Beneath the Surface

Eighteen

Hi friends!

I'm sorry I'm getting this update to you later than I had hoped.

Online classes are really keeping me busy, but I'm doing my best to budget out time for writing as often as I can.

For those of you who are still in school, how are you doing?  This is definitely the strangest semester I've ever had.

Anyways, happy reading!

✿          ✿          ✿

She doesn't remember her first thirteen birthdays.

Has no idea if there was ever a celebration or a party thrown for her.

If she ever had cake or presents.

These are questions on a never-ending page that floats listlessly in her mind.

It doesn't matter.

Today she wakes, sweaty and shaky from her nightmare, and she is eighteen.

There is no birthday breakfast waiting for her.

No presents to open.

Lethe softly hums the notes of the Happy Birthday song to herself as she showers.

They echo off the tiles and swirl in the steamy air.

She pulls on her nicest top, one of the ones that Maggie had given her.

In true Janet style, her mother had taken to buying Maggie clothes that were too small for her to urge her to lose some weight.

Maggie just passed them off to Lethe and had eaten an entire pint of ice cream in retribution.

Lethe had happily accepted them, glad to have some clothes that weren't already thin and threading from past owners.

This one had been her favorite, a soft lilac color that looked nice against her tanned skin.

She tugs on a pair of jeans and fiddles with the beaded bracelet that she wears each day.

It stands out strangely, more likely to be on the wrist of a child.

The plastic strand is old and fraying, the plastic beads cheap.

Shaped like butterflies.

It is not a valuable possession, but she loves it more than almost anything else she owns.

The bracelet's story is lost in the darkness of her memories, but she knows inherently that it is important.

She had been wearing it the day she woke up in the hospital and she hadn't taken it off since.

Taking one file glance in the mirror, she tiptoes to her door and unlocks it.

"First day of college today, right?" Are the words that greet her in the hallway, the smell of beer thick in the air.

Lethe grips her bag tighter, stepping into the living room.

"Yes." She does not meet his eyes, instead studying the bottles that line the fireplace.

She is surprised that he remembered that today was her first day of classes.

He'd only been half-conscious when she had told him.

Eyes glazed and drifting.

Blurry and unfocused in the way that she had come to dread.

Her father clears his throat and she raises her eyes to meet his immediately.