The Smile Always Fades

1. Yellow Sticky Note

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Shards of glass are laying in the corner, books are thrown all over the floor, and the bed sheets are a mess. This is what happens when she feels helpless.

She'd only flipped out like this one other time before. Last time was when her father left, this time was because her mother deleted everything.

A few things led up to this moment of hysteria. First, her best friend, Cassy, moved to New York City and never once called or emailed to tell her how life was going in the "Big Apple". Second, her immature 19 year old brother, Jason, took a picture of her on the toilet and emailed it to every person he knew. And now this. The main computer at the house died, so her mom took her laptop. She still remembers the confrontation:

Mom, do you know where my laptop went? I can't find it anywhere!

Oh it's over here, Anna. I was using it. I needed to upload all my new documents, pictures...well just about everything, so I could post them to my new site!

A new site. Ugh. Anna's mom was always coming up with new inventions, new products, new websites that would make the family rich. It never worked out well in the end.

...Oh but, honey, I'm sorry. I had to delete a few things from your laptop. There wasn't enough memory for all my loads, so I had to sacrifice some of your documents and such.

What??? Oh god, what stuff?! Anna had immediately rushed to her laptop's side to see the damage that was done to this poor, innocent soul. The laptop was no doubt cowaring in fear when it came face to face with the wrathful queen. (Her mother showed no mercy when it came to deleting things.) To Anna's horror, all of her photos, videos, recordings, and word documents for school were gone. Vanished. Without a trace. Swept off the face of the earth. And nothing was backed up.

With that, Anna stormed straight to her room with a look in her eye that could kill, and the rest is history.

Anna looks in the mirror now. Her curly chestnut brown hair is tangled and messy, her eyes are bright red and puffy from the hot tears of anger and frustration, and her nose is bleeding from the stress and exertion that came from disheveling her once clean room. She hardly ever gets upset like this, but the events from the past month couldn't go unnoticed any longer.

Wiping the tears away from her eyes and blood away from her nose, Anna heads for the bathroom. Cold water to the face always jolts her back into her good, quiet self.

As she makes her way to the bathroom door, she collides with Shane, Jason's best friend and Anna's secret crush. Shane and Jason had been friends since the day they met at space camp the summer before middle school. They shared a bond for space and aliens that no one else could even begin to appreciate. Ever since then, Shane had been sleeping over at their house practically every weekend.

Anna hadn't always had this crush on Shane. For a long time, he was just her older brother's best friend. He was nerdy, annoying, and stupid. But when he hit Junior year in high school, his acne cleared up, he got a decent hair cut, he started working out, he was basically the heart throb for all the girls, in every grade, of Baker High...including Anna Henry.

For a moment, Anna had forgotten why she was going into the bathroom. She was captivated by the guy who was standing before her. His muscles were toned and definite under his electric blue t-shirt, his skin was perfectly tanned, and his golden hair was just messy enough to look stylish without looking like he tried too hard. His intoxicating, bright, baby blue eyes shone down on her, as her name slipped from his lips, "Anna..." Melt.

"Anna! Anna, what happened to you? You look like you got into a bar fight or something," Shane chuckled to himself, but quickly caught himself when he realized, "...whoa, your nose is bleeding."

Anna jumped back to reality then. Great. Was there a time where she could impress the guy of her dreams? Why wasn't Shane ever around when she looked like a million bucks?

"I'm fine," she mumbled, as she pushed past him and bolted for the bathroom sink.

The second the faucet turned on, Anna threw the liquid at her face as if she was trying to somehow drown herself with a handful of water. She reached for a washcloth and patted her face dry. After inspecting her now clean face, she turned to look at the doorway. Shane was already gone; to go finish playing video games with her brother, no doubt.

Thinking of nothing else to do, Anna slunk back to her room to clean up the mess she had made just moments before. Once arriving to her room, she noticed a yellow sticky note up on her mirror. She grabbed it and pulled it into her hands.

It read: Hope you'll be okay. Just promise one thing, no more bar fights. Your nose is too pretty to be broken ;-) --S

A smile fluttered across Anna's lips. Her eyes took a peek at her nose in the mirror. Was her nose really that pretty? She didn't think so, but then again, she really didn't think anything about herself was pretty, even though many had tried to convince her otherwise....

Anna knew Shane was probably just trying to make her feel better; she knew it didn't mean anything. Shane was a huge flirt and definitely popular with the ladies. Anna knew all of that, but it still didn't stop her from slowly pulling out her momento box.

Anna only put a select few items into her box. It's where she kept pictures of old friends, letters from her dad or grand parents, and odd knick knacks she never wanted to lose.

It might have been childish, but then again, Anna was only 17, she kissed the corner of the small note and layed it on the top of the pile in the box. She then closed the lid and stuffed her momento box back into a corner of her closet, where it would sit until she had a nagging urge to read Shane's note a couple dozen more times.

Finally, Anna turned to face her room. She took in a deep breath, knelt to the ground and picked up the first book closest to her.