Chapter 15 (post three)

Author's note: So here is the next and last section of chapter fifteen! I still have not cracked open my books yet today -- I am so bad! But I will, I will,  or that's what I keep telling myself anyways lol. Anyways, read away.

Chapter fifteen, section three:

Jake called, but talking to him that way wasn’t the same as talking to him in person. Without being able to see his smile and watch his eyes, I couldn’t get the same high as I had the night before. I think he could tell, since after a while he asked, “Are you ok? You seem a little down.”

I made up a lie about a test I had the next, which accidentally cut our conversation short, since he insisted that he was only distracting me and that I needed to study. When he hung up, I realized he really had been distracting me, but how I wanted that distraction back.

I tried to occupy myself with homework, but everything bored me. I remembered when all I would need to do when I was feeling down was wander downstairs.

I would typically hide in my room until I felt so lonely I could hardly take it, and then slowly, in my PJs and a hoodie, I would creep down the stairs. My mom would be about, cleaning something or reading, usually in the kitchen. My sisters would be watching television in the living room if they weren’t up in their rooms. I would sneak past my sisters into the kitchen, where my mom would look up from whatever she was doing and know instantly something was wrong. When I flopped into a chair, she’d sit on the other side of the table, reach across for my hand, and say, “Honey, is everything ok?” This was the cue for me to start my rant on whatever it was that was bothering me. I would go on and on, my mother hardly getting a word in, but that was what made me feel better, ranting, and she understood that.

Then, sitting at my desk in my cold blue room, I closed my eyes and pictured my mom. She wore her hair back, in a low bun or ponytail, and very little makeup, or so it always seemed. She could take an hour in the bathroom and emerge looking as though all she’d done was apply some mascara. Her eyes were a deep blue, caring and kind when they looked into mine. They could sparkle when she laughed, or break your heart when she cried. My mother didn’t dress much like a mother. I’d always been proud of that, as though that made her much cooler than all my friends’ mothers. I don’t know if it was this or her open, kind energy that made all my friends like her so much. When they’d come over, my mom would talk to them as if they were her own friends, and I never felt bad for leaving a guest while I went to change or look for something because of this. My mom’s hands aged without her permission. She could hide her small wrinkles with her talent with a brush and palette, but her hands I watched age slowly. They began to remind me of my grandmother’s, back when I had seen her and they were talking to one another, although my mother’s hands were still much smoother.

I could feel her hands wrap around mine as tears dripped down my face.