Marilyn My Love

Special Artist

It was raining, great I thought to myself opening my curtains. My room, which didn't look like my room anymore, was piled high with boxes filled with books, clothes and random things that'd been hoarded by me over the past 8 years. After all the years of living in this house we were moving to a small town, called Jericho, for dads work, and my last year of school will be spent at a boarding school, Nevermore Academy, built on the outskirts of town.

Mum called me down for breakfast as my dad packed everything into a large moving van that we had rented to get all the movie done in one go. "Why do we have to be up so early?" I groaned into my cereal "Because" my mother replied "We have to be at nevermore academy by Eleven but your father and I wanted you to come see the house before we send you off to a boarding school" it was a long 3 hour drive and being up at 6 in the morning made me feel sick to my stomach. A part of me couldn't help but get excited at the thought of staying at a boarding school.

My mum and dad squeezed everything into the back of the van as looked around the now empty shell of the house I'd been living in for the past 16 years of my life. Not all good memories came to mind, but my therapist said "as long as you focus on the good of a person or place, then the good is what you receive" biggest load of shit I've ever heard in my opinion, has she ever heard of school? Or teenage friendships? Rolling my eyes, glad to see the back end of therapy since we're moving away. I shimmied across the passenger seat sitting cozily in between my mum and dad it was nice at first but on the second hour hearing my mum and dad bicker about God knows what, so putting my AirPods in I turned my volume up to max and played my music on repeat to drown them out.

The house we arrived at was the perfect little family home, it looked like something out of a Disney movie, with its baby blue exterior, a white fence surrounding it, beautiful green grass covering the front, flower baskets hanging from the porch and the inside was just as beautiful. It was so cozy and homely, my eyes and heart fell in love with the place it already felt like home. The house was very empty looking so I helped my parents unload some of the necessities and some furniture, however this loving atmosphere didn't last long, my mother and father sat me down at the dining table, pulled a pencil and sketch pad out and put it in front of me. Confused at their actions I questioned them, "what?" I asked in suspicion "We haven't really been honest with you." My father mumbled staring at his thumbs  holding his hands in his knees in between as my mother followed "draw something Keira, anything" still very confused I began to draw the first thing that came to mind, it was a little white rabbit with big floppy ears and a cotton tail. After I'd finished my mother took my hand and hovered it over the page, the more I stared at the rabbit it began to move, small movements but still moving, I gasped with disbelief as the rabbit then began hopping around the table before disappearing in a cloud of smoke and pencil dust. My mouth was wide open in shock, although, it was thrilling to know that I had some sort of, 'superpower'. "do you remember pippin?" my father questioned me looking up from his hands "yes, my imaginary dog" I remembered, he sighed "no no no, Keira you used to draw pippin when you were little and he'd come to life, he wasn't imaginary, he was a drawing, but when you grew up you stopped drawing him and you began to forget and we didn't want to remind you so we thought we best wait until we think your ready to go to the same school we did to manage our creative talent" I was sat in anger that they had hidden that not only me but they had 'special artist' abilities, but yet secretly static at this strange discovery. "It's getting to Eleven we need to leave now else we won't get to Nevermore in time and Weems wont be happy with us." All words lost meaning, following them in auto pilot to the car, feeling myself wishing we had moved sooner. Then I began to panic as we drove through the town of Jericho, thinking of the infinite possibilities of how I could mess this up.