Threads of Compassion

Part 6

The next day before school, Emily finally bothered to do something with her hair. She would usually just get down to grab a quick breakfast and immediately leave for school without even bothering to say goodbye to either of her parents. But today Emily went to the bathroom and did her hair, she combed through her black locks carefully and then tied it up in a high ponytail. Emily smiled to herself in the mirror, feeling motivated for the first time in a while.

She walked out of the bathroom, there was a bounce in her step as she picked up her notebooks from the desk. She was even humming as she held onto her note books and grabbed her backpack to put them in there. Her smile instantly vanished as Emily noticed that she still had a bunch more packs of drugs in there.

"Stop thinking about it..." She scolded herself and shoved the notebooks in with the drugs inside her backpack.

Emily shook her head and put her backpack on. She couldn't help but glance at the date on her phone and saw that she had no more than 8 days to sell the drugs at her school. She could sense her clock ticking, time was running out and she still had more than half of the drugs in her backpack. They were just lying there like the perfect evidence to make anyone think wrong. She was sure people would think that she consumes them or sells them for money. When truly instead Emily was selling them against her own free will just so her family can have a chance to live.

She sighed and rubbed her temples and told herself to stop thinking about that. She took one deep breath to calm her nerves. She shoved all of her "What if...?" questions deep into the dark pit her mind she always avoided and then walked out of her room like nothing.

Emily walked to the kitchen of her house and found her mother, Delilah, cooking breakfast — which was most likely to end up in the trash quicker than Delialh could cook it. Her mother quickly sensed Emily's presence and she quickly turned to see her. Delilah smiled (or tried to give a small smile) at the sight of her daughter, it was the first intent of a smile in forever.

"Good morning, you look pretty today." her mother's soft voice was barely audible through the noise of the sizzling food.

"Hi...mother." Emily cringed at the way she sounded trying to say mother, at that moment she wondered how long it had been since that word had come out of her mouth.

Delilah cringed at the sound too, "Foreign word?" She asked, genuine hurt in it.

"No. I. Uh...sorry...?" Emily felt weird now, she started to play with her ponytail as she stared down at her feet. She felt bad but didn't know why... .She still cared for her mother, she really did. She just didn't know how to show it after losing another person.

"It's fine. Well, why did you bother to come down the stairs today?" Her mother asked, probably in hopes of a subject change before it got any more uncomfortable than it was.

"I wanted to ask you... can you give me some money?" Emily looked up at her mother, she kept the same cold facade but softened it just enough for her mother to give in and say yes.

Her mother blinked in confusion, Delilah started to make guesses of her own on why her daughter would need money. Emily could guess the main speculation her mother was making by the somewhat pale look on her face in failure of trying to conceal her true reaction.

"I swear it's not for what you think it is." Emily protested as she held her hands up in sign of peace.

"What is it for, then?" Delilah lowered the fire of the stove to slow the cooking and then fully turned her body to listen to her daughter's reasoning.

Emily licked her dry lips — she needed to drink more water — she was deciding whether to tell her mother the reason she wanted the money. She knew Delilah wouldn't be against the idea of her painting once again like she used to. But she didn't want her parents keeping tabs on her either — it was very unnecessary.