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THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF NIGHT, Valentina jolted awake every time her eyes fell shut, encasing her in an inescapable darkness until the icy finger of a haunting hallucination grasped the skin of her throat and left behind a shiver of slick sweat.
She felt just as exhausted as she had upon returning home that night and just wanted the soft comforter hugging her body to enclose and trap her in bed forever. The thought of going anywhere that day had her yawning already.
"Valentina!" Alicia had other plans, though.
The girl sprung up out of bed with fear and instinct, immediately regretting it when a massive headache pounded on the walls of her head like a swat team with a no-knock warrant.
Her damp palm pressed eagerly against her aching forehead while the white wood of the bedroom door creaked open, revealing a confused and tired mother.
"Why is there water all over the kitchen floor?"
Dark eyebrows pulled together in thought, trying to grasp at an explanation for why the floor beneath her bedroom was covered in water. Valentina remembered dragging in plenty of substances last night, but water was not one of them.
"I don't know," she shrugged honestly to the woman who'd just entered her room, standing in the doorway.
The honey-blonde looked around the bedroom, her hazel eyes skipping over her daugher's lazy frame that was sitting up in bed and closely examined the wall to her left.
"Why is the window open?" she asked, marching up to it, "it's freezing."
Valentina had completely forgotten about the window she sat at last night, smoking herself into oblivion until a boy—whom she refused to admit was on her mind—pulled up to the dim streetlight.
She must've not clicked it fully shut, too occupied with trying to get away from him. It also wasn't likely that she'd have been able to notice the open window, anyway, with everything swirling in her cluttered mind.
Looking past her mother to see outside the window, Valentina caught a glimpse of the silent house across the street before the blinds pulled shut—courtesy of the testy woman—and blocked off the boy sleeping under his window and the rising sun.
"Mom, what time is it?" Val yawned, flipping her tangled hair to one side and out of her face. The wavy tendrils were entwined together in loose knots all over her head, a result of the exhaustion and lack of effort she put into getting ready for bed last night.
Her hairbrush sat untouched on her dresser, next to the plastic shopping bag containing her destroyed Converse that she'd yet to wash.
"Just past five. I had the night shift, remember?" Alicia reminded her daughter, unaware of the blood-soaked shoes on the dresser.
Valentina did not remember her mother's absence in their home due to various other events that occurred while her mom was working.
"Oh, yeah," she lied through her teeth, eyeing between the plastic bag and her mother swiftly. If the woman were to look behind her daughter for even a second, she'd question why a once-white plastic bag was not-so-white at the bottom, where the child's blood, sweat, and a mysterious slime pooled together to create one disgusting mixture.
