Ashley ✓

Eight | Dandelion

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SOTC: Pray by Bebe Rexha

Darkness had fallen in Sienna and I's bedroom that evening, moonlight and lampposts shining the only illumination through the blinds. It created a pattern on the closet across from the beds we laid in.

Sienna and I slept well throughout this night— until I heard it.

POP!

I shot my upper body upward with the support of my hands, gasping out. Heat flushed into the blood in my face, running cold as the organs caged in my muscles twisted with the veins attached to them.

After the initial shock wore off, it came to me that it must've been the gunshots Sienna and Fedor spoke of.

Speaking of which...

I spun my head to her at a velocity that could've snapped my neck to Sienna. Her snores hadn't even changed pace.

POP! POP! POP!

My palms dug into the outer part of my ears, my index finger pressuring the skin covering the gap leading inside it as more came closer and closer. I muffled my mouth in a pillow to get out my faster, more strangled breaths.

I sped through thoughts to rip my mind from the clutches of outside until I landed on one.

I got it when I made out a framed painting of a sunflower on the left of the closet in the dark. Then I landed on a collection of glimpses making one thought, drowning out the sound as I remembered it.

I was actually a very nice kid.

It was Ashy. That was the nickname everyone held for a smiley girl who'd skip to Abbot Elementary School every day in a sundress and a lunch pail. Everybody loved me, classmates and teachers alike.

During recess, I'd pluck an infinite about of dandelions and gift each of my classmates one across the playground. Two to the kids who had a bad day. I'd watch their faces light up as they got the yellow fluff on a stem in their hands with euphoria. I gave some to teachers when I had leftovers, which added to the millions of things to rave about Ashy Walker.

"I love you, Ashy!"

"Can I have another dandelion, Ashy?"

"Thank you for helping me on my spelling test!"

"You're such a lovely child, Ashy. You'll go very far in life."

"Come to my birthday party!"

"I wish my kid was like you."

That's what I most remembered hearing kindergarten to fifth grade regarding me.

But Father never noticed.

He was always busy with the millions of different girlfriends, who'd create a song from the patters of their stilettos throughout the house, repeatedly claiming the powder on the island was flour for the cake they never made. Their antics ceased when they'd get kicked out after about a month for whatever reason. Many reasons I lost track of after time.

I had tried everything. I used my newfound skills to ace all my tests. I did anything and everything for dad's girlfriends, from offering to clean up the supposed flour to getting them tea when they were stumbling around the house more than usual. Sometimes I'd wake up at five A.M to see if he hadn't left for work yet to tell him I loved him like I saw other kids did to their fathers.

"Okay, kid," he'd always say before leaving for work.

Because I'd pluck and blow every pasture of dandelions, wishing on every molecule of a little fluff that he'd give me attention.

The attention he never gave me.