A Broken Road

A Broken Road- 4

I forced a smile onto my face because, even if he did leave me and my mom those many years ago, this has to be hard on him too. Just randomly being forced to take in a teenage girl. A girl that he never even wanted in the first place. And I'm sure with my piercings and bad attitude, I looked like a troubled girl. Which I wasn't, I just liked the way they looked, that doesn't make me a bad person or a difficult teenager. "Thanks." I said and before going up the stairs that were in the living room, I turned and faced Charlie once more. "And for what it's worth, I'm not as bad as I look."

I turned and trotted up the stairs with my black ankle boots thumping on the wooden surface. Following his directions, I opened the second door on the left in the, unsurprisingly, boring hallway of white walls and doors. The room only had a bed in it and everything was just plain white. I was excited to see to large sliding glass doors on the wall, though, and eagerly moved over to them. They led to a small balcony that overlooked the ocean. I could hear the waves crashing from where I stood. Everything seemed so peaceful out here and I felt guilty for feeling at peace right now. My mother just died a week ago and I'm enjoying the sound of water? Ridiculous. I sighed before hurrying back into the room and locking the glass door behind me.

I looked around the room and a million ideas of how I was going to design this room ran through my mind. The room was a little bit on the small side, so I could go for some kind of bunk bed thing. There was a huge open wall so I could paint something on it or put something up right there. The glass doors needed drapes and so did the windows. I just stood there, excitedly thinking about the endless possibilities.

Designing this room will help keep my mind busy so that I don't drown in my grief and I'll feel close to my mom, as painting and decorating our home was something that we'd always done together.

I found the bathroom and cleaned up before going back downstairs where Charlie was sitting on the couch, watching one of those shows where they auction off those storage garages.

"Are you hungry?" he asked me when he turned and saw me standing at the bottom of the stairs.

"No, not really," I said quietly. "But I really like the room," I refused to use the word 'mine' because it wasn't my room. My room was in Indiana, with my mom, in our home. It wasn't here in California, with my supposed dad.

"Good, I'm glad," he still sounded so awkward, like he had absolutely no idea how to talk to me. I felt like a foreign object being forced into a place that I did not belong, like a splinter.

"Yeah, so I'm just probably going to head to bed, I've had a really long day," I told him, turning to go back upstairs. Even if it was only six in the evening, I just wanted this day to be over. And the easiest way to make the day end is to sleep.

"Oh, okay. Goodnight."

"Night," I mumbled, going back up the stairs and into the bland bedroom after finding a red shirt at the bottom of my suitcase to sleep in. It was really big on me, so it draped over my thighs like a dress.

Once I washed up and got dressed in the bathroom across the hall, I noticed two other toothbrushes at the sink. That was odd, there was an extra tooth brush. It was kind of weird, but I shook it off. Maybe he likes options, or he had bought one for me, even though I'd brought my own.

I moved the comforter down and slid inside it like a hot pocket and closed my eyes, but I knew that I was far away from sleep. The light that was seeping in from the large glass doors weren't the problem, I can sleep in the brightest of hours any day. It wasn't even the TV noises from downstairs that was preventing me from falling asleep.

It was the sickening feeling in the bottom of my stomach that was keeping me awake. I never thought it was possible to feel so incredibly homesick. I felt like a five year old at her first slumber party, only I couldn't call my mom in the middle of the night to get her to come pick me up. I couldn't call anybody. Anna still wasn't speaking to me (for unknown reasons) and I couldn't even look at Ricky anymore. I wasn't going home the next day, either. I was never going home again. My mom wasn't waiting for me to return because she wasn't even there. My mom was never going home either, she was gone. Just gone. Forever. Gone gone gone. Forever.