Until We Break (Formerly Wicked, Wild, Wonderful)

Original Edition: Chapter Twenty-One

NAOMI WAITED FOR ASPEN TO TEXT FOR A WHOLE TWO DAYS.

On the first, she switched her phone on— like Aspen had asked her to— and watched with woe as weeks of texts and notifications filled up her lockscreen. Letting herself down against the faintly familiar sheets comforting her bed, Naomi waited for everything to stop, and then some, before building enough muscle in her thumb to unlock her phone. She cleared the dust off it with her lone t-shirt and began scrolling. The weight of the phone was more than she could ever recall and holding it felt like trying to bring forth a memory that had long been forgotten. Or, perhaps, locked away.

Jessica, the alive Jessica, always told her that phones would be the death of humankind, but if it brought food to your door and helped people to make a living then death would be worth it.

The most recent texts were all from the Riverside Dance Academy group chat. Naomi didn't read that. The rest were from her family asking the most mundane of things like to take out the trash and bring toilet paper to the bathroom. Naomi opened each one and glossed over the unreplied texts, a large, distasteful lump forming somewhere in the back of her throat. She exited the chats quickly and kept scrolling. Before those, there were vague relatives wishing their apologies and granting their condolences for 'Jessica's accident'. Naomi read them over and over again and wondered if any of them even knew Jessica.

Then, she stood. In a beat, Naomi had flung her phone away from her. It went skipping across the bed, all the way to the edge before halting just enough to prevent its demolition. But it didn't matter; Naomi's back was already turned. In fact, she had made it to the door and finished pulling it open haphazardly, thinking only to go into her brother's room for the countless time this week. But she had forgotten it was Saturday and the sun was out shining brightly; that meant both her parents were home. Perhaps if she had taken a moment, she would have remembered, but much to her detriment she only realized the fact when it was too late. Right there in the Morgan home hallway on that Saturday afternoon, Naomi saw her father (for the first time in days).

He was coming up the stairs with his head down and his hair ruffled. His tall frame seemingly more intimidating than what she was accustomed to and his entire aura had shifted too as if his sins were strolling behind him like cackling demons. When he looked up and saw her, they both halted. Hesitation glinted his eyes before courage bucked his leg forward. Naomi didn't suffer the same; she beelined straight for her brother's room and spent the rest of the day there. Breathing deeply and not responding when Will asked her what was wrong.

On day two, Naomi downloaded the music she hadn't realized she missed and kept her phone in her back pocket the whole day. For breakfast, she plugged her earphones in and came down the stairs quickly, arriving at the table and passing her eye over her seated family before sharply taking a seat herself. She reached for the syrup and the eggs and realized that for the first time, the Morgan dining table wasn't silent. There was noise finally, and though everyone else could only hear its muffles, it was wall-shattering to her.

At noon, Naomi unrolled her fluffy carpet from the corner of her closet and set in the centre of her room. She opened a window and lit a scented candle in her bathroom. Then, she pushed her desk under the rectangular shape on her wall, ignoring the noise it made on her wooden flooring and took out her T.V. from under her bed. She lifted it out of its box and struggled with it all the way on top of the desk where she hung it back on the metal bearing in the wall. It concealed the rectangle seamlessly and Naomi smiled.

However, now in the present, when Naomi wondered back to those memories, she saw those two days fade into one another like a thick mist. The memories had no real timestamps, only vague emotions. As if she didn't live through them at all. But tonight, as she idly scrolled through her phone with crossed legs atop her queen-sized bed, she tried to focus on the now. After all, her future was unfixable and her past was abysmal; the present was the only thing that hadn't given up on her yet. It was all she had left. Her phone vibrated.