Swayed (A Before You Exit Fanfiction)

Chapter One - A Little Queasy

Copyright © 2013 BYEconnort  - All Rights Reserved

It started out as a miniscule feeling, but now it’s clouding up my thoughts like a plague.

I lay there unmoving on the plush couch in our living room, staring at the ceiling. I looked up at the chandelier, counting the tiny shimmering bulbs attached to it but somehow, I always seemed to lose track of what number I was on due to the swimming thoughts in my head. I was already showered and dressed, basically ready to go. There were these annoying knots in my stomach starting to form in apprehension of today, and annoying was an understatement. They were tormenting.

I heard my mom calling me from the kitchen, so I made my way there absentmindedly, almost tripping on my own feet over nothing. I’ve always been taught to be graceful and if I were the same person I was before, that wouldn’t have happened to me. But hell, things change, don’t they?

“Breakfast is ready,” my mother announced when she caught sight of me entering the room. I sat down on my usual seat around the kitchen table, not making eye contact. The dining table would’ve been nice right now, but the movers already took that piece of furniture away.

“You okay, honey?” she asked quietly. I glanced at her from across the kitchen bar contemplating whether I should tell her what was really bothering me, but seeing as she was tapping away furiously on her phone, probably important text messages and emails, I decided not to bother.

“Yeah,” I responded with a lie. It was normal for me to not be able to talk to my mother about things such as my problems. She already had a lot anyway.

I was one of them, too.

“Eat up. We have a long day ahead of us,” she looked at me briefly before returning her attention to the gadget on her hands.

I took a bite out of my pancake. My mother wasn’t that great of a cook, but she wasn’t bad either. Between her workload at the office and the ones she took home with her, of course she didn’t have the time to improve her culinary skills. I was usually the one in charge of cooking, but I guess she somehow wanted to make it up to me for this sudden decision of leaving.

I downed the dry pancake with orange juice and continued eating bit by bit. After a while though, I started lugging my food around my plate, my mind spacing out again.

I kept thinking about my life back in Florida and it made me feel sick all of a sudden. There was this dull throb of excitement in my heart but the rest of me is keeping it away. I don’t even know what to expect, so why must I get so worked up about it?

I ate the rest of my food quickly despite my stomach’s protests.

“We leave in about 10 minutes,” my mom says, making her way to me. “Make sure you didn’t forget anything, okay?” With a brief pat on the back, she was out of the door.

As I walked around the house we’ve been occupying for nearly three years, I realized I felt no sadness leaving this house. It was never home to me, I guess. The two-story house was a little too big for just me and my mom to live in. It was a pretty house, furnished quite nicely before they moved out all of our stuff, but it never really had the homey feel to it. There were no personal pictures hung around the house, and instead there was this painting of a freaky looking tribal god hung right outside the door to my room. I always complained about it, petitioning for it to be removed, but now that I realized I’ll be seeing it for the last time, I felt a bit more warmly towards the painting. I was the one who strongly opposed to bringing it back to Florida anyway, and I was still pretty glad I stuck to that decision. I mean, it was really freaky.

As I made my way inside my last destination in our house, I also realized that this was probably the only thing I’d miss here. My room provided a lot of comfort to me when nobody else could and I guess I was really going to miss my bedroom walls. Each wall was a different color that in no way complimented the other walls. My mother didn’t like it, but I loved it. I painted them myself, too.

My room was bare now, except for my bed, which I sat on as I took in my bedroom for one last time. If I closed my eyes, I could still picture it as it used to be, the walls plastered with posters of my favorite bands all over. When we first moved here, I used to have this part of the room where I put up pictures of me and my old friends from Florida so I could look at it whenever I missed my real home. I took it down a year after though, when I didn’t keep in touch with all of them.

They must hate me now. Just like the other kids from my school here did.

I took one last look around my room before grabbing my backpack and slinging it over one shoulder. As much as I hated moving here to Maryland, there were also a lot of things I was thankful for. But now that we’re actually moving back to my original home in Florida, I honestly didn’t know what to feel about it.

Maybe I was a little queasy, or maybe I also missed Orlando deep down. But as I made my downstairs, out of the door, and into the backseat of my mother’s car, I pushed away all my feelings and stuffed it in an unattended corner of my heart. If there was one thing I learned over the past three years, my emotions have the power to destroy me. And I wasn’t going to let it anymore.