite that she will disappear. When I open my eyes she is still standing there smiling at me, trying to warm me up to the idea of her and this new man my father is turning into, something he never did for me or my mother. She is a fool is she thinks a smile will make me like her and her son encroaching on my personal space.
“Hayden!” My father growls low in his throat, he reminds me of a dog, all bark and no bite, though I keep this to myself because he is ready to blow.
I am often the cause of my father’s explosive temper. I suppose all the stress from moving two households into one has put him further on edge, but that is hardly my fault. It’s not like I have done anything truly bad, I have just refused to help him, his fiancée and her son move into my house and my heart.
It is a moral thing not helping with the move, not a bratty thing which is what my father doesn’t understand. I don’t feel like explaining this to him so I simply lean back on the stairs with a smile.
It looks as if he is struggling from screaming bloody murder at me. Good, I think stubbornly, he deserves it. My eyes fall back on the fly on the wall, it is still there staring at me and my father, waiting to be killed.
The fly on the wall moves and I with it.
I follow it into the kitchen but I am not sure why. The open floor kitchen, dining room and living room now houses two of everything, two microwaves, two dining room tables, two fridges. I am not sure why my dad and Marissa, my soon to be step mum, did not organise this better, but I don’t bother asking, I want to pretend I don’t care. Because I don’t… I think.
I wonder what will happen to all the extra things, I hope they will get rid of Marissa’s things and leaves my fathers, my mother’s things. I don’t know if I could forgive my father if he threw out the last traces of my mother.
No, I know I wouldn’t be able to forgive him. My father gave up asking me to help half an hour ago and has been since sending me nasty glares, but things really have been moving much smoother now that he has decided to leave me alone.
Marissa has tried four times to force feed me her lemonade, force drink rather, and every time I have plain refused. I don’t need her lemonade, and I certainly don’t need her, I need my mother. The thought stings my heart hard and I gasp in pain clutching at my chest in frantic anxiety.
My mother.
I haven’t thought of her for a while yet the pain hurts as if she left yesterday. Left, yeah right Hayden, I think bitterly, she didn’t leave, she died. I shake away the thought and focus on the new microwave, it is newer than ours and has more buttons. I still hate it even though it is cleaner. Probably easier to use but I do not care. The microwave that sits in the small alcove belongs to my mother, or belonged rather, and that makes it invaluable.
I blow a loose strand of hair from falling in my face and make my way from the kitchen to the front yard, where a large truck has just pulled up with a second batch of Marissa’s things. I watch as two men, both movers, jump from the cab of the truck and make their way to the back, lifting up the rolling door on the back of the truck.
My dad begins moving a box marked valuables off the truck and inside, I consider sticking out my foot and tripping him smashing the valuables but I don’t, just in case they belong to someone that Marissa lost like my mother. I may hate her but I am not evil.
“Finally decided to help?” My dad asks as he walks past grunting under the weight of the box, I refuse to answer him.
I watch him walk inside and leave the box on the new floral couch when he walks past me again I head inside and rifle through the box. I am not sure why I want to know what is in box but I do, I want to know what Marissa thinks is valuable, glass figurines or something more important, something less physically fragile but emotionally fragile. I am disappointed when I reach into the box and find some china figurines of ballerina’s.
I follow the fly up the stairs and across the hall from my room. I want to step inside but then I have always had a hard time with boundaries. I know he, Ryder is no more thrilled about this move than I am. It is the one thing, and I do mean one thing, we can actually agree on.
The door swings open and Ryder stands there staring at me, we are almost the same height so I barely have to look up. I stand my ground and pretend that I just ended up here, not that I went searching him out, searching him out to see what he thinks about all this, the move and the cohabitating together under one roof.
I know I think it stinks.
“Hayden?” Ryder asks softly as if I need him to be soft with me, I know what this stems from and I know he thinks I am having another ‘episode’. I ignore him and push into his room, seeing what changes have been made.
Ryder’s new room has been my dad’s office for as long as I have been alive and to see it changed so drastically scares me a little. I am not so good with change. I need routine and structure to survive, and this big change is leaving me a little winded and anxious.
“Wow” I murmur staring at the changes, gone is the desk and wall mounted guitar, replaced with a stationary guitar and a big bed with black sheets, manly sheets. I giggle I have never thought of Ryder as manly in my entire life. He is just Ryder, that annoying guy who occasionally picks on me and kind of saved my life that one time.
“Different huh?” I spot the fly now, mounted above Ryder’s bed. I want to climb up the bed and grab the fly hold it close and never let it go and I am not quite sure why. But it is all I can think about at this moment. It irks me to no end.
