Trapped in Forever

33 ~ Someone Else's Dream

A:N: Sorry for the late update. I was trying to write two novels at once, and it wasn't really working. I wanted this certain feeling from that new novel that it always lacked, so I would focus even more time on it to get it, but I never did. I've decided to abandon the idea and focus on TIF, which works so much better, honestly. School is starting on Tuesday, so I'm not sure how that will affect updates, but since I'm home-schooled, it won't be that big of a difference. Anyway, enjoy the chapter and your dosage of Orion!

By the time when my mother had flipped the pages of the calendar, April and it’s crossed out dates and appointments vanishing and swiftly being concealed by May, and it’s unmarked dates, appointments yet to be made, and the picture of Italy’s ruins, tourists crowding the area with their polo shirts and their cameras strapped to their chests, visors shielding their narrowed eyes, and as its dates were steadily being crossed off with a thick, black Sharpie that was attached to the wall with Velcro beside the calendar, one she had gotten from the funeral home, for free, something of which she had stressed when she walked back to the car, clad in black attire, with the calendar clutched in her hands, things were altering, slowly, strand by strand.

The screeching sound of Mikayla pushing her window open, her heels knocking together in her hand by the straps, and then her faint footsteps across the rough surface of the shingles had stopped. Sometimes, when I couldn’t fall asleep, I would lay awake in my bed and wait for those sounds, as if they were my personal lullaby, but they never came. I thought a few times when I would glance over at her closed bedroom door, her voice muffled or not even there, just the sound of her music blaring filling my ears, if I should say something, but every time I reached for her door handle, I would hear something like a toilet flushing or the doorbell ringing, and then I would walk away.

My mother had stifled down her disdain for modeling, somewhat, but instead of slipping college brochures under my bedroom door, underlining financial packaging or specific classes she thought I would like—Photography? Is that what you like about modeling? Because they offer a really nice class or They have an arts program! Don’t you remember how much you liked to draw as a girl?—she had stuffed those brochures into the kitchen drawers, mingling with the take-out restaurants pamphlets, probably just waiting for the day that I realize what modeling really was and decide to do something practical with my life, and started to focus on renovation. Did the kitchen tiles match the new curtains she was making? Should we repaint the living room? Does the lawn furniture look like it has rain damage because Sears has a really nice sale for patio tables? Whenever she would ask, leaning across the gleaming, granite counters to point a ruby manicured finger at some ad in the catalog she had pulled out of the mailbox that morning, I would simply nod or make a noise in my throat that she always took as an agreement as she decided to scurry across the kitchen floor so she could use the computer in the living room to order it.

But Mo’s was a safe haven from all of this, of Mikayla and her silent windows, blaring music, and abandoned heels buried in the back of her closet (“Maybe she’s growing up,” Orion offered with a slight shrug when I mentioned this as I dried one of the golden painted plates on top of the stack that Albert, the burly dishwasher I had seen a few times before, washed, silently raising his bushy, black eyebrows at certain remarks) or Mom’s new obsession with renovating the house, picking out new sofas and asking me if I wanted my room painted, because we could do that, if I wanted, because she thought she saw a really cute pink that I would like (“Maybe the pink was fantastic.”)

There, at Mo’s, the world seemed simpler, restricting itself down away from dead best friends and their last words memorized on a SIM card, overbearing mothers, mysterious sisters, and allowing frying oil, cake decorations, and bringing patrons their food before they started a chant like Hawkeye in M*A*S*H, something that Orion was disappointed hadn’t happened yet. But while I was there, in that simpler world of icing sugar dusted across my clothes, the middle section of my shirt damp with dish water, I learned more about Orion, other than that he was an avid M*A*S*H fan or that he had all of the Batman Begins and The Dark Knight soundtracks, downloaded onto his computer and his iPod, and added to countless CDs he would give me when I would arrive, nodding over to the crates of flour or sugar where the CD would be resting on top.