last resort

s i x

I stumble onto another picture of London, but of my favorite store; Drop Dead. I won't even be able to shop there anymore. Now I have to watch my cousin rub her clothes in my face the way she usually does to attempt in jealousy. I don't get jealous over forced jealously.

"Hey," my mum's voice coos softly, her head popping in between the doorframe and the door. I have the ideal James Bond door, it never makes a noise unless you knock on it. "What ya' up to?" 

My glance scans her quickly before falling back to the screen in front of me. She stroll into my room with her arms crossed behind her back, as if she's innocence's goddess.

She lost the cardigan, her bare, pure arms out on display. A strong sense of disgust slaps over me when I remember the way Casey looked at me when I went to grab my mother. I had to steal her back, otherwise they would've had to deal with her the rest of the day. I doubt if they would like to spend too much time with her, since I myself sometime get the urge to tie her shoelaces together. Only a little.

"Tryina' put a portfolio together," I imitate her heavy American accent. She has the heavy Texan accent, even though she's a full-on East Coast born babe.

She sighs heavily at my crude attempt, shaking a weak grin off her face. She slaps her hands together in front of her, kicking her leg up before thudding her sole down on he hollow wood. The echo blasts as far as the crusts of the room, the vibrate softly felt beneath my weight at the foot of my bed.

"For what?" She asks, slumping her weight down next to me on the edge of the bed. The mattress pushes me up, a few throw pillows tumbling off the edge of the bed, in resort of the violent way she plopped down. I have too many pillows, in anyways.

The zipper of a pillow slams into the wood floor, the sound emphasizing by the hollow sound my room gives. I have yet to remove the haunted sound of my walls, and I don't know how. Maybe actually unpacking everything I have boxed up, but it's never fun to assemble new furniture. My dad's no handyman and Telle can't even hit a nail without breaking his limbs. I have to nail my own furniture together. I'm the only one whom ordered things you assemble yourself, my dad got the interior designer to assemble the rest of the house.

"To be the photographer of the school magazine," I mumble, copying the photo of Lora doing her handstand. It's after all one of my better pictures, and has sentimental value to me. I can't bear to let it fly off to waste. I open another folder and name it, Magazine Portfolio, pasting the photo of her in there.

Woe, what a lot of work. Call the department of labor, I'm overworking.

"Someone's in your good books," she snorts teasingly, watching me scroll through the pictures.

If she's been around more often like a normal mother, she would've known that I have a dispersed bad and good book. I don't just jot a name down in my good books because the person supplemented me with an offer that might make or break my already crummy school career.

I desire to dislodge the famous sound from my name and drop it in the rubbish bin. It scares the shit out of me when I hear my name being whispered from eye to ear, while I am in the same room. Or being ambushed from all sides. I cringe, a defeated chill chasing down my spine.

"That one's good," she says, pointing her manicured nail against my laptop screen, killing the picture with a white spot at a—much overrated—red telephone stall. The shiny red paint gleams like a lightbulb in the weak sunshine penetrating through the clouds.

I copy it an paste it in the folder, giving in to the cliché-ridden society. I continue to scroll through the rest of the photos. "You should put some portaits you've done on Telle or Lora," my mum says, tucked away into the pictures her eyes scan up.