“Really,” I breathe, Ryder stares at me taking me in as if over the holidays I have somehow changed. Ryder was away staying at his father’s cross country over the holidays and only arrived back yesterday.
He looks the same as he has since seventh grade when he fell hard into puberty and a growth spurt. I do not think I look all that different, except for my boobs they have definitely grown I think annoyed. I like flying under the radar, being incognito but these new boobs will make that hard for me, boys are sure to notice them.
The fly starts dancing back and forth in front of my eyes, taunting me again. I swat at it and try to catch it, I think I might let it out the window so it does not have to feel as trapped as I do in this home.
“Hayden?” Ryder asks suddenly weary, I stare at him the fly landing on his forehead, melding into a million colours,
“Yeah?” I ask distractedly.
“What are you doing.?” It is right now I realise the truth, the real truth that my brain is playing tricks on me, that what I am seeing is not actually real. And I realise, belatedly of course, that Ryder has noticed as well.
“Are you okay?” Ryder asks again and I nod my head, annoyed.
Annoyed at my mind and annoyed that it had to happen now in front of Ryder. I chew on my bottom lip, blinking twice and wishing with all my mite that I could for once just be normal.
It is flying back and forth in front of my face daring me, just daring me to reach out and swat it away with its beady little eyes. The fly lands on the far end of the wall in my house and stares at me, from my vantage point on the staircase it is all I can stare at.
She is moving in today, her and that son of hers. She is moving boxes, acting helpful and making my dad smile, something that normally I might appreciate but don’t today because she is encroaching on my space, on my heart.
My dad has asked me three separate times if I am okay with this, with them moving in and each time me answer is the same, ‘whatever makes you happy’ because it has been so long since I have genuinely seen my father happy. But the truth? Well the truth is that my heart is slowly breaking apart.
I am slowly breaking apart.
With each box they move in another piece of me dies. A large part of my dies and I am scared I am going to have nothing left when they are done. Around me workers and my new family move to make sure that that one last box is moved before night time falls and we tumble into a deep sleep, exhausted physically from today.
I am exhausted mentally, I had promised myself that I would not feel anything today, that I would not let them moving in affect me so but it does and I have. I had promised myself with the late night cold air flowing in and out of my lungs that I would not feel a thing, and I have broken that promise, it hurts more than I can understand.
My father is struggling after his pack a day addiction, that up until a week ago he was still enjoying, to walk back and forth to the moving truck and into our house, my house, their house, with a heavy box of someone else’s belongings that really have no business being in my house.
A heavy body squeezes past me on the stairs carrying a box and wearing a Lombard support belt. He is one of the movers they hired late last week who smells like cheap cigarettes and even cheaper whisky. He bumps me lightly and apologises, quickly moving to get the next box in the truck outside. I slide over on the stairs slightly not wanting to be in the way like my father thinks but out of the way.
A keen observer.
If I turn my head slightly I can see into the kitchen, where one of the new residents of my home stands, an older woman in her early forties with frosted tips, starts mixing up a batch of lemonade.
I have never, in my entire sixteen years, known anyone to actually make lemonade from scratch before. I consider yelling out and telling her we have some of the pre-made stuff but I don’t. I don’t want to help her. I don’t want to talk to her and I don’t want her living here making home-made lemonade.
But I don’t get what I want… ever.
I blink twice like I used to do as a child, my mother having told me that is the way to wish, and wish with all my mite that she will disappear. When I open my eyes she is still standing there smiling at me, trying to warm me up to the idea of her and this new man my father is turning into, something he never did for me or my mother. She is a fool is she thinks a smile will make me like her and her son encroaching on my personal space.
“Hayden!” My father growls low in his throat, he reminds me of a dog, all bark and no bite, though I keep this to myself because he is ready to blow.
I am often the cause of my father’s explosive temper. I suppose all the stress from moving two households into one has put him further on edge, but that is hardly my fault. It’s not like I have done anything truly bad, I have just refused to help him, his fiancée and her son move into my house and my heart.
It is a moral thing not helping with the move, not a bratty thing which is what my father doesn’t understand. I don’t feel like explaining this to him so I simply lean back on the stairs with a smile.
It looks as if he is struggling from screaming bloody murder at me. Good, I think stubbornly, he deserves it. My eyes fall back on the fly on the wall, it is still there staring at me and my father, waiting to be killed.
The fly on the wall moves and I with it.
I follow it into the kitchen but I am not sure why. The open floor kitchen, dining room and living room now houses two of everything, two microwaves, two dining room tables, two fridges. I am not sure why my dad and Marissa, my soon to be step mum, did not organise this better, but I don’t bother asking, I want to pretend I don’t care. Because I don’t… I think.
