ANCHOR

Chapter 11

   HOPE

  Melanie left an hour or so later, when I declared I should do my homework instead of watching clouds slowly pass by in the sky. It was relaxing, and it wasn't that I hadn't enjoyed it, just that I heard a loud yell come from the blue house. Every window was sealed, and it struck me of how it seemed out of place among our neighborhood, paint peeling and deck sagging. It looked so run down yet it succeeded in something no house I'd ever seen before had managed to do; lock out the entire world behind it's closed doors.

    My phone vibrated with a text as my mind was straying from my homework, and I looked to the screen. It was Jared. "Hey babe. How about tonight? Seven? Me, you, and the beach?" I chuckled to myself and replied, "Yessss. that sounds amazing right now." I needed time to clear my mind. Jared had a special way of doing that. With a surge of energy, I finished my homework, eager for the clock to read 7:00.

    A scent began to work it's way into my nostrils, burnt and foul. I sighed, knowing Mom had tried to make dinner again. I gave her credit, but she had never been very good at cooking, and had surrendered to it when Dad had died. Each night it was usually pizza, chinese food, or anything she didn't have to cook. When she did get around to cooking, it was usually charcoaled, and I forced it down my throat with a smile. It was only five, which meant I probably couldn't use Jared as an excuse to escape.

    I walked out my room, closing the door quietly behind me. Each step I took down the stairs was silent and careful, like how I had to act around my Mom. She was so fragile, so easy to break. Sometimes I felt like if I hugged her too tight, if I said the wrong thing, she would crumble and fall before me. She spent days in her writing studio, nights in her writing studio. That was her safe haven, her escape. If she wandered anywhere else she was catious, teetering on the edge of unfamiliar land.

  I loved her, but she made somethings in my life difficult, as if it was me taking her of her rather than the other way around.

  "Hi Mom." I smiled, touching her gently on the shoulder from where she sat on the kitchen table. She looked up at me, and gave me a soft smile that didn't quite make it to her tired eyes. "Hey baby." I suddenly felt guilty for even looking for an excuse to miss the rare moments I get to spend with my her. 

   I walked over to the stove, where she had placed the chicken she attempted, burnt to a crisp. I saw she had left the oven on, and I quickly turned it off. I fixed us both a plate, then walked over to the table with it. I ate all of it, fighting off any expression that would have displayed to her what I really was thinking. "It's great, Mom. Thank you." She smiled, a sad, lost smile. Her eyes a dull blue, her skin looking thin on her face. She looked into the distance, a chewing the tiniest bit of chicken in her mouth. Her plate was still nearly full, as it was when she took it over to the sink, clearly finished.

   She retreated into her studio, her steps echoeing on the wood floor as well as in my head, each one steady and sure. She put the distance between us silently, and I was left there to stare at it, sadly, watching any ties we once had to each other continue to break, string by string, knowing eventually, one day, we would be departed our seperate ways.

   I still had an hour and a half before I went to the beach to see Jared. I washed the dishes, mine and my mother's, suddenly wishing Mel was here to fill all the spaces in this house, all the cracks and faults where the lonliness was beginning to seep through.

   I took my sketch pad from where I'd last left it, thrown on the coach. I walked out the house, pencil in my hand, needing some way to let my emotions escape. I had always found they liked to flow through my hand, guiding my pencil in shapes on the paper. Something took me to the willow tree, that solemnly stood between mine and Sam's yard. I wanted to be able to capture the sadness in the leaves, the curve of the branches, the unspoken words tangled it's curtain.

   Then I was drawing, and I didn't have to think. All there was was my pencil on paper and my hand's soft movements, in attempt to copy the object in front of me. I was a machine, with one sole purpose, and nothing in between.

  I hadn't noticed Jared's car in my driveway until I heard the familiar honk, loud and obnoxious. I waved to him, then ran in the front door to throw the sketch pad on the couch again, then ran back outside. By the time I was inside his car, I was a little out of breath.

  He smirked at me, then began backing out the driveway, glancing in the reveiw mirror. He began shaking his head and told me, " I still don't know how you manage to do that, lose yourself in something like that." I smiled and looked over to Sam's house, then back to Jared, and quietly replied, "I don't know." It was mostly silent the car ride to the beach, with the exception of him telling me how beautiful I was. I wanted him to ask me how my Mom was, how I was. I wanted him to ask. I was practically willing him with my mind, waiting for the question that never came.

    Jared and I had been going out for two years, and he seemed a little afraid of my mom. I took him to my house once, my mom quietly saying hi before retreating into her studio. He didn't seem to know how to respond to someone like that, and sometimes I felt like he pulled me away from her, just a little more.

   He turned on to the dirt path we always went down. We had our own private section of the beach that was always vacant, so we felt like we practically owned it. He sat down in the sand, his blonde hair blowing in the wind and his green eyes intent on me. I sat next to him, feeling my hair lifting to the breeze, as well. Then we were kissing, his hot breath in my mouth, his hand on my lower back. I could feel the ocean waves crashing, something I'd never noticed before when we were kissing. I opened my eyes.

   The sky was darkening to a deep blue, the beach grass swaying, back and forth, back and forth. I felt the sand beneath my toes, his lips moving on my mouth. I smelled his cologne, strong and overpowering. Instead of it being just him and me, there was still the whole beach, the whole world, shifting and turning with us. It felt different, it felt wrong. I pulled away.

   I heard him groan, and he opened his hazel eyes to look at me. "What did I do wrong?" he asked, clearly annoyed. I looked at him full on then, his hard jawline, sculpted cheekbones. His eyes were shining emerald green. He was absolutely gorgeous, and I knew it. So why was I pulling away? Any girl in our school would die to have him.

  Every part of me knew it was Sam Torres. Something in the way he looked at me, something hidden underneath his friendly smile. I'd only spoken one word to him, I remembered. Only seen him twice. I shook him out of my head, and closed the distance between mine and Jared's lips. And then we were kissing again.