Runaway - A DEVIL'S NIGHT FANFICTION (PTBR + ENG)

Chapter 13 - Nini

Four years ago.

I left early and I'm already at school. I'm fine.

That's the message I type to my mother as soon as I leave my bike in the parking lot. Not even the remorse I feel now can overcome my excitement about today.

I know she wanted me to go with her to the museum, but I didn't want to see her now in the morning and she might suspect how happy I was even after what Evans did to us yesterday.

Thinking about it, it upsets me for a moment.

I wasn't trying to be rebellious or unruly, but he wasn't anything of mine and I definitely wouldn't ask for his signature to go on the excursion, so I waited for my mother to arrive to ask for his signature. It's not my fault if he ended up listening and thought I was disrespecting his authority.

Still, he took out his frustration first on me and then on her, but when she came to release me and I went into my room, I saw the card on my desk.

From: Romeo

To: Valentine

Stop looking at the stars and look under your bed, you nutcase!

Despite all the anger I felt at that moment, it was all put aside when after my mom left, I bent down and saw under my bed, a basket wrapped in a garish yellow plastic. Inside were a small bouquet of sunflowers, a box of chocolates and a Vincent Van Gogh plush whose ears were removable.

A huge smile was on my face as I unpacked everything, and after eating a few chocolates while hugging the doll, I looked at the flowers and suddenly wanted to keep them too. They would lose their vitality in a few hours and die in a few days, but I had an idea to keep them in the same state forever.

According to the schedule of the horror show I was living in, now Evans and my mother would be in the bedroom reconciling and I couldn't blame Van Gogh for cutting off his ears, considering what I could hear down the hall, but still, I opened the door and ran back to the basement, taking only one of the sunflowers in my hands.

My mother rarely made use of the equipment she brought from the museum and I was the one who took advantage of her stuff. So, taking the pot of resin appropriate for my project, glue, a hole puncher and a square, siliconized plastic pot, I turned the sunflower I brought into a table ornament, which would be ready in 24hrs and went upstairs with it to my room. Tomorrow, it would be on my desk and would be an eternal reminder of my first Valentine's Day gift. A gift given by the most troublemaking boy I've ever met, and who still made my heart skip a beat every time he held my hand.

This early morning, despite having little sleep, I did so while looking at the sunflower drying on my window. And I couldn't be sure, but I prayed my Selective Mutism wouldn't get the better of me in the morning.

And now, I was standing on the steps of the school entrance, watching people arrive and waiting for Ivar and Mads for the ride to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

"Do we have a little bird that left the nest earlier today?" - asks Prof. Forester, as he gets out of his car and parks it, walking towards the school.

I give him a short smile as a way of greeting him, but I didn't want to try to talk and end up disappointing myself. Not in front of him.

"Let's go in, Nini," he asks. – "I imagine you're the first to have arrived and we can't leave until all the students with permission are present."

I nod and stand up, taking out of my backpack the paper containing my mother's signature and handing it to him, then he takes off his cream coat and I see he's wearing a slime green sweater and dark jeans.