KY$ ✓

Fourteen | Zoe Banadax

SOTC: F*CK YOU, GOODBYE by THE KID LAROI

<><><>

Inhale.

Exhale.

Both words breathed within me internally as I laid in bed that night after the maids left. Each breath was swooping in as a wind current through my nostrils. The rustles I made while shifting my head on the pillow resembled a cringy ASMR.

Those exact moments I needed to free-fall into a memory.

A Year And A HalfAgo

"I don't care. Fifth graders should not be wearing jeans— ripped jeans!" Mom paced around the island, her knuckles paling from her grip on the phone on her ear. "Hannah and Anna will not be influenced by your daughter!"

Across the kitchen, in the living room, Hannah and Anna played spoons. I was on the couch across from them, staring into my phone on a texting screen full of blue.

Me: When are you coming back?

Me: Dad please come back. I don't know why you left but please come back I love you so much please come visit me. Hannah and Anna want you back too. All three of us love you so so much and we're your children please Dad

Me: Dad? Hello?

Me: Dad please!

Me: What did Mom do???

Me: Did I do something wrong??

Me: Please just one text it could be of an H

Me: Please I love you and you love me

I even resorted to the, Do you still love me?

All for my father who hadn't given me a grey bubble back for six months.

No one knew Clara Stratton's dad left. Chadwick High School still saw me as the socially retarded Catholic girl known for following Juliette and Lilly around. That albino sweater-covered girl with a ponytail and glasses hugging her blinders. Who crouched into her desk when the teacher spoke to her. Everyone in my school only had two words to describe Clara Stratton: innocent and unbangable. Whatever the last word meant.

I didn't want to add fatherless to that equation, too.

I looked at my fist, examining the faded sharpie spelling 'Daddy' on my knuckles. I thought of the 'CLARA' tattooed on his own for me. How we'd fist bump every day since he got it done. He had to have looked at it every day he was gone and thought of me.

He'd come back.

I knew he'd come back.

"Just keep your little slut away from my daughters!"

I whipped my head around to find Mom ending her call and smashing her phone on the island.

Holding in a yelp, I turned back around to my phone, pressing my knees harder against my stomach.

"Clara, wash the dishes!" Mom's yell rasped up the stairs when she ran to them in search for me. She hadn't checked the living room I spent hours in.

"Ooooo! Are you in trouble?" Hannah's youthful voice hinted amusement.

Anna was snickering.

I hopped off the couch and scurried to the sink as fast as humanly possible, hearing Mom's footsteps finding me even through the vigorous scrubbing I started to do on the dirty casserole dish.