Ellie:
Okay counting my blessings here, cough with a pinch of salt cough.
I got into my dream college but my father hates me for it. I am finally confident enough to wear what I want without letting others affect my choices, but people still ridicul...
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ELLIE
"Have you applied for the internship?" Papa asks, his face a stoic mask through the screen.
"Yeah."
"And have you checked the events I sent you?" He goes on, "I think it's a workshop but I am not sure about it, so you have to might have to look into it."
"Papa, it's a workshop generally on the applications of coding, what use will I have of it?"
The second the words are out of my mouth I regret uttering them. His face morphs into disbelief and anger, creases forming on his forehead and his mouth turns into an upside-down grimace.
"What do you mean of what use?! You used to love coding," No I didn't, you used to force me to love it because you loved it, "You've already picked a career that will be of no use at least put some of your time to use by learning programming languages."
I have been sitting on this chair for way too long and my butt fills tight and achy. But more than that, my head hurts; it's throbbing and pounding and aching and I want to smash my head against a wall and let a bulldozer run over me and I'd also gladly let Parker talk about his vacation to Versailles and Monaco for a whole day non-stop, but please oh god, make Papa stop.
"I am saying this for your own good, but of course you know better," He snarks.
"Papa it's not like that..."
I am so tired.
"You've made it very evident that you can fend for yourself and my opinion is useless," He spats out his word and I flinch.
"Papa it's okay," my voice sounds low even to my own ears, "I'll go to the event, I am sorry for talking like that."
"I don't know when you will start listening to me, you're still a child you don't know anything," He goes on, his voice going on higher and higher.
Tears prickle in the back of my eyes and my chest feels like it's caving inside out. The familiar burn in the pit of my stomach reaches a maddening height, just like it did the hundred times Papa and I had this conversation in the last four years.
"I am sorry," I murmur. I am afraid if I talk too loudly I'll break everything in my house, and punch my laptop screen.
"Always the disobedient kid, who can't see what's right or wrong," It's the last thing he says to me before he hangs up.
When I was sixteen I had a parent-teacher meeting where my biology teacher asked me to leave the class so she could talk to Papa alone. It was a hard day for me, I had fought with Papa consecutively in the last three days. All about the same topic – I didn't want to do Medicine or engineering, I wanted to do something surrounding literature.
I was on the verge of throwing up and my eyes burned from constantly crying instead of sleeping at night. Every second that I was outside my classroom door, felt like I was swallowing glass shards.
I could hear them.
I could hear them so clearly I still hear them when I close my eyes.
"Do you know what's happening with Eleanor?" She asks, her voice soft, and edged with concern.
"What do you mean? Is she okay?"
"I am afraid I don't think so."
Papa sounds worried, "Did something happen in class? Did she do something?"
"At the risk of sounding intrusive, I am going to ask, is everything alright at home?"
"Yeah, yeah everything is okay, what happened?" I peeked through the door to look at Papa gripping the table, and I press down my nails on my phone
"She has been very...off in classes, her energy is very negative and she's always staring off into the void. I've known her for a long time now, and she's a very lively girl, but nowadays she never smiles, she never talks. It's a shell of the person she used to be-" She spots me peeking through the door, "Eleanor, sweetheart come in."
I walk inside on leaden feet, a wobbly smile plastered on my face that takes nearly all of my energy, "Good morning."
"Good morning Eleanor, how are you feeling? Have a seat."
"I am good," Lies.
"Are you alright Eleanor?"
"Yeah," I give her a watery smile but I can feel the cracks widening, I press down my nails on my palms harder, "I am, I am fine."
"You can talk to us you know, what is it? Is it the subject, do you know like the class?"
I remember time slowing down and everything coming to a stop. Time was reverberating forward and backward and in between and I was stuck somewhere in the middle. I remember my heart beating in my mouth as the dam broke. Everything came rushing out all at once and it was all a blur. That was one of the worst days of my life. Papa yelled at me the whole night until I was crawling to bed and I had rashes on my cheeks from crying. He said I was a disgrace to his name and I humiliated him in front of a teacher.
A door bangs open in the living room.
"El, I brought ice cream, c'mere we need to start the new season of Elite," Alexis's voice rings out from behind my door, "Ellie? You there?"
I wipe the streaming flow of tears from my face and sit up groggily on my bed. I don't remember lying down.
"Yeah! Be there in a minute,"
"Cool."
The good thing about going to sleep every night with your heart crushed in your chest as the world falls apart around you, for years, is that you get pretty good at masks. No one can get through them.
