Masquerade ✔️

fifteen: noelle

Is it still me that makes you sweat? Who you think about in bed?

I dump my jewelry box out onto my bathroom counter, going through the thousands of dollars worth of ornaments carefully. I have a lot of jewelry, it's not a huge deal if I loose an earring here and there, but I lost my bracelet.

The bracelet my dad gave me the day he left my mom. When he walked into my room, gave me a box, told me he loved me, kissed my forehead and left. I was only six at the time, but I knew he wasn't coming back.

And I was right. Haven't seen him since. The only thing is, that bracelet is the only thing I have of him.

I quickly sort the jewelry into piles, earrings, necklaces, rings, bracelets and the small jewels I wear in my cartilage piercings. My bracelet isn't there. I've got others, sure, but that bracelet was special. The last thing I had of my father. Not like I care, my dad is an a.ss and is currently in prison, but still. I don't even feel its weight, usually, nineteen years of wearing the bauble is enough time to make you forget you wear something, but there's a tan line where the bracelet always sits that I am just now noticing.

My mind flashes back to that night, did I drop it? Take it off. But if I think about that night, I think about all of that night. The hideous parallel when I cried,, the parallel to ten years ago when I had made a horrible mistake with my boyfriend and ended up pregnant. At least there was no parallel to the horrible way I lost the child, the worst thing my mother ever did to me in seventeen years.

My phone buzzes and I sigh, swiping left and answering the FaceTime request.

"Shh, Ollie, I'm on the phone." Sara's voice pops into my bathroom, half of her head and half of the back of her boyfriend, Oliver's, head appearing. I can only see some of Oliver's dark hair and Sara's happy face, then Sara's hand hits him out of the frame and she appears to move to another room.

"Hey, Ellie." Sara smiles, attempting to adjust her hair.

"Hey." I begin to put the piles back into my jewelry box neatly, fixing each ornament carefully. I'm a very organized person, like my ridiculously organized kitchen. I have bins. Colour-coded bins.

When I'm done, I walk into my kitchen and take my phone with me, propping up my phone on my fruit bowl so I can make myself lunch. Sara talks as I open my fridge to examine the contents.

"Make salad. Or a sandwich. Or order pizza." She says, looking into my fridge.

"I had pizza yesterday. I'll have salad." I remove a bag of lettuce from the crisper and set it down on the counter, taking a shallow bowl-thingy from my immaculate dish cabinet and place it beside the bag.

"Hey, so, Ollie is going away for a few days. Want to bring Milo over and stay for as long as he's gone?" Sara asks, a bark from Luigi startling me.

I grab a piece of leftover chicken from a container and pull a knife from the block, beginning to neatly slice the cooked breast into even strips.

"F.uck yeah. Game of Thrones, dogs, vodka and chicken nuggets? All over that." I reply, pitting an avocado carefully. Scooping the halves from the skin, I cube the pieces and add cucumber to the bowl.

"Is that what you guys do when I'm away? Losers." Oliver chimes in from the other room, making us laugh. A shower head is heard, followed by the sound of a door slamming shut.

"You wish you were this cool!" Sara replies. I laugh again and toss the salad carefully, combining the lettuce, avocado, cucumber and chicken effortlessly. I add dressing and continue to combine my lunch.