Reckless Play | ✓

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  I stared down at the small dark dot printed on the crumpled yellowish map I held in my hand, wondering how such an abstract thing as distance could be measured and then drawn in a paper I could so easily hold.

Between the coloured lines signaling the rutes and rivers, the dots looked like an art composition. In some places they seemed to have been grouped together by a gifted hand, making small irregular forms, while in others they were dispersed like the artist forgot about them and they got lost in the middle of the vast space.

But I knew better, even when they seemed to be struck to each other, there were hundreds of kilometres pulling them appart.

Absently, I let my index finger trace the short line from my hometown in Marietta, Ohio to Danville, Kentucky where I'm living now or I might say, the place I'm leaving behind.

I'd always hated the distance that separated them. The distance that separated me from my mother. The distance that seven years ago separated my parents and changed my life for worse.

Now I wondered if crossing that distance would turn my life upside down again.

I hoped it did.

Letting out a long hopeful sigh, I set the map on my bedside table and stood up from my comfy possition on the bed, walking towards the window that overlooked the front yard. I looked out at the neighbourhood that had me trapped since I was a seven year old.

I hated it.

It hasn't always been like this though, but since my father remarried five years ago, it had been insuferable. Olivia, my stepmother hated my guts, she didn't need to tell it to me, it was written all over her face when I came back from school, in the glances she threw my way as my father kissed me goodnight and every time I succeeded on something at school.

And don't forget her daily remarks about my apearance. I always thought that me being half Asian didn't help matters. Yeah, I was part Philippine. So what? I'd die before being ashamed of that. I always thought that if she had problems with that she should get over it. She never did.

I never told this to dad. Even though I loved him and he never stopped showing me love, our relationship wasn't the same. Olivia made sure that he never had time for me, taking him to expensive dinners and all those fancy things that I never got an invitation to. I tried to confront him several times about it but I didn't want to ruin their relationship and he sure was a grown up man to figure out that she was using him by himself.

My mother had no idea of this either or I believed she would have taken me away with her sooner.

So the last time I talked to my mother on the phone and she told me to come back home, I didn't even mull it over. I wanted to escape this. I didn't want to be this invisible girl anymore. I wanted to have friends and for people at school to notice me. I wanted to be cared for, I wanted to feel beautiful once again.

Olivia's watchful eyes were always on me, and I've been hiding and withholding myself from living like a teen for so long that I almost didn't recognize whom I was. The loose clothes and the tight bun were a nice way to get rid of my stepmother's jealousy, but they costed the few friends I'd made during the first years in town.

Resting my head on the widowsill, my gaze swept through the street in a last goodbye.

"Kalley, honey, are you ready? the bus isn't going to be waiting for you." I heard my dad shout from the door.

"I'm on my way!" I shouted back as I turned arround to pick my backpack from the floor and run down the stairs, not missing the disgusting look Olivia threw my way as I crossed the livingroom.