Pretty Please Don't Pinch Me

95. Circles

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I don't even need to open my eyes to know that I am still in my bedroom. Every ounce of hope that I once had is now vanished and is leaving me feeling utterly depleted. I roll over and check my phone to find a message from Scarlett.

"Hey bitch, are you still coming to work, or are you still sick?"

I clumsily type out a response as my eyes squint to the surprisingly bright screen of my iPhone.

"I'm sorry, I'm just not feeling up to it."

I am not at all in the mood to work and have to pretend like this is all okay, when it's not. I'm not meant to be here, and how can I keep this all from my best friend? I just don't want to have to feel the need to put on a fake smile and act like everything is normal.

"Boo you whore."

She quotes from the movie Mean Girls, which elicits a small smile from me.

"Love you too. We'll have to catch up soon for you to tell me about the concert."

I saunter down the stairs at a slow pace and make my way to the kitchen. Opening the fridge, I stand at the door for a minute or two, deciding on what I should have for breakfast, before taking out leftover chicken from last night.

The breakfast of champions, my subconscious sarcastically sneers.

"Really? That's your breakfast?" I hear from the lounge room.

"Yeah," I say, in a challenging tone, just hoping that she'll take the bait and argue back with me. It's all this pent up anger and confusion inside of me that is bursting to get out, and she doesn't continue, only giving me a woah, okay look before going back to her morning television program.

I eat my "breakfast" in peace, as Marnie noticeably stays out of my way before she makes her way to school, and all I want right now is a nice warm shower. Annoyingly, there are no fresh towels left in the cupboard, so I instead walk the distance to my parents bedroom to borrow one of theirs instead. Without knocking, I walk in and am stumped to find my mother still in her pajamas, sitting on her bed with a piece of paper in her hand.

"Woah, what are you doing here?" I ask, taken aback by the fact that she's home.

She never takes a day off work.

I think in the entire duration of my life she has stayed home maybe twice, and only because of severe food poisoning and also when Brooklyn had his appendix out.

"Just looking through some old things of mine," she says quite sadly, and upon closer inspection I notice the paper she is holding is an old photograph of herself. The bed shifts slightly as I sit beside her and view the photograph from over her shoulder.

"You look really pretty there," I comment. "And happy."

"I was," she half laughs while trying not to cry. "And thinner. The world is a much better place when you're a size six."

I laugh and hug her tight from the side, my head resting on her stomach.

I was too caught up in my own life the first time around to even notice how affected my mother was from her past and can't even begin to imagine how she is feeling right now.