Harder to Breathe

Sitting in her room, procrastinating the mountain of homework she had sitting on her desk, MacKenzie scrolled through the social media on her phone. She only paused briefly when the ads would periodically populate on her screen.

Minutes that felt like hours had passed when an ad appeared on her screen that peaked her interested.

An app that keeps your identity completely anonymous and still lets you post and chat with people online?

Curiosity got the better of her and MacKenzie downloaded The Quiet App.

After some time of changing between all the different tabs, changing her username to something that would help keep her identity as confidential as possible, and scrolling through more of the posts than she cared to admit, MacKenzie finally felt like she had a pretty good understanding of the app. You write your post - whatever you want to say - and people can reply to you or directly message you about your post.

MacKenzie decided to write a post just to see what would come of it. She slowly typed out “I’m new here. Anyone wanna talk? Who knows, maybe we’ll even become friends!”

She put her phone on the bed and sighed.

I know this homework really needs to get done but I would so much rather see what happens with this post.

“Mac, I hope you’re working on your homework because I know there’s absolutely no way you’ve finished a weeks worth of homework in the 45 minutes you’ve been home.”

“Well, hello to you too, mom! My day back to school was great, how was your day?”

MacKenzie heard the gentle steps as her mom made her way down the hallway, eventually ending right outside her bedroom door.

She quickly glanced from her phone to her desk and had just begun to open one of her textbooks as her mom walked in.

“My day was fine, thanks for asking. Are you just now starting on your homework?”

“No, but I did just start my Spanish homework; did you want to help?” was how MacKenzie responded to her mother's’ correct assumption.

“Don’t get smart with me Mac. I’m your mother and I know if I don’t ask about it, your homework won’t get done,” Janine responded with a sigh, “I hate that I have to always bug you about it but, you know as well as I do that it’s necessary.”

“Okay mom, can I do my homework now? I want it to be done and over.”

With a quiet sigh, Janine stepped out and quietly closed the door behind her.

MacKenzie picked up her phone and opened The Quiet App to see if she had any messages from her post.

Much to her surprise, she had received 34 messages in the ten minutes since she’d posted. Most of them did not seem promising. The first 13 alone started and ended with some variation of ‘hey’.

MacKenzie appropriately responded to the ones that she felt might have a good conversation coming. She put her music on and set her phone down on her bed with the screen down so she wouldn’t get distracted again and sat down at her desk.

“Okay,” she said to herself as she started to open her notebook, “time to focus on this homework so I don’t get grounded.”

An hour and a half had passed when MacKenzie heard her mom calling that dinner was ready. She looked at the half page of her Spanish homework that she was able to finish and sighed. MacKenzie always struggled with Spanish. Even her trip to Honduras last Summer didn’t seem to help her with Spanish at all.

“MacKenzie!” Janine yelled again, “you’re the only one we’re waiting on, hurry up or your dinner will be cold!”

“Coming!” MacKenzie yelled so her mom didn’t think she was ignoring her and hurriedly put her notebook in her Spanish textbook so she wouldn’t lose her place and ran out to the dining room for dinner and a long discussion about her first day back at school that she didn’t want to have.

“How does it take you twenty minutes to get from your bedroom to the table every single night?” Is the first thing Dylan, MacKenzie’s little brother, says when she sits down.

Before MacKenzie can respond, her mom is already reprimanding him.

“Dylan stop it, you know she’s been working on homework and she could have been in the middle of doing something when I called for her to come out. As long as it doesn’t actually take her twenty minutes to get here, we can all wait for her, just like we would if it were you.”

With that being said, MacKenzie gave a subtle smirk in Dylan’s direction that was meant to be avoided by everyone but Dylan.

“Mac! Will you say grace for us since you’re so happy to be here tonight?”

“Yeah, dad, I will,” MacKenzie said softly, knowing her father had seen the smirk she threw Dylan’s way.

Dinner was going smoothly enough - all the questions about school and homework were directed to MacKenzie’s siblings - until her dad asked the question everyone had been skirting around all evening.

“So, Mac, how was your first day back at school?”

Everyone at the table froze. All heads turned to MacKenzie to see what she would do.

“You know, if the school wouldn’t have sent you my transcript, you guys would never have even figured out I was cutting non important classes to go to work. And besides that, it was only a week. It’s not that big a deal but everyone seems to think it is.”

“I’ll take that as ‘it went really good, dad. How was your day?’ and tell you that my day has been alright. Except for the fact that I’ve been on the phone with your school all day trying to make sure that you’re really at school and doing what you’re supposed to be doing.”

Before MacKenzie could respond, her mom cut in with, “Matthew, do we really need to do this right now? This is not a conversation that all the kids need to hear. We can talk to Mac after dinner.”

