The House

Sunny Palms High

  It's 1:30 in the morning and I'm awoken from someone lying on my bed with me. I rub my eyes and turn to look  to the right of me. I see an outline of a person lying right beside me but no one is there. I sit up in bed and rub my eyes again. The outline is gone. I breathe a sigh of relief. I lay back down and try to go back to sleep. I feel a cold gust of wind again and I pull my blanket up and over my head. I try not to think about there being a ghost in the house. My dresser drawer fly open and shuts again. Now I'm panicking. I try to be brave although I am very scared. Evil spirits feed off of fear. I sprint to the door and try to open it. IT'S LOCKED! I DIDN'T EVEN LOCK IT. MY DOORKNOB'S LOCK DOESN'T EVEN LOOK LOCKED! I Bang on the door as loud as I could. "MOM! HELP PLEASE!" Before you know it I hear my moms footsteps running through the hall to get to my room. As soon as she opens the door, my drawers stop opening and closing and the cold gust of wind leaves my room. I'm just sitting by the door with my head in my hands crying. "WHAT! WHAT HAPPENED?," my mom frantically asked me. "My drawers kept opening and closing and my door lock by its-," I tried to explain to her. "WHAT THE FU** ARIA," she yells. "Just listen. Hear me Out! Please? I think there are gho-," I tried to explain again. "DON'T COME TO ME WITH THAT BULLSH**," she yells. I roll my eyes while trying to hold back my tears. A few months ago I barely cried because I solved most of my problems with drugs and liquor. Now I'm different. I don't do that anymore but I also don't cry in front of people.

"Whatever, mom. Just go if you don't want to hear what I have to say," I said while getting back into bed. "ALRIGHT I WILL! YOU JUST INTERRUPTED MY SLEEP THOUGH! SO WHEN I WAKE UP EARLY THIS MORNING TO GO TO WORK AND I SLEEP ON THE JOB AND GET FIRED, IT'S YOUR FAULT," she yells. After she said that she storms out of my room and slams the door behind her. I cry silently in my bed for the next 37 minutes. A lot of things are my fault. But this one is not. I end up thinking about that night. Memories of that night still haunt me. I start to think about mama and why she's changed. Usually she's never like this. Maybe she's been drinking again and caught a hangover before bed. Whatever. I have school this morning and I need to get some sleep. I wipe away the last of my tears from my face, turn over and try to go to sleep.

Two hours had passed since being locked in my room. It's 3:30 now. I toss and turn and suddenly start dreaming about that night. Todd, Valerie, Quinn, Zane, Brent, and I was there. Those were my old "Friends" that I isolated. Zane got an idea to rob a house that night. It all went downhill from there. I wake up staring at my ceiling. I sigh and bring my blanket and pillow with me to downstairs. I be careful not to wake my mom. Once downstairs, I lay down on the couch and drift off to sleep.

I was awoken to the smell of smoke and my mother's singing. I look at our wall clock and it is 5:02. "Nice to see your up," my mother says while making eggs, looking at me, and takes a smoke from her cigarette. I was still pretty mad at her for not believing me. "Why lie,"she asked. "I didn't lie," I mumbled. "Whatever. You know where to find me when you want to tell me the truth." With that she sat down at the table and ate eggs with toast. I'm so close to snapping at her! Instead, I count to ten to calm me down. I stomp up the stairs to take a shower.

Once in the bathroom, I get in the tub to take a shower. 15 minutes later I turn off the water and turn to my right to get my towel. I see a dark shadow behind me! I scream and fall in the tub. I caught myself before I hit my head on the wall. I got a scratch on my arm while falling though.  I try to get up and the shadow is gone. I jump out of the shower, dry off, gets dressed, and braids my light brown, curly hair into one french braid. My heart is still racing though. 

As I walk down the stairs my mom asks me what was the noise about in the bathroom. As much as I wanted to tell her what I saw, I didn't. She'll think I'll be lying again. "I just slipped on the soap," I lied. I sat down at the kitchen table where the cereal boxes were and poured myself some cereal. "Sorry I yelled at you earlier. I was just sleepy. But you know I don't like it when you lie," she said as she TRIED to apologize. My blood starts boiling. I have a whole lot of pet peeves and my number one pet peeve is when people are calling me a liar when I'm telling the truth. I didn't feel like arguing, so I took my bowl and went to the living room to eat. "So this is what I get when I try to apologize?," I look at her and look back at my bowl to continue eating. "Wow, out of the 16 years I raised you, this is how you repay me?," she says. I look at the time and realize I was going to be late to my first day of school. "Mom, not right now. I'm going to be late for school," I say towards her. "Well you better hurry to the bus stop. I was gonna drive you until you did what you did." I roll my eyes. "Have a nice day at the police station mom," I say nicely. "Don't try being nice now!," she yelled. I got my backpack and headed out of the door. I slammed the door behind me and started walking to the bus stop. 