I wonder what will happen to all the extra things, I hope they will get rid of Marissa’s things and leaves my fathers, my mother’s things. I don’t know if I could forgive my father if he threw out the last traces of my mother.
No, I know I wouldn’t be able to forgive him. My father gave up asking me to help half an hour ago and has been since sending me nasty glares, but things really have been moving much smoother now that he has decided to leave me alone.
Marissa has tried four times to force feed me her lemonade, force drink rather, and every time I have plain refused. I don’t need her lemonade, and I certainly don’t need her, I need my mother. The thought stings my heart hard and I gasp in pain clutching at my chest in frantic anxiety.
My mother.
I haven’t thought of her for a while yet the pain hurts as if she left yesterday. Left, yeah right Hayden, I think bitterly, she didn’t leave, she died. I shake away the thought and focus on the new microwave, it is newer than ours and has more buttons. I still hate it even though it is cleaner. Probably easier to use but I do not care. The microwave that sits in the small alcove belongs to my mother, or belonged rather, and that makes it invaluable.
I blow a loose strand of hair from falling in my face and make my way from the kitchen to the front yard, where a large truck has just pulled up with a second batch of Marissa’s things. I watch as two men, both movers, jump from the cab of the truck and make their way to the back, lifting up the rolling door on the back of the truck.
My dad begins moving a box marked valuables off the truck and inside, I consider sticking out my foot and tripping him smashing the valuables but I don’t, just in case they belong to someone that Marissa lost like my mother. I may hate her but I am not evil.
“Finally decided to help?” My dad asks as he walks past grunting under the weight of the box, I refuse to answer him.
I watch him walk inside and leave the box on the new floral couch when he walks past me again I head inside and rifle through the box. I am not sure why I want to know what is in box but I do, I want to know what Marissa thinks is valuable, glass figurines or something more important, something less physically fragile but emotionally fragile. I am disappointed when I reach into the box and find some china figurines of ballerina’s.
I follow the fly up the stairs and across the hall from my room. I want to step inside but then I have always had a hard time with boundaries. I know he, Ryder is no more thrilled about this move than I am. It is the one thing, and I do mean one thing, we can actually agree on.
The door swings open and Ryder stands there staring at me, we are almost the same height so I barely have to look up. I stand my ground and pretend that I just ended up here, not that I went searching him out, searching him out to see what he thinks about all this, the move and the cohabitating together under one roof.
I know I think it stinks.
“Hayden?” Ryder asks softly as if I need him to be soft with me, I know what this stems from and I know he thinks I am having another ‘episode’. I ignore him and push into his room, seeing what changes have been made.
Ryder’s new room has been my dad’s office for as long as I have been alive and to see it changed so drastically scares me a little. I am not so good with change. I need routine and structure to survive, and this big change is leaving me a little winded and anxious.
“Wow” I murmur staring at the changes, gone is the desk and wall mounted guitar, replaced with a stationary guitar and a big bed with black sheets, manly sheets. I giggle I have never thought of Ryder as manly in my entire life. He is just Ryder, that annoying guy who occasionally picks on me and kind of saved my life that one time.
“Different huh?” I spot the fly now, mounted above Ryder’s bed. I want to climb up the bed and grab the fly hold it close and never let it go and I am not quite sure why. But it is all I can think about at this moment. It irks me to no end.
“Really,” I breathe, Ryder stares at me taking me in as if over the holidays I have somehow changed. Ryder was away staying at his father’s cross country over the holidays and only arrived back yesterday.
He looks the same as he has since seventh grade when he fell hard into puberty and a growth spurt. I do not think I look all that different, except for my boobs they have definitely grown I think annoyed. I like flying under the radar, being incognito but these new boobs will make that hard for me, boys are sure to notice them.
The fly starts dancing back and forth in front of my eyes, taunting me again. I swat at it and try to catch it, I think I might let it out the window so it does not have to feel as trapped as I do in this home.
“Hayden?” Ryder asks suddenly weary, I stare at him the fly landing on his forehead, melding into a million colours,
“Yeah?” I ask distractedly.
“What are you doing.?” It is right now I realise the truth, the real truth that my brain is playing tricks on me, that what I am seeing is not actually real. And I realise, belatedly of course, that Ryder has noticed as well.
“Are you okay?” Ryder asks again and I nod my head, annoyed.
Annoyed at my mind and annoyed that it had to happen now in front of Ryder. I chew on my bottom lip, blinking twice and wishing with all my mite that I could for once just be normal.