“Thanks mom.”

After everyone finished eating, MacKenzie helped clear the table and clean the kitchen with her mom.

Once everything was cleaned up, MacKenzie went back into her room and started working on her English homework, putting her Spanish aside for now.

It was nice for her to focus on something that made sense to her. Something that she never seemed to have questions about.

As soon as she started to really get underway on her English, she heard a knock at her bedroom door followed by it slowly creaking open.

“We really need to fix that door for you so you don’t wake the entire house when you get up for school. Can I come in?”

It was her dad. She should have known, what with everything that happened at dinner.

“Yeah dad, of course.”

Matthew came in and sat down on the corner of MacKenzie’s bed, while she turned around in her desk chair to face him.

Matthew sat, silent for a moment before saying, “I’m sorry for what I said at the dinner table, but, it’s true. I have been worried about whether or not you’ve been at school today and I’ve been talking with your school about other options so you don’t feel like you need to lie to us about whether or not you’re at school at all. You’re a senior now so that means that you have very few classes that you are required to take. You are required to take an English class, a physical education class, and two of your Concentration Class electives. That leaves you with four classes that you have to fill with something.”

He paused, briefly, and MacKenzie knew he wanted her to either understand where he was going or respond.

“Okay, so, what does that mean for me? Other than the fact that I have to find something to fill the last half of everyday.”

Matthew looked at MacKenzie like he wanted to get angry with the way she was responding but decided better of it.

“Well, your school offers an elective course that is only available for some students. Seeing as you’ve been cutting class to go to work, we think it would be a good idea for you. It’s an elective class called Work Release. You go to your morning classes and then at lunch, you are able to leave school, go to work, and get school credit for it. You just have to have your boss sign a paper that the school requires saying that you will meet certain requirements.”

MacKenzie sat quietly, processing what her dad just said.

“Okay…” she said slowly, “what’s the catch? It can’t be that easy to only have half days of school...can it?”

Matthew sighed at her perspective on the solution before he continues, “technically, it’s not a half day of school since you’re getting school credit for going to work. Do you want to do it?”

“Yeah, sure, I don’t see why not. We’ve already established if I have other pointless classes, I don’t go and I go to work anyways. Where do I have to get the paper for Robert?”

“The lady at the front desk that I talked to said you could pick it up from her when you go to school tomorrow. Until you get your paper signed and brought back to her, you do have to be in school,” Matthew said as he got up and closed her bedroom door. “Now get back to your homework; you still have lots to do.”

MacKenzie finally finished her Spanish homework and three in the morning. The Quiet App didn’t help her focus at all.

Just in time for me to wake up in three hours, MacKenzie thought to herself as she crawled into bed.

“It’s ridiculous that everyone thinks they have to monitor everything I do like I’m a child,” she muttered to herself with a sigh.

The first half of school was a blur. MacKenzie couldn’t on her school work at all.

The only thing that seemed to pull her out of the daze she was in was her best friend, Sheli saying, “what has been up with you lately? I barely see you and when you finally show up to class, you’re barely even there.”

“Sorry Shelb, I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately since my parents found out I was cutting class to go to work. I feel like I’m on suicide watch or something.”

“How about you come over after school? I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages and I got a new puzzle that we can start.”

MacKenzie mulled over the idea and what she would have to say to her parents to get them to agree to let her go and decided it wouldn’t be worth it.

“I wish I could, but you how my parents are; I’m obviously grounded and they wouldn’t let me come over, even if I said it was for school. They were so pissed when they found out.”

The bell suddenly rang, seemingly out of nowhere, and everyone scurried to get to their next class.

“Well at least text me when you can! I miss you and have a lot to tell you. Maybe I can come to your place so your parents can still ‘keep an eye on you’!” Shelbi said as she turned to go to class.

“Okay, sure, I’ll see what I can do.”

The rest of MacKenzies day at school felt like it lasted forever. When she got home, she added a new stack of homework to the already towering pile she had to finish, and texted her mom.

“Do you mind if Shelbi comes over to help me with my homework tonight?”

MacKenzie checked Quiet, set her phone down after she replied to a couple messages from the day before, looked at her Work Release paper to see what she was actually agreeing to, and went to the kitchen to get a snack for when she did her homework.

When she got back to her room to start her homework, her phone was ringing with a call from her mom.

“Hello?” She answered the phone with a hopeful tone in her voice, knowing she was being called from the text she just sent her mom.

“Hey Mac. Sorry, I’m driving. But, you know that I don’t care if Shelbi comes over, she’s a good kid and I think she’s a good influence. I wasn’t the one that grounded you though, either. Have you asked your dad if he’s okay with it?”