I look up at the sky. Another cloudy day. Calling this place Sunny Palms is an understatement. Genesis and Konner catch up to me. "Hey Aria!," she says cheerfully. Konner waves at me. I wave back to the both of them and keep going. "Excited?," she asks me. I shrug. I get to the bus stop and wait for the bus. Genesis is determined to have a conversation with me. I can't stop thinking about trying to get to the bottom of what's in my house. Konner was listening to music. I zoned out of what everything Genesis was saying until she asked me what is my deepest darkest secret. I stared at the ground and she gave me a concerning look. "Nothing...," I finally say. I'm not ready to even talk about it with my grandma, let alone some neighbor I have only known for a day. She nodded and silence came after that. 

15 minutes later the bus finally came and we loaded on. There were only 7 people at our bus stop and all 4 of them were staring at me awfully hard. Like they were trying to figure me out just because I wear all black. Today I have on black jeans and a rock band T-shirt on with black Vans. Haven't they ever heard about don't judge a book by its cover? I find a seat and put my earbuds into my ear and listen to rock music. Genesis sat right next to me started talking about something. I don't know what because I ignored her the whole ride to school. 

20 minutes later we are at school. I get off the bus and Genesis completely forgot about me. She ran towards her other friends and started squealing with them. Konner stayed back with me. We talked about basic stuff like favorite colors and things we like to do. That is until he met up with his friends. Before he left me, he gave me a small wave and smile. Konner is really cool once you get to know him. Well it looks like I'm on my own for now. I head to the office to get my schedule.

The bell rang and it was time to get to class. I look at my class schedule and my first class is language arts in room C178. I frantically look for that room before the bell rings. Four minutes later the bell rings and I still can't find my classroom. I sigh and debate if I should skip school altogether. Then I remember I can't go back to my old ways so I keep searching. 5 minutes pass since the tardy bell rang. I gave up and decided to go back to the office asking where the class is. I jog to the office and opens the office door. An elderly lady with glasses looks up and over her glasses to me. "Yes, what do you need?," she asks me. "I don't know where C178 is," I tell her. She rolls her eyes and asks "Why didn't you ask me about it when you were here getting your schedule?" I sigh. "Because I wanted to be independent", I thought. I don't tell her that though I just shrug. She sighs and walks towards the door to the main hall. She motions for me to come with her. Then she takes me to my class. Once there she opens the door and I walk through. "This is Aria Parker and she is your new student today," the office lady says to the class and to the teacher. "So much for not trying to bring attention to myself," I thought. 

"Take a seat Aria. I'm Mrs. Dash," the teacher say towards me. "I'm not going to count you tardy because this is your first day, but you better be here on time tomorrow." I nod and sits down at a desk in the back of the class. All eyes were on me while I was walking towards it though. As soon as I sat down they stopped staring except this one person. He turned back around as soon as he got caught staring at me. He looks familiar. I stare at my desk and realize that he's the guy from the abandoned apartment! I guess he is way cuter in light. In the apartment I couldn't really see his face. I wonder what his name is. "Okay, class today you will have to partner up to work on an assignment. I will assign you your partners and give you your packet that you would have to read in order to find out what to do," Mrs. Dash says. That's just great. Partner work and I don't know anybody here. I raise my hand and ask Mrs. Dash if I could work alone. Sometimes I work better alone. Mrs. Dash said no and began picking our partners. I sigh and started to doodle on the desk. "Aria and Sebastian...," I look up as soon as I heard my name and wonder who is Sebastian. "Sebastian go over to Aria because she may not know who you are," the teacher orders him. He gets up and starts heading my way. Yep, that's the abandoned apartment guy. My eyes gets big as soon as I see him. Now that I fully see him, he still has hazel eyes, caramel skin, and the curly black hair. But he as muscles and he is pretty tall. I guess I was staring too long because he asked me if I liked what I saw. I blinked and looked back down at my desk. Of course I liked what I saw but I wasn't about to admit that.

I shook my head. Out of the corner of my eye I see that he is staring at me. "Aria, don't you dare tell ANYONE about the apartment," I look at him for a few seconds, rolls my eyes, then nods. He smirks and turns back around to listen to what Mrs. Dash has to say. My heart starts racing and then I realize that this is gonna be a long day. I slump down in my seat and listens to Mrs. Dash also.