Wrong Number

Wrong Number [35]

18 Years Old

Kylee grinned as the diploma was pressed into her hand, as her principal smiled proudly at her and said, "Congratulations."

Kylee grinned as she rejoined her row and watched as her classmates walked onto that very same stage as she did and shook the same hand and grasped a similar diploma.

Kylee grinned as another speech was made about going out into the world and making something of yourself.

Kylee grinned even as her mother sat down with other parents, long after Kylee had walked up on stage, dressed in black and one leg crossed over the other. She would later meet up with Kylee, smelling of the expensive wine Kylee knew too well.

Kylee grinned when she met up with her friends after throwing her cap into the air, bare only because her mother expected nothing less than a crisp attire and would have been enraged if Kylee did anything to make her graduation clothing her own.

But Kylee grinned the most that day because, even with the prospect of her mother breathing down her neck when she would race off to her campus when she could, even as her mother kept her thumb pressed suffocatingly against her daughter daily, Kylee knew something her mother did not:

She was slowly breaking the chains her mother had spent eighteen years creating around her. She was escaping the mold she had become accustomed to, and had been given the chance to ignore expectations she was forced to meet around her neighborhood and community.

Her college was fresh and she would be unknown in this new world.

Kylee could be comfortable knowing something important, something her mother also knew: Her mother's days were limited. She can control Kylee through college, her finances and her living arrangements — for now.

But one day, Kylee would grow tired of it.

And both of them were waiting for the storm to hit.

So, as Kylee lay in her bed, no longer a high schooler, she grinned. Because one day, be it in the middle of college, or after she's done with it — she knows she grows closer to never being controlled and broken down again.