The Bridge on Spring River Road

     My phone was going off like crazy. I was too afraid that my brother would call, so I couldn't turn the volume off. It mysteriously lost the ability to vibrate a few months ago. Every time that my notifications went off once, 10 more came at the same time afterwards.

     I was glad that I had not gone to that birthday party. It seemed like it wasn't exactly the place to sit in a corner and read. I needed to get my drawing done anyway. Casually, I reached over to the other side of my desk and threw my phone, speaker down, into my bed. That quieted it down a bit. It didn't stop my friends from obsessively posting selfies on instagram though.

     My pencil tapped against the paper. Tucking my reddish-brown hair behind my ear, I strained to come up with something. At this rate, I wouldn't get any of my art homework done by the end of this weekend. My mind wandered to the events of last year. Almost exactly a year ago, my parents were visiting a friend and their car crashed and fell into the river. They died, and the police found the car, but not their bodies. The cops came up with the story of their bodies being thrown from the car and washed away in the currents of the river. I only just went back to living with my brother a month ago. Relatives had kept me until my brother was old enough to be my legal guardian. 

     I held back tears from the memory. It had happened so fast, one moment they were here, the next they were gone. Not very many kids at school knew or cared, but I was glad that only a few knew. I didn't want to get bombarded with people saying "Are you okay?" or "I feel sooo bad for you". Close friends sent cards, my class all signed one. The attention just stirred up bad memories.

     "Stop thinking about it!" I told myself firmly. I didn't need to distract myself from my homework. It wasn't a good idea to let myself wallow in grief.

     A new sound erupted from my phone. After a moment, I recognized it as my ringtone. I crossed the room and picked up my phone.

     "Hello?" I asked warily. The phone number looked familiar but I didn't remember who it belonged to. It may be Eli calling from work.

     "Hey," It was my brothers voice. "I wanted to tell you that I was going to be home late, so you might not see me before you go to bed."

    "Okay," I replied. "See you tomorrow then."

    "Bye-oh! Wait. I have a surprise for you, I can't tell you what it is but I have it. It's from before the, uh, incident"

     "Ok, just set it on my desk if I am asleep. Bye!"

     He hung up, and my phone started making its own sort of mechanized music as it tried to catch up on all of the notifications that it received during that short call.

     This time, I decided to be smart and I covered the exploding phone with a pillow, then placed a comforter over it. The noise dulled, and I was able to go back to my work. My skills are landscapes, but there are almost no options, since hills, valleys, cities, meadows, and pretty much every other existing landscape are hard to make look original. I surveyed the other options on the assignment list. I could do a portrait, but I'm not very good at drawing faces. Mainly just the shape of a body. I might actually be able draw a person if I ever took my nose out of a book long enough to actually look at people.

     An idea sparked in my head. My name, Rose, was of course the flower rose, but my mom also named me it because of her favourite book character. Although the character had absolutely nothing to do with the idea, the thought of books brought me to my comic book collection beside my bed. Me and my dad had been good fans of DC comics. Over the years, I had become accustomed to drawing the characters included.