𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐚 𝐆𝐢𝐫𝐥 ✓

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫 - 𝐥𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲

"How are your classes going?" Odessa's mom asked through the phone.

  Odessa hesitated, trying to figure out how to respond in a believably vague way. "Alright. Things are getting busier now that clinicals have started."

  "You should do fine. You've always been hands-on."

  "Yeah, I enjoy it. I'd rather be doing this than be back in my books, to be honest."

Her mother hummed in response, clearly distracted.

  "I, uh, have to go. Thalia needs me to help her do laundry." Odessa lied.

"Alright. Bye."

"Bye."

  That's how their conversations went lately. Short and anticlimactic.

  It's not like Odessa and her mother didn't get along. They had their perfect mother-daughter moments, most of which happened when she saw still young.

But now, dynamics had shifted. It felt like Jeannie Greene called her daughter every few weeks purely out of obligation, rather than genuine care and concern. Odessa envied the conversations Thalia had with her mother, which were always hours long and full of laughter.

  Aunt Tia would be the one to visit them and bring food to make sure they weren't eating cup noodles and RedBull's all week.

  All though, in some ways, Odessa preferred her mothers' infrequent communication. It made it less likely that she'd find out the truth.

  There were no clinicals. One out of those two days a week, she told her mom she was at some hospital practicing taking people's blood pressure, she was modeling in the nude for art classes. And when she wasn't doing that, she was working on a 15-page research paper.

  Odessa was grateful for the quiet weekends that allowed her to get some coursework done.  Her building, though not densely populated, wasn't always the quietest. There were four thin-walled apartments, all of which were filled with at least one stressed college students each. Odessa was used to the constant background noise by now.

  The ever-present hum of music and the all too frequent screech of the fire alarm. These apartments were too small to boil water in without the fire department being called in. At this point, Odessa found it cozy and almost couldn't focus if she wasn't crowded with distractions.

Odessa leaned back, rubbing her eyes against the glare of her laptop screen, opting instead to pick up her sketchbook. It was almost ironic how little she drew recreationally now and when she did, it wasn't even because she wanted to. Sometimes she felt she had to, just to get an itch out of her system that she couldn't quite place.

  Quite honestly, she didn't like her art as much anymore. Not like she used to. She preferred other people's art. It meant something to her because she could make up a story in her mind about the piece. If she wasn't the artist, there was no definite meaning behind it, so she had the freedom to make up a meaning. But if she was the artist, she knew the meaning, the time it took to make it, the colors she had used, the brushes she'd ruined, the pencils she'd broken. She knew everything about the piece so there was nothing to be surprised by, nothing to ponder on or have an opinion about.