Tick. Tick. Tick.

A rusty grandfather clock’s fragile hands move in an endless circle of stress and uncertainty.

8. Solve the system of equations. x = 2y…

The plastic, slightly scratched and grayed, is peeling off of the laminated study guide that Mr. Johnson passed out. What appears to be years of dust have collected on the sheer plastic lying above what should make sense to me. This is the first time that the Special Help math program has the funds to operate, but I’m still as useless as this paper.

Usually, I’d try to force myself to refocus my tired mind on this tiresome work, but my head is too full of questions that I’d rather not think about. Like where you should’ve been right now.

Or where you are.

My eyes dart around my frigid, still, silent classroom to find Adriana. My eyes lock on her perfect hair, perfect outfit, pink stationery. Everyone always loves her, appreciates her, and surrounds her with their sympathies for the slightest inconvenience. Her parents love her, everyone chooses her. She is wanted. Lucky. I lean on her, but I’m not sure if she’s still set on carrying the weight.

Ring
Ring
Ring

The bell rings, and I feel my two divided personalities playing tug of war in my mind. One hopeful, the other despondent. I pass my test into Mr. Johnson’s wrinkled hand, heaving my bag over my tired frame. My shoulders hang low, a cloak of invisibility. His heavy breath suggests discontentment, years of burdens of troubled students. Maybe I’m a burden. I don’t really have a clue who I am.

School is an old, storied building. But you couldn’t tell from the outside. The ramp from the top story to ground level is a steep downhill drop, fresh concrete laid over the summer.

My footsteps plunge deep into paper-white snow, clear and pure. It’s comforting icy blanket lays over a beautiful winter backdrop. I watch little boys and little girls at the park, playing family with their plastic dolls that mean something in their fragile little hearts. If only that stability could’ve lasted inside me, free from this cage I carry along.

“Adri!” I shout, noticing Adriana not far from me. She doesn’t hear me, my wavering words lost with the wind. I shouldn’t bother her.

Old, rubber-bottomed snow boots cover my frozen feet, but a matching leather jacket keeps my heart warm. My father’s old leather jacket. If only he’d known me longer, maybe I could’ve held on.

I stare down at my old watch. 4:45. Mom would want me home by now.

“Ah!” Boiling water thrashes against my wrist as dry spaghetti plummets into my old pot. An unfamiliar reminiscence hits me, of cooking with my father. Those days are far behind me, years away. If only the world couldn’t be so cruel.

I set our greasy kitchen alarm clock to 10 minutes, but my heart sinks to my stomach watching it tick away. Mom should be home by now. I wonder if she’s left me too, my fractured heart wails.

I just wish she wasn’t my only option.

I jump out of my kitchen bar stool at the eerie noise of a creaky door. An impossible wish enters my head every time I hear a key jiggle into our rusty lock. Stolen pieces of childhood memories click into place, wishes of a wonderland whisked away with time. But my heart falls through my stomach as I hear the gold key I’ve known for far too long click into place. The wrong place.

“Hello?”

Mom strides into the house. Her scrubs reek with the smell of antiseptics, a long day at the hospital shows in her tired eyes. Long, straight, sleek hair the color of a fox’s fur falls to her waist. She’s so quick to mention her excellence, that you can almost sense her illustrious reputation from afar.

“Paris?”

Like the city, full of life and color. Its vibrance fades nowadays, life drains with absence. My happiness deteriorates like a sunken ship in the deep end. No one looks for it, and no one notices it’s gone. The riots ended an eternity ago but never left my mind. I fix my knotted hair and smooth my shirt with shaky hands as she comes in.

“I need to talk to y-”

“Not now, Paris. I just came home, give me a break!”

I apologize and run to my room. The emptiness of silence after years of excuses widens a persistent void that no dinner could fill, breaking a heart already broken. A red rose encased in years of solid ice.

But still, she’s all I have. She’s the only one who’s held on to the weak link I’ve become.

But is that so?

New footsteps trace the shape of a never-ending hairpin around my old, knotted faux-fur rug. My own eyes feel cloudy with a judgment that’s supposed to be wrong. An out of body feeling. I watch myself, possessed by some sort of rage and enigmatic explosion, dial his phone. I’ve been pulled away from him, fought over like a rope in tug of war. Mom won, she seemed all too content to rip apart a home. A string of lights that no longer have electricity.

A volcano of painful memories rises to the surface. The colors that my family once painted faded all too fast. Maybe he forgot about me.

I’ve grown up without him, I haven’t heard the sound of his voice in years. Numbers trail off my fingers and onto the keypad, as eager as my longing mind.

Ring
Ring
Ring

Standing, teetering, nearly falling on the edge of a long-frozen deep end. A wish to be able to test the waters beforehand persists. Still, it gives me the courage to dive, to try, but my clumsy feet trip and fall in instead. The water so unsure of me, that it’s mutual, but I’ll never learn to swim if I don’t paddle.

“Hello?”
“Dad?”

End