“Mom, you know he won’t agree to it. We both have homework to work on and that’s really what we’re going to do. Just because you didn’t ground me doesn’t mean you can’t be the one to let me see people other than family outside of work and school. I’m already getting stir crazy.”

“You have to ask your dad Mac. I won’t say yes without you talking to him first.”

“Fine. I guess I’ll call dad but you and I both know how that’s going to end so don’t say I didn’t try to avoid it.”

“Goodbye Miss MacKenzie. Your dad and I love you,” is the last thing Janine said before hanging up the phone.

MacKenzie sighed and looked down at her phone for a few minutes, preparing herself for the argument that was likely to come from asking her dad if she could have someone over while she was grounded.

Before she could bring herself to call her dad, MacKenzie sent a text to Shelbi, knowing she was probably wanting to know what was going on.

“I talked to my mom and she’s making me ask my dad. Things don’t look promising but I’ll let you know. I’m about to call him.”

The phone rang twice before Matthew answered.

“Hello?”

It was like he knew what she was about to ask. MacKenzie felt what she thought was dread well up in her stomach.

“Hey dad. I talked to mom and she said I’d have to ask you. Can Shelbi come over tonight to help me with my homework?” MacKenzie asked hoping that already talking to her mom would help him make up his mind.

“MacKenzie, you know you’re grounded. That means no going to friends’ houses and no friends coming to our house. I’m sure you’re mom told you the same thing too.”

MacKenzie sighed out of frustration and told him, “actually no. She told me she didn’t care if Shelbi came over.”

“Well, I’ll talk to your mom and let you know if anything changes. But don’t tell Shelbi she can come over yet. Because for now, it’s a no.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I already told her. It’s just dumb that I’m even grounded. It’s not like I was skipping school and doing drugs or anything. I was just working.”

Matthew sighed before he responded. “I don’t want to get into this with you right now. The punishment is the punishment. It’s not going to change just because you don’t like it.”

“Okay well, I’ll let you go so you can talk to mom. Talk to you later.”

“Alright, see you.”

Click. Just like that, MacKenzie felt like she was being pushed further and further away from her friends and people she was close to.

She texted Shelbi one more time, “just talked to him. He said he’ll talk to my mom and let me know but for now it’s a no,” and opened her water bottle so she could get started on her homework.

After she finished her English homework, her phone beeped with a text from Shelbi.

“It’s all good, my dad has been home and didn’t take his medication so my mom asked me to stay here with her. Maybe another day. Unless my dad leaves and your parents change their minds.”

MacKenzie put her phone down to focus on homework. As she was about to get started again, she heard the front door open and the ‘click-clack’ of her mom's heels from work.

“Mac, I hope you’ve been working on your homework!” She yelled as she walked into the kitchen to put her things away.

“Yeah, mom, in here.”

Janine softly knocked on MacKenzie’s bedroom door as she opened it. She came in and sat down on MacKenzie’s bed before saying anything.

“I talked to your dad on the way home. He said he told you Shelbi couldn’t come over but I talked some reason into him and got him to agree to let her come help you with your homework.”

MacKenzie smiled a little before saying, “thanks, mom, but she isn’t going to come over after all. She said she has things she needs to be home for today but maybe another day.”

Janine looked at MacKenzie with a sad expression. She knew exactly how MacKenzie felt and wished that she could do something to change it.

“Stop looking at me like that, I’m fine. I’m just tired of doing literally nothing but homework until three in the morning,” MacKenzie said before her mom could feel more sorry for her.

“Three in the morning?! Why on earth are you doing homework until three in the morning?”

“Have you seen this stack of homework? It all has to be done by Friday. It’s why I wanted Shelbi to come over and help me with it because I missed so much school and she has notes that will help me understand what all this is. Especially the Spanish. She always seemed to understand that better than I did.”

“Okay, but you need to get a solid night’s sleep. Three hours of sleep is not enough for you. Does Katherin know Spanish? Maybe she could come up and help you with your Spanish.”

“I appreciate the effort mom but, no; she knows French and that won’t really help here. I’m just going to get everything else done and then take the rest of the week to focus on my Spanish.”

“Okay…” Janine said with uncertainty, “let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”

Once her bedroom door was closed, MacKenzie put off her homework for a little while longer for a break from school and schoolwork and turned her attention to her phone. She had a few people that she really enjoyed talking to on The Quiet App.
If anyone ever asked for her real name, she always gave a fake name - Brooke - to be safe. One of the people MacKenzie was engaged in conversation with said his name was Benjamin and he lived in Chicago Illinois. He said he was 23 and MacKenzie really likes him.

She had a tendency to love the words people said instead of the words that they acted on. And Benjamin said all the right words.

