Fake Lullabies | Wattys2018

chapter 2.

Okay.

I am ready.

I'm back from my hiatus.

Back...

That word, it just makes me so happy,

It sounds like such a good thing, you know.

You say it when you're happy about something,

You imagine that huge delighted smile on your face as you say, "I'm back!"

But...

Can it also mean something else?

(please no smut references please let me remain pure till I'm 16 ;-;)

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So I, Cassandra Alanis, have finally finished my first day with Sandy.

And I can't believe what I just did. 

I mean, to be honest, I'm extremely closed off when it comes to my past. I hardly tell people who I was like before. I was too scared I would accidentally blurt it out, that I was once the person people hated now, were jealous of once upon a time. That I was a stuck-up, rude daughter of a biscuit, and that once stupid fire in a classroom had done such a change.

I was too scared to admit it. I had bottled it up for so long, it always felt ready to leak out, and eventually spread amongst my closest friends, the ones who stuck with me ever since the incident as well as my newer acquaintances and friends.

It always felt as if it was at the tip of my tongue, whenever people would ask me, You never told how you were as a kid, Cassidy. I would just end the topic with a half-truth : "I was pretty naughty and hyper as a kid, nothing special really."

And then they would move on to a new topic, and I would sigh with relief. I can't believe I had stayed that long for half of my life. 

I am 14 right now, and that happened when I was seven.

So that basically meant a long time right?

Apart from that, I had also changed schools when I was eight. After the incident, my parents were very upset of the safety conditions at school and the irresponsibility of the teachers regarding the fire. It would be 'unacceptable' if I continued being there, so I was transferred to a nearby school, and I would do anything for the next couple years to cover up my burns, my hair, face, everything, and avoid the road leading to that school completely.

I just wanted to disappear. Oh, and I also wanted my scars to disappear.

I remember even now, on my tenth birthday, how my mom happily brought my photo album to me. Even three years from that day, I was always wearing full sleeved shirts and long leggings to cover up. Hoodies were no exception.

But when I saw how happy I was, my huge grins, the way I showed myself in a huge way, in the middle of a whole crowd of happy dancing kids from when I was three, me when I went to the beach for the first time (I didn't live nearby the coast back then), me playing tennis in the playground with another girl whom I hardly remembered from when I was seven, a couple weeks before school. I wondered how I remembered that, but not the girl. But then I remember what happened back then and I burst into tears the moment I realised what had led me to the state I was in. I remember even now, how bitterly I cried that night. I remember my bloodshot eyes, my parents unusually worried about my wellbeing, everything...

They kept the album, and all its photos stashed away in the attic ever since. They knew I couldn't bear it.

And how long I stayed that way. I found it much easier to not tell and deal with it than to tell someone what truly happened and then deal with their response and their treatment towards me later.

And I would tell myself every night, it's okay. It's okay. It's just a bad dream. I can breathe again one day.

And I would believe my own fake lullabies and lies, and that's the world I lived in.

All that disappeared now, because I thought, maybe my secrets will be safe with her.

Maybe...

Maybe I could finally be relieved of what I had been carrying for years.

Maybe I could smile that genuine smile, not the one I did only for photos, only to make sure my friends and others whom I loved weren't worried about me.

Maybe, if I just trusted her with my secrets...

I could find myself back again.

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