Amnesia • hemmings

0.2

"Luke!" My mum calls from downstairs. I pretend not to hear her as I turn up the music on my phone, the loud noise blasting through my headphones into my ears.

I'm laying on my bed listening to music, and I keep reading. I'm pretty sure I've read every book in this series over 10 times. That's about 80 books. The Missing Series by Margret Peterson Haddix has 8 books in it. Found, Sent, Sabotaged, Torn, Caught, Risked, Revealed, and Redeemed. The stories are about time travel, and two kids go back and try to save important children in history from dying with the help of a time travel agent. It sounds weird, I know, but it's good. Right now, I'm about halfway through the 5th book, Caught.

All of a sudden, the door to my room slams open.

"Luke, what are you doing?" My mum yells as I slowly take my headphones off and let them rest around my neck.

"Reading a book." I say blankly.

"Well get the hell up and start cleaning! How many times do I have to tell you to clean this room?" She starts yelling, and I just tune her out and start picking things off of the floor and throwing them onto my bed.

"Listen to me!" She screams, grabbing me by arms and pulling my forward.

"I want this room clean in 20 minutes. Got it?" She says quietly while glaring at me, and it was honestly scary.

"Okay, whatever." I say, trying to turn away. She releases my arms and storms out of my room, slamming the door shut. I look down at my arms, and once again, there are bright red marks where her hands had been just seconds before. Her nails left marks in my skin, which isn't that bad. She's made me bleed with her nails. Scratching, pulling, pushing, hitting, slapping, she's even thrown chairs at me when she loses her temper.

Bruises, bumps, scars, scabs, cuts, stitches, even casts sometimes.

Blades, pills, rubber bands, ropes, all I need to end it all.

I've tried to.

I remember hearing my mother crying as I lay in the hospital bed, half asleep. She didn't think I was awake. I heard her saying how much she loves me, and she doesn't know why I would do this to myself. But she knows why. It's because of her.

She should be telling me she loves me when I'm here, not when I'm almost dead.

Sometimes, after she leaves my room, I hear her yelling to herself about how dumb I am, and that I should just run away and never come back.