Good evening, this is Adrian. I hope this finds you in good health. The use of Y/N has been decided against by Karl and I. I hope this doesn't deter you from the reading experience. Both of the authors are American. So any folk from the UK, please correct us if we get anything wrong.
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Breath hits the back of my neck as my brother stands behind me. "So?"-his mellow, deep voice rings out- "What'd you get?"
My words die as they hit the back of my tongue when I see the score I made sitting on the paper. "I-uh.. I got in." I say, the breath I had been holding in for so long finally breaching the slot between my front teeth. Arms wrap around my torso and lift me up, the paper falling to the ground as if it wasn't the sheet that just sealed the fate of the next year. "Oh my gosh! That's amazing!" The loose vowels scream out of his mouth and into my ears.
Being lifted feels free, is this how birds feel? Weightless, even though air pressure mocks their tiny little bodies, zipping through the holes in their head that mimic ears. I wish I were a bird. Not a care in the world. But no, here I am. My brother holding me in the air, and my acceptance letter from the University of Nottingham laying discarded on the ground.
♙♙♙
The cycling starts as I sit in my bed, my bladder doing no good to my exhaustion once I lay down. Slowly getting up, I check the time. 02:34. Amazing, moving day is tomorrow and I haven't got a wink of sleep in the past 35 hours. I've been to busy contemplating whether French or Spanish sounds prettier.
Opening the sliding door to the bathroom in my room, I keep the light off and sit on the toilet, letting my bladder deflate as I relieve myself. Time passes, as do my thoughts. Cycling starts again. My mind runs a marathon of thoughts.From intrusive, to anxious, to self loathing. The whole package deal.
I wonder if when the stork brought me to my mom, was I a package deal? Depression and anxiety all wrapped up in a tiny blanket! The mental illness and the child all in one! Maybe she had to sign a waiver that said "Stork and Baby co. are not responsible for any underlying mental problems the baby has." Or if she had no idea how messed up her kid was. I wonder if my mother even got me from a stork, I know of course the actual way babies are made, I'm 18 for Christ's sake. But if she did get me from a stork, it was probably the ones in the alleys between the buildings, the ones who say "hey, pregnant lady, wanna buy a kid?" And that's how she got me. She probably got my brother from a rich stork. The perfect little bundle of joy. And then 7 years later she shows up with a baby she got from the baby dealer stork in the alley.
My thoughts are broken when I hear my brother screaming at his friends over the phone. "Can you shut the fuck up!"-Only, I don't say that. I don't say anything at all. I just continue to listen to him scream about some video game. I think they're playing UNO? But what do I know.
I get up from the toilet, after wiping myself clean of course, we don't need me smelling like piss on top of the smelly perfume my mother makes me wear. I stare at myself in the mirror. Light coming from my phone lighting up with notifications from the front pocket of my sweater. Looking in the mirror, seeing the light shine from the bottom of my chin and lighting up the front of my face, I begin to dissect.
My eyes don't feel like mine. My cheeks feel too chubby. My lips are too big and my ears are too small. I wish I looked like my brother. He got our dad's genes and I got my mom's. Maybe the alley stork made my mom choose. Or maybe he mimicked my face from hers. Since she was the only person he saw to model me after.
I hear a soft knock at the bathroom door. "Princess? Are you in there? I went to check on you but you weren't in your bed." I wipe my face of the sweat that accumulated on my forehead from my overthinking. "Yeah, I'm in here. And how many times have I told you not to call me that?" I rasped out, my throat dry from a lack of speaking and dehydration. "I didn't see you at dinner..So, do you want me to make you food?"
