Are You Awake?

|A stolen default|

Waking up at three in the morning wasn't something Cari was unfamiliar with. The only difference the night before was that she hadn't woken up because of the sea of voices trapped inside of her head, but rather a low buzzing sound from her phone. Cari was already half awake when she had gotten the first text and immediately her body had filled itself with a foreign form of excitement, knowing that it probably was the unknown texter who had woken her up.

She had tried to sit up and grab her phone from the nightstand by her bed but had then frozen when she felt arms wrapped tightly around her way too big frame. She had slowly opened her eyes fully as a lump slowly formed in her throat and the air in the room didn't seem to really reach her lungs anymore.

This seemed all too familiar to her, it wasn't supposed to happen again.

Cari had laid her head back down on her pillow, facing her mother, as her bottom lip started trembling. Her mother wasn't ever going to find Cari like that, ever, again. She had promised herself she wouldn't ever be the reason for her mother's tears again. At least not tears of sadness. She couldn't be the reason for the loss of her mother's smile filled with love. But she knew she was. She had failed.

The brown-eyed girl had spent over two years hiding behind a smile that hadn't quite reached her eyes since the day she had started high school. She had spent the two last years of her life making sure her mother knew she was okay. Even though she wasn't. She had put her mom through enough days of her tearful breakdowns in school, hiding in bed for the rest of the night, to then proceed to lie about it later. She hated the look on her mother's face when she woke up; lips pressed tightly together, eyebrows sunken in concern and eyes filled with sorrow, pain, silent prayers and unshed tears.

She had promised herself she wouldn't ever be the cause of that look, ever again, after the hundreds of times she had. She was tired of being the cause of her mother's sadness and loss of love filled smiles and eyes filled with light. She was tired of the pain in her mother's voice and the slight break in specific words, as she washed Cari's face to get rid of the dry tears, asking her if she was okay or how she was feeling, the morning after. Only to receive another lie from the blonde-haired girl.

Almost two years ago she had promised herself she would never show the growing pain in her chest, to her mom. She was never going to shed another tear in front of her mother. She wasn't ever going to let her mom find her buried in bed with dry tears down her red cheeks. She was going to make sure the only thing she ever brought her mom ever again was happiness and love. She was going to make her mom smile. She had promised herself she would.

But she broke the promise.

She had messed up. Why wasn't she able to bring her mother's smile back? She missed the smile her mom seemed to have as default so badly. The smile she would give every human being ever passing her on every street, in every country at every hour of every day. The smile that radiated love. The smile that could make every dark day, the brightest to ever experienced. The smile that made it impossible to not mirror it immediately. The smile she had told Cari about, all those years ago, that was now gone.

The smile Cari's mirror had stolen and wouldn't give back.

But Cari had quickly been pulled out of her thoughts when her phone buzzed again and the tears that had slid down Cari's face became present in her mind. The blonde-haired girl turned over to her nightstand and reached up to wipe away the tears that had stained her face for the second time in only a few hours. She silently reached for her phone and, without looking at it, laid back down, facing her mom. She bit her lip and carefully brushed her nose against her mother's as she whispered out a quiet, "Sorry".

But when Cari had eventually read the messages she had received that night, her heart dropped.

The second time she woke up, after having finally managed to fall asleep out of exhaustion from her unexpected breakdown, she was still wrapped up in her mother's warm embrace. She slowly lifted her head out of the crook of her mother's neck and opened her eyes, blinking rapidly to get used to the brightness from the sun shining through her windows, while, at the same time, trying to meet her mother's soft, light brown orbs.