Trapped in Forever

7 ~ Photographer or Daddy?

A/N: I have a question, darlings. Do you guys want an epilogue? Like, one set years into the future (and that doesn't automatically mean it'll be one of those happily ever after pieces with adorable, chubby faces and matching wedding bands.) It wouldn't be for the novel, but more for you guys and your support with the story. Kind of like a thank-you. So it won't be grim with stick-thin Amanda on her deathbed refusing a pudding. Okay, enjoy the chapter! :)

The sun was just beginning to peak out from under the light navy sky with darker clouds roaming its endless atmosphere, a small but strong gold light shining above leafless trees that hovered over pointed rooftops in the cul-de-sac we lived in. Just over the sun, which was just barely a sliver, a flash of pink and orange was being painted. Suddenly, everything that had gone to sleep—birds, the sound of car engines humming, and front doors opening and closing—were starting up again, awakening. Soon, I’d hear a car humming its way down our street, tossing newspapers into birdbaths and wind chimes, and then a pause before you’d hear a car door opening, hurried footsteps, and another thud. Then the car door would close and he, our paperboy, would start driving again and repeating the cycle once more.

I sat, on the chair on the right side of the table, watching the sun peek over the world again and then stars and moon begin to fade before vanishing altogether. A few houses across the street already had flicked on a few lights in their homes, opening their doors to check for the paper, before heading back inside, holding their bathrobe tightly around their skin. The digital clock on the microwave switched from 5:14 a.m. to 5:15 a.m., and I waited. A second later, behind me, the coffee maker gurgled, loudly, and then started to brew, the sweet smell filling the room.

Then, as if on cue, I began to hear the old, rusty springs in my parents’ twenty-year old mattress squeak as one of them—probably my mother—awoke. After a moment of silence, with the exception of the chirping birds resting on birdfeeders outside and the gurgling Keurig coffee maker, waiting for a K Cup filled with vanilla, the sound of their muffled footsteps padding along the violet carpet in their bedroom to the bathroom and the faucet being turned on floated down to me in the kitchen, directly below their bedroom.

As I waited for them to each wash their face and pat it dry with towels that matched the bright green room, I picked at my nails. The Essie nail polish bottle, the one Roxanne had bought me for my last birthday, seemed to look emptier and emptier every time I looked at it. With all the money they spent on name brand clothes and makeup for her modeling, they couldn’t afford much besides Rice-A-Roni so for my eighteenth birthday they gave me an eight dollar bottle of Essie nail polish and a bag of M&Ms I ended up splitting with her. Something in the way my sister looked on, when I had opened the reused Disney princess bag that held the Mulan doll Roxanne got from my aunt when she was nine, and pulled out a bottle of nail polish and M&Ms made me think that maybe I was supposed feel offended. But I was just happy to take a break from using Pure Ice nail polish and that she remembered my favorite color—blue.

Soon after I chipped away a small space of cotton candy blue nail polish off the cuticle of my thumb, I heard my parents’ muffled, slow steps down the stairs and ducked my hands under my thighs. Mom hated it when I picked at my nail polish, mainly because, in her words, I “just left the little pieces of dried nail polish everywhere” for her to clean up.  Their bodies casted a blobbed shadow together in the light that shined in through the transparent blue curtains that hung on either side of the window. My dad was yawning when he stepped into the kitchen, mouth wide open and eyes squeezed shut as he blindly walked on the tilled surface of the floor toward the fridge, hand already reaching out. Just as he grasped the handle on the fridge door, pulling it open and letting the bright, yellow light fall onto the floor, briefly blinding me, his mouth closed and he opened his eyes, scanning the fridge before reaching it and grabbing a gray carton of eggs. When he turned around, on the carton in one hand and adjusting his glasses with the other, he saw me sitting there.