Ashley ✓

Thirteen | Nice

SOTC: Take What You Want by Post Malone, Ozzy Osbourne, and Travis Scott

Noir spread across the skies, allowing the moon to illuminate through the blinds of Sienna and I's bedroom once again the next evening.

I remained alert in these hours of restlessness while Sienna snored.

Watching.

Waiting.

Listening.

All for gunshots that never came in the hour I stressed.

So I ran the sheet of my completed English homework in my head. Specifically, number five. The question, written in bold italics, reviewed the mechanics of a couplet, which I was sure I got right.

When I finished the review, my mind settled on a collection of memories regarding my useful skill.

And what others called a power.

I learned I had a photographic memory in fifth grade. Until then, it hadn't been odd for me to recall everything from my paper assignments to the warning label for my dad's girlfriends' JUUL pods after just a read. I could do passwords sometimes, too.

I believed no one when they proclaimed I had a gift. Then in the fifth grade, the main character for my classroom's play vomited the day of the performance and I memorized their script in two hours, so I finally had to surrender to the belief of what everyone told me.

Once I did?

I utilized the talent to feed my people-pleasing addiction.

Every piece of information about my classmates I could get my hands on became the holy grail. I, Ashy Walker, knew everyone's birthday, favorite color, best friend, and sometimes their parent's phone numbers. Each piece of information hosted by my stellar memory was utilized to give the best gifts, make friendship bracelets for them in their favorite shades, and help them remember their parent's phone numbers without anything in return.

But it was these sentences that made my fifth, sixth, and seventh grade.

"Uh, yeah, that's nice. Thanks."

"Sorry, I can't invite you. You're nice and stuff, but my mom said I can only have... ten people over."

"You're not mad I copied off you, right? Since you're like, nice."

"I lost the friendship bracelet down my garage disposal. Can you make me a new one since you're nice?"

"No, I'm going with Kaylani to the dance. You're nice, though."

"I don't like you back. I'm sure you'll find a person.. maybe. You know, since you're like, nice."

"What's your name again?"

Nice.

That one word making my three years. Three years of watching all the boys pick the pretty girls. Three years of being picked last in dodgeball. Three years of being kicked off the lunch table when there wasn't enough room. Three years of constantly trying to solve the problem by letting my neck get stepped on, giving boys more flowers, and nearly tying up my own fingers with colorful strings in exhaustion a million times over.

But for three consistent years, my own father ignored me less.

Slowly, each limb of bright, bubbly Ashy who once passed out dandelions tore off as if it was the metal of a trashed robot. Until my petite figure roamed the halls with my arms dead at the sides of my long T-shirts, daring never to offend anyone with the acknowledgment of my presence.

Not that anyone stopped me.

Then that day came. It was the first week of Eighth grade. I was sitting on the barstool in my marble island, avoiding what I now knew wasn't flour on the counter. Father sat on the couch, blabbing about stocks on the phone. His latest girlfriend, a prostitute named Chasity, typed an essay on her phone about the daily crises of being a Libra.

Like it had for weeks, emptiness had rotted away at my soul until my physical chest sheltered a hollowness.

As if I was dead at only thirteen.

Suddenly, the intrusive thought had whispered in my frontal cortex.

Knock over that vase.

I had peered over to the glass vase placed at the edge of the marble counter then went back to sulking.

Knock over that vase.

I jumped at the aggressiveness of the thought's repetition, my wide eyes peering to the abiotic object again.

Knock over that vase.

Knock over that vase!

KNOCK OVER THAT FUCKING VASE!

SLAM!

I hadn't even realized my arm flung out and contacted the vase until it shattered onto the kitchen floor, glass flying in every direction of the compass.

Upon the ear-shattering disturbance, Chasity had shrieked, waving an accusing acrylic at the horrendous crime scene of glass shards displaying itself in a released ocean dripping on the marble.

Father lost it.

His vocal cords nearly shot out his body in his booms, going off about how it was handcrafted in Indonesia and how much of a fuck-up the product of one of his unprotected one night stands was. How he ignored the fact that I was nothing to him just for me to ruin his precious trophy.

However, it hadn't sent me flying away in tears.

Because somehow in some way, I never felt so alive.

A/N: Bro this book jumped from 460 to 574 reads in less than a week. That's fucking insane.

A.K.A. Thank you all for your support. <33