He’d already made a habit of reassuring her doubts without even knowing what they were. He used gentle words when he could tell something was bothering her. He was patient when she couldn’t be.

“My dad has been hounding me to get my homework done lately and won’t even let me see my friends. The only time I even get to leave the house is for school and work and it is driving me nuts.”

MacKenzie hoped he would respond soon; she wanted to feel like someone actually wanted to talk to her.

While she waited, MacKenzie sat down with her homework again and got started on her week old English homework, knowing it would be easier to finish than her Spanish homework.

When she finally had all of her English homework caught up, Janine knocked on the door, cracked it open, and said, “I just wanted to let you know that dinner is a free for all, so whenever you’re hungry, you can have whatever you can find.”

“Okay, thanks mom. I’m god for now.”

“How much homework do you have left?”

MacKenzie gestured to her still huge stack of papers and books and said, “I got all my English done so now I just have Spanish. If I can get it caught up, can I drop it when I get my Work Release approved? Dad said I only need two Concentration Classes, English, and Physical Education so I figured that my Concentration Classes can be my Choir classes since that’s actually my area of Concentration.”

“We’ll talk about it when your dad gets home and see what he thinks but I’m sure that would be fine. At this point, it’s your fifth year of Spanish. If you’re going to learn anything more, you’re going to do it on your own time. Did the trip to Honduras with your dad last Summer not help you understand it better at all?”

“Not really, they all speak so fast and I barely know any so I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. Even if they used words I knew. There’s so many different variations of it and I have no idea how to make sense of any of it.”

MacKenzie paused for a moment to consider then decided to continue, “and not only that but, everything she tells us in class is just information I’ve already heard before since I’ve taken the class so many times. I just want to drop it when I get Work Release.”

“I’ll talk to your dad and see what he says. Now get back to your homework. You still have quite a bit,” Janine said and closed the door with a quiet click.

MacKenzie checked her phone once more to see if Benjamin had replied and she’d somehow missed it.

“Still nothing,” she muttered to herself as she felt herself sink into her chair. “I’ll just zone into my homework and forget about him.”

By the time MacKenzie realized she was hungry, she knew it was probably too late to go out and get food but she did it anyways.

“Dylan! You scared me. What are you still doing up? Don’t you have to get up for school in the morning too?”

Dylan looked at her like she was crazy for asking then said, “Yeah, I have school but I’m always up this late. Mom and dad don’t care as long as I’m quiet. What are you doing up this late?”

“Mom and dad let you chill out here watching tv as late as you want as long as you keep it quiet? The only reason I’m up is because I’ve been doing my homework and I got hungry since I didn’t eat dinner.”

“Oh yeah, you have two weeks worth of homework to get done,” Dylan said with a chuckle. He loved that MacKenzie was the ‘problem child’ right now. It gave him time to catch his breath from seemingly always being in trouble with his parents, “dad is going to come out and get mad at you if you eat something that makes too much noise.”

“Okay, genius, what do you suggest I eat that has no kind of packaging and will be super quiet so I don’t wake anyone up? Nothing? Okay, I’ll just eat some toast and jam like I had planned.”

MacKenzie was tired of feeling like Dylan thought he was better than her and the perfect child since she was the one that was under scrutiny right now. She was used to being in trouble but never when Dylan was being the good kid.

After she made her toast, MacKenzie sat down on the other side of the couch as Dylan and watched tv with him while she ate. The break from the droning monotony of school and homework was much needed and MacKenzie appreciated the company. Even if it was her little brother that was always trying to pick fights with her.

She was about to get up and go back to her room to try and get some sleep when Matthew walked out with Cameron.

“You better keep it down out here. Cameron woke up and walked by both of you without being noticed. Mac, you need to go to bed, it’s late.”

MacKenzie looked at her dad in disbelief and asked, “if Dylan can be up, why can’t I? I am older than he is, you know. If you don’t care if he’s up, you shouldn’t care if I am.”

“Mac, you know you need more sleep than most or you get irritable,” Matthew sighed.

MacKenzie got up without another word and went to go to bed like she planned when her dad and Cameron came out.

“Don’t start with me Mac. It’s late and I’m not in the mood for this.”

MacKenzie turned around and looked at her dad in disbelief before saying, “don’t start what?! I just got up to try and get some sleep. Like you just told me to not even five minutes ago. There’s nothing here to do,” and closed her bedroom door.

“Aren’t you glad I’m the good one now, dad?” Dylan said smugly.

“Knock it off Dylan or you’ll have to go to bed too and I won’t let you stay up to watch tv anymore.”

Dylan quickly looked away and started his movie again while Matthew got Cameron back into bed.