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“I heard about your little hobby,” she said and her gaze fell on the drawing under her glass. “Oops. That one’s ruined”, she picked up the wine, then the piece of paper and I snatched it from her hand. She was right. It was ruined. I squeezed it in my fist.
She was a nasty person. Not that I didn’t poke her every time I got the chance, but telling dad about her alcohol abuse was an empty threat and she knew it. I wouldn’t tell him. It would benefit her. She would get help. Sympathy. Eventually she would get better.
I wanted her to get worse.
I wanted her to suffer. To feel lonely, deserted, rejected, and weak. Like she made me feel every single day of my life.
Sylvia tried to walk towards me but those stilettos she always wore weren’t the best option if you want to get hammered. She lost balance, leaned over my bed, spilled her drink on my blanket, and laughed like a maniac.
“It’s barely ten, Sylvia,” I growled and rubbed my forehead. Sometimes I wanted to do violent things to my mother.
She ignored the fact that I called her by her name. When I started doing that few years ago, she threw tantrums like a toddler. It pissed her off so much, she lost control over herself, and the perfect facade she maintained her whole life cracked each time.
These days it didn’t even make her roll her eyes at me. I had to up my game.
“How long have you been doing these?” she asked pointing at my desk.
“Let’s not pretend you care.”
“I don’t. But I don’t want to be embarrassed either. Do you have any idea how it looks to people when they talk about stuff like that, and they find out I don’t know what you’re doing?”
“Probably it looks exactly like it is”, I murmured.
“Are you suggesting something?” she was half-sitting half-lying on my bed.
“Only that you stopped being a mother the moment your son left this house, even though you had a fourteen-year-old to look after?”
“Cry me a river”, Sylvia dragged. “Your constant whining is so annoying. I can’t even look at you.”
“Soon you won’t have to,” I smiled. The school year started the next day.
“Yes, finally. I’ll get rid of you after graduation. Like I always wanted to.”
“Well, not exactly like you wanted to,” I reminded her.
She didn’t deny it. I always knew I was the unexpected child. Not a surprise, but bad news. She joked about my dad convincing her to keep me ever since I was a little girl.
“Obviously,” she finally said. “I could have had a few good years but no. You had to happen.”
“Get out of my room,” I said through clenched teeth.
“With pleasure.”
I could probably go wash my hair for the time she spent taking her shoes off and getting out, but I waited silently. When she was finally out the door, I cracked a window behind the curtains just to get some fresh air. Then I collected all the candles and dumped them in her room.
I kneeled down next to my bed and pulled out the shoe box. I wanted to make sure she hadn’t found it. I started counting. Everything was as I left it. I could still pull it off. Not now because the amount I had wasn’t enough. But I could do it by graduation.
And it was going to crush my mother. I wanted to say that it would break her heart, but a long time ago I found out she didn’t have one.
The next morning, I woke up in total darkness. The left side of my face was numb since I probably spent the last few hours sleeping on my book instead of my pillow.
It was the first day of my senior year. Even though it was the beginning of the year, it felt like some kind of an ending. I sat up in my bed, facing my thick curtains, thinking about Lucas.
Soon we won’t be living across from each other.
The thought ripped something inside my chest, and, in a moment of weakness, I went to the window. I drew the curtains open. The sun blinded me for a second.
Lucas’s curtains were wide open. He wasn’t scared that I might watch him. He loved being watched. It was a part of his personality.
