Life After You

Chapter 18

It's been two days since the nightmares kicked in and ever since, Merebelle, yes she has kept her mouth quiet but she has been on top of me everytime I move an inch. She figured out about my blackouts. She knows about the nightmares. She knows about Jeremiah. She knows everything-to be frank. Everything!

"You're sure you don't have to see a doctor?" Merebelle whispers when daddy wasn't within earshot. I sigh, not annoyed at all but just upset that she won't stop convincing me to see a doctor.

"Yes. I'm very sure. I'm really fine." I smile to soften my flat answer. She sighs and then nods.

"Okay. Just please tell me if you don't feel good, okay? I need to know immediately." she says for the tenth time today and like always, I smile, sort of and then nod.

"Well, have a good day at school, you."

"Thanks. I'll be back in the afternoon. Call me if anything happens." She says suddenly remembering her wrist watch and then after getting it she kisses my cheek goodbye and rushes out the front door and gets in the car with daddy and leaves.

For a change, I try to arrange the house even though there's really no point doing it because the next minute I do arrange the house, it's trashed. I still do though to keep my mind occupied.

I start at the front of the house, the living room, the upstairs and the big balcony there and back downstairs again.

"You're wasting your time." I jumped at the sudden voice that belonged to my mum.

"Uhh, sorry.. Just wanted to get the house in order since it's been a bit messy..." I kind of ramble. I really wish I wouldn't get nervous around her all the time. She's still my mother.

"Go find something useful to do, Isabelle. Stop wasting your time on house chores." she says, stricter, throwing me a little off guard. I oblige though.

I sweep the floor mess to a corner so it wouldn't fly all over the place and make my way to my room.

I sit on the floor in the middle of my room finding something to do when an idea pops into my head.

I pull my desk chair to a corner and start pulling out all the books, files, notebooks, textbooks, pen holders, boxes of different craft stuff, basically everything from my desk and set them all on the floor. I then grab a rag and wet it slightly and wipe the dust off my desk. I would say, giving my desk a wash-by the way I was scrubbing on the surfaces around the hardwood. All edges, corners, flat surfaces, shelves all wiped clean and then wiped again with a dry cloth.

I then sit in the middle of all the things I pulled out from my table and start dusting them off and cleaning the objects and then re-placing them in their original places.

When I start arranging my notebooks, old journals and files filled with school past papers of different subjects, I come across an album book my mum made for me on my thirteenth birthday.

Happy 13th birthday darling!

The book's title read, making me smile.

I flip through the pages I haven't gone through in a while. I read through all the little notes she had written covering all the pages fully without a blank spot in sight. I flip through the photographs she's put in and laugh at some of the baby pictures of me with my fingers in my mouth or the picture where I have milk dripping down my mouth, having just burped. I was about five months old.

I trace my fingers across the cursive handwriting of my mum's on the notes. She really put in a lot of effort, making a whole album from my birth till becoming a teenager making my eyes well up with heavy tears. I close the book immediately not wanting tears to smudge anything on the album's pages she's put so much effort into.