As I Am

Chapter Two

Dedicated to Fanganator because her story Abrogate is amazing and you should definetally check it out (:

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Two

          I know better than to sit by my window the next day. As I come down the spiral staircase from my lighthouse window, deciding what to do. Dad is at the doorway, half between being inside the house and outside. He pauses when he sees me, but doesn’t remove his hand from the door knob.

            “Good morning, Bam,” he says with a smile. His glasses catch the light from outside and I can’t see his eyes. “Want to come with me to work?”

            I shake my head and walk past him towards the hall. “I’m fine.”

            I lay sprawled on my mother’s comforter hours later, staring up at the white stucco ceiling despite the bright sun coming in through her square windows. My legs and arms are all stuck out, making me look like more of a crime-scene than simply a teenager who has nothing better to do.

            “Why are people so strange?” I ask without realizing I spoke out loud.

            My mother’s fingers stop typing on the laptop across the room and her pause makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have said anything at all. Interrupting her writing process while she’s basking in her muse is one thing, but asking her a question – not to mention a random, uncalled for one - for the first time since the accident might have just caused an impending mother-daughter day.

            I expect her to go read a parenting handbook for how to respond to such a question or at least ask me why I would say something, but instead, she surprises me.

            “What a strange question to ask,” she says. “I actually don’t think I have an answer for that one.”

            Instantly, a giant elephant appears in the room and sucks the air out of every corner, ever drawer and I feel like the unsaid tension could suffocate me. The way she said that one leaves a feeling in the air as if everything is fine, as if it wasn’t the first time I spoke to her not only directly, but willingly. Even she herself pauses over her keyboard, wondering if maybe it was something she shouldn’t have said.

            Little paws thump on the floor but I don’t lift my head to see. Only a moment goes by before a flash of grey jumps up onto my mother’s bed. My cat, ironically named Cat, pads over to me, testing each step on the cushiony bed before he takes a step. Eventually he makes it to me and stands on my stomach.

            “Want to go get your pictures developed today?” Mom asks, turning around in her chair. I can only see her middle from the view underneath Cat.

            “I don’t really have that-“ I cough as Cat steps on my throat in attempt to get into a sitting position. “That many pictures. I’ve only taken a few since we got here.”

            “But you still have some on your camera from before me moved, don’t you? We could buy some tape and you can stick them to your walls, like you did back home.”

            I think about how almost every inch of my four white walls are covered in photographs that are important to me and cringe. So many of them have Cade.

            “I’m fine.”

            As Cat steps off my stomach, I can see that my mother is looking at me with an expression somewhat close to stern.