Caramel | A Short Story Collection ✓

8. Barbies

Sometimes life just gets so hard, you wish you could go back to playing with Barbies in your room.

Winner of cheeky_fries contest four!

_____________

"Your card has been denied."

"What?" My head snaps up, my fingers paused in the middle of rooting around the bottom of my bag for a few spare coins. "Try it again."

The store assistant humphs. "I tried it twice. It's denied."

I pull out my purse, scrambling around to find my other credit card. "Here. Try this." I push the card desperately into the slot, typing in the pin code, only for it to beep again.

"It's maxed out." This has begun to get embarrassing; a little boy behind me pulls at his mother's arm, whining about the amount of time they're spending at the supermarket, whilst a young couple tuts in the queue, shaking their head at me as I hold them all back.

"Just... one more time. One of them must work." The assistant looks sceptical, but he tries them both again, even as a baby begins to gurn and the mother talks loudly about complaining to the manager.

"Just... never mind." I snatch my cards back, sticking them in my empty purse, feeling my cheeks burn. "Thanks for your help." I turn on my heel and get the hell out of the supermarket as fast as I can without running.

I reach my rapidly ageing car, that looks a little out of place amongst all the bright shiny new ones parked alongside it with enough seats at the back to host an army of children. It takes me two tries to unlock the door manually, the clicker on my keys long broken, and I fling my bag into the passenger's seat and slam the door shut behind me. I pull down the sun visor, flipping up the mirror so I catch sight of the many boxes squished into the back of the car. I was finally evicted last week, and I still haven't found a place that will take me due to the various bank loans I have piling up.

Don't cry. Don't you dare cry.

I can't stop my lip from trembling, my hands from shaking. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to leave the relative safety of the crowded car park, and find somewhere to park for the night, a much harder job than you might imagine. Sooner or later, my stash of chocolate is going to run out and given the current situation when it comes to buying things, I will literally starve to death.

I am running out of options, and my fuel's getting low. I am getting desperate, and desperation reminds me of the thought I've been having a lot lately.

I could go home.

But that... that wasn't an option. There's a reason I left there in the first place. I had dismissed all sensible thoughts and careers, pushing away the chances of college for a much more satisfactory slot - becoming a famous actress. I had ignored all warnings that fame was not so easy to achieve as I imagined, and that I would never achieve my foolish dreams.

I can easily recall the last time I'd seen my parents, almost three years ago, on the lawn of their sub-standard American house. My father's face had grown prematurely old, marred by thick lines of worry, but my mother was the opposite, her face contorted by the red flush of fury.

"If you leave this house you will never come back!" Her screams still echo inside of my head, frequently hurled at me again in my nightmares. I can never stop re-living the moment where the people sworn to protect and love me kick me out into the streets just because I'd dared to pursue my dream.

But my dream had crashed and burned, and now I'm sitting in a crappy car containing everything I have left in this world. A single tear rolls down my dirty cheek as I stare into the mirror, watching a smiling family behind me push a trolley by as though they came straight from a commercial.

I feel like I'm going to die. 

Maybe it'll be from the fumes of the car, maybe I'll eventually starve to death or maybe I'll just get so tired of struggling through that my body will simply cave in on itself.

Each scenario is different, but the threat they pose is the same. I am running out of time, and admitting defeat and heading back to a home that no longer belongs to me is out of the question. As I ponder my meaningless existence, I can't help thinking of the pig-tailed little girl I once was, for which death was but a distant dream of passing away peacefully as I slept. That little girl had names picked out for each of her six children, and an imaginary friend to chase away the loneliness of being an only child.

I wish I could go back to being that little girl. I wish life was as simple as deciding whether to eat a chocolate bar or gummy worms as a treat. I wish I could go back to being overwhelmingly innocent, to living in a pink painted room and playing with my Barbies every single day.

But life is more complicated than that. I am stuck in a terrible position, and I do not have the luxury of being a little girl again. I can no longer play with Barbies and dream the day away. That little girl had hopes and dreams for the future. I might have failed her in every way possible so far, but I can't give up on her. I can't just die here. I have to do something.

I owe it to that little girl to try and fix my problems.

Despite everything, I have to persevere. I will have to do the thing that makes me shudder with disgust.

I will have to go home. Home to the house where my childhood bedroom remains untouched. Home to the mother who hates me, the father I made I'll by leaving. Home to the whispers of those that surround us, of my failure at life and my irresponsibility.

I start the car.