Demi Lovato Imagines

Posthumous pt.2

"Just drop your bag anywhere," she says, tossing her keys on the table just inside the front door. The same table you ran into when you were four, the corner of it bursting a deep gash on your forehead. Even to this day, that spot still throbs when you get upset, like your body is looking for a physical scar on which to blame your internal pain. 

When you were packing your bag, you wondered what you really needed to take. It was your house, after all. Perhaps you had been kidding yourself but, for the last three years, you had held this image of your childhood bedroom in your head, untouched, exactly how you'd remembered. Eliza asked if you were okay as you felt the blood draining from your face, pressure building in the tips of your toes. You'd nodded, swallowed hard, and slid another bra into the side pocket. The ones at home wouldn't fit anymore, anyway, you reminded yourself. So it wouldn't actually matter if your mom had thrown them away. You tucked your chin into your chest, blinking fast so as to not let the tears get a chance to fall. 

She had picked you up on the street outside. She didn't get out the car but you recognised her face through the windshield, sunglasses and straight mouth. The door didn't budge when you pulled on it. You had to wait for her to unlock it. All set? she chirped although her expression didn't match her voice. You couldn't help but think that it was something you'd say to someone about to go into an exam, or travel across the world on a gap year, or step into the first day of their new job. Not go home. Not to return to the place which was supposed to be home. Yeah, you'd mumbled, looking back and forth between your mom and out the front. Jamie, from your elective class, walked down the street, chatting to another girl you didn't recognise. All at once, you wished that your life was as simple as his looked. 

After your meeting at 'The Bakery', time seemed to move both too fast and too slow. Classes dragged, the material no longer interesting and the professors no longer able to rouse your excitement. Yet, simultaneously, each night you checked off another day on the calendar, you felt like you wanted to dig your heels in and scrape yourself back from the bottom of the page. The twenty-ninth. The end of term. The day you were going home for the holidays. When you'd phoned grandma the day you'd got back from across town, to tell her your plans for Spring had changed, she didn't sound all that pleased. You'd snapped at her, annoyed that she didn't share your feelings of elation. Looking back, you realise that elation lasted only a few days, slowly corroding as you thought about what it really meant. Two weeks with your mom. Two weeks with the woman who was supposed to always be there for you and, for three years, hadn't been. That's completely normal, Eliza had said when you admitted to the apprehension that had raised it's head again, it will be awkward for both of you. But this will be the first step in making it better. A journey of a thousand miles and all that. 

Yeah, you thought. It certainly feels like a thousand miles. 

You nudge an empty can with the toe of your shoe and it rolls along the wooden flooring. It stops when it hits an open pizza box, stacked against a pile of polystyrene containers. The smell of rot, or damp, snakes up your nostrils. 

"You wanting a drink? Or a snack?" your mom says up ahead, disappearing into the kitchen and shrugging off her jacket. "Sorry, I don't have much in."

With a shaking hand, you reach over to the wall to flick the switch. The hallway stays dark, the unusually dim May day casting long shadows up ahead of you. There's a clattering from the kitchen. 

"Mom?!"

She pokes her head out the door, eyes wide, eyebrows raised. 

"What?" she exclaims, breathlessly. You look around then back at her. 

"What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

She looks genuinely confused and there's a few seconds where neither of you speak.