Need You To Need Me | Jenlisa

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Chaeyoung was leaning her head on the window of the passenger side of her mum's minivan. It was Sunday, which meant only one thing: church.

While she wanted nothing more than wear her headphones and listen to the saddest playlist she had on her phone, she was stuck listening to some kind of religious station her mum had registered on her radio.

Sometimes, she hated going to church. How could you grow to hate a place that allegedly spreads nothing but love and tolerance? Chaeyoung was also well aware that hate is a strong word. She was reminded of that quite a few times.

"There's no place for hate in a christian's heart" her catechism teacher, Mrs. Jenkins, had told her after nine-year-old Rosie had told her whole table how much she hated the color green when asked about a fun fact about herself.

She was eleven when she was denied access to the Sunday's function because she was wearing a shirt that had a little skull wearing a pink ribbon on it.
Sister Theresa told her that she should have been ashamed of entering the house of the lord with a satanic symbol.

Rosie had been so traumatized and embarrassed that she had tossed away the shirt as soon as she got home. Even though it had been a birthday present from her friends. When asked why she never wore it, she had to lie and say she had lost it during a camping trip.

But these little episodes were just the tip of an iceberg of things Chaeyoung's mind hadn't been able to wrap around until... well, until now.

"Do you think you can turn it down a bit? I have a headache" the girl told her mum, who was busy humming to the folky guitar melody playing through the radio.

"Sure, sweetie. What's up with you lately? You seem down".

Chaeyoung hesitated. For a second, she thought about blurting out everything that was had been bothering her lately. For a second.

Then, the good catholic girl that was in her, the one who was taught that to give displeasures to your parents could as well be considered sinning, brought a slight smile on her face. Her lips curved a little, but the expression didn't reach her eyes.

"Just school stuff" she said.

She could have lied differently, one could have thought. She could have said "boy problems" or "I'm having some troubles with the band" but both were on the line of being taboos at the Parks house.

Loren surely didn't give off the I'll-bring-her-home-by-nine-sir that parents so love. But she had been able to sell him out as a good guy who treats her well. Still, nobody longed to talk about him. Even when he was over, her mum never asked him to stay for dinner if not on strictly inevitable situations.

Part of why her parents hadn't prohibited Rosie from seeing Loren again was that part of the brain washing that the girl had done on them was convincing them that the band they were both in was indeed a Christian band who sang, you guess it, Christian music.

They even recorded a couple of covers to show her parents. Probably along the top five most embarrassing moments in Chaeyoung's religion-dictated life.

"Oh, everything's gonna be alright, Rosie. God only gives what you can take".

The girl smiled again at her mother's obliviousness before turning once again back to the window and rolling her eyes.

Winter was finally starting to end and Lisa had never been more grateful for spring to be finally making her way this year.

She was done with the cold and humid weather that only managed to accentuate the absolute hell that it was already going to school. She was looking forward to park dates and softly tanning her skin in her garden while reading a book. Actually, she would probably avoid parks for a while now.