[ A WATTPAD FEATURED STORY ]
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❝We accept the love we think we deserve.❞
But what does that really mean?
This is Eva's story; a tale of a wayward girl who had a heart of glass and when it broke, forgot that light tends to creep in through the cr...
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Eva stared at the blank A4 sheet in front of her — the smooth skin under her fingertips a contrast to the rough texture of the white paper as she traced invisible patterns on it.
Eva looked around her, her eyes landing on the sheets of her peers. There were stick figures on all of them. Some had stick figures sitting in front a of a box that was supposed to be a TV. Others had stick figures standing under trees or walking along a beach. There were always two tall stick figures and either one or more shorter ones.
"Don't you want to draw something, Eva?" Miss Dorothy Thompson asked softly, coming to a stop beside the girl's desk.
Eva's barely visible eyebrows furrowed and she sucked in her bottom lip. Once again, her eyes darted around everybody else's drawings. They all had too much colour in them, varying from the lightest of blues to the brightest of orange.
Eva never really found colours fascinating — there wasn't much room for colour in her life anyway. She much rather preferred the bland white of the sheet on her desk.
And that's when Eva felt it again. That sensation inside her, somewhere near her chest — she couldn't quite describe it — as if there was a yo-yo ball inside her and it was just dropped. She always felt it when Miss Dorothy spoke to her in that soft, gentle manner. She was the only one who ever spoke to Eva like that and Eva couldn't make up her mind on whether she liked it or not.
It was just so... unfamiliar. She was never, ever spoken to so fondly...
"I told everyone to draw something related to family, to home," Miss Dorothy continued on, thinking Eva hadn't heard her earlier. Of course Eva had heard her; she just couldn't understand. "You know, it could be a day out for a picnic, or a movie night where you watch a cartoon together or even a trip to the park... anything you feel like, anything at all, Eva dear."
Eva waited patiently for Miss Dorothy to walk away to another student's desk before she pushed the sheet away.
How on earth was Eva supposed to draw any of that?
Those didn't happen, did they? Eva couldn't recall having a movie night... or going out to picnic together. The idea seemed so utterly ridiculous to her little seven year old mind, it was overwhelming all of a sudden.
She looked at the stick figures on a boy's drawing sheet and wondered if the taller ones were supposed to be a father and a mother.
But if everyone had something to draw, why didn't Eva? Didn't all homes operate the same way? Didn't what happen in one family happen in another?
Eva was so confused, but she quickly shook her head.
Poor MissDorothy was wrong, Eva thought sympathetically. And she hoped that one day Miss Dorothy understood what actually happened in homes.
Like how no one ever really spoke to each other much, or how fathers got angry all too quickly and how mothers always seemed to be making one mistake or another that upset the father.
Like how you were supposed to shut up and not ask too many questions or tell others about all that happens inside the four walls of your house if you didn't want to be punished for it.
So Eva folded her skinny arms on her stomach and leant back in her chair. And yet, her mind couldn't stop thinking of all the stick figures on everyone else's sheets.
She was so confused — Eva was just so, so confused. She wouldn't ask anything about it though — wouldn't voice out her confusion.
She'd learnt a long time back that it wasn't her place to speak out.
---------------------------------------------------------- Writtenon; 10th February 2016
