𝙇 𝙄 𝘽 𝙀 𝙍 𝘼𝙏 𝙀 𝘿

16 L I B E R A T E D 16

16 V 16

Tonight was the day before my mother's event. A Thursday. She was forcing me to spend the rest of my night looking for someone to attend it with me, since she had been forced to deal with planning and taste testing and everything else that came with the event, due to my lack of a friend.

"Don't come out of this room until you have a buddy to go with. It's about appearances, Vonna."

So here I was, cooped up in the very last room I wanted the door shut to ever again.

My bedroom.

I scrolled through my contacts, looking at it from top to bottom for what had to be the millionth time. No mysterious contact was going to pop up and be the answer to my dreams. I was going to either have to suck up my social anxiety and beg someone that I barely talked to in class to go with me, or find someone that I did want to go with.

I put my phone down on my bed and got from underneath my covers. I hesitantly cracked my bedroom door open and looked at the main floor below me. I could hear my mother in the bedroom, going on and on about something.

Dad's voice was the one that I really missed.

He said he needed some time alone from us. From me, it felt like he had wanted to say. My mom claimed he felt like he had failed both mom and I as a family, but some vulnerable part of my mind felt like he was too ashamed of me to be in my presence.

"Mom?" I called out from the top of the stairs.

"Yes, Von?"

She came out of her room, bonnet on her head.

"Do you have Mrs. Coolmen's number?"

"What for?"

"I'm gonna ask to take her daughter with me to the event," I found it hard not to blush as I said this.

My mother paused for a moment, then looked down at her phone in her hand, "Alright. I'll get it after I send a call out to Mr. Cherry. I need forty nine gallons of fruit punch."

"Okay. Uh, Mom?"

"Yes?" she sounded a bit irritated.

"Can you tell Dad I said good night. If he calls...today?"

Her expression softened. "Sure, sweetheart."

I left my bedroom door slightly cracked as I climbed back into bed. This whole week, I had been looking around school, hoping to catch a sight of Liberty. I was too shy to actually ask around for her, which I guess is the reason why I'm asking my mother to contact her mother to ask her daughter to go to an event with me.

Soon, I was falling asleep to different scenarios of me  dancing across the floor with an unknown figure.

That truly confused me...because the last person I remembered thinking about...was Liberty.