Running On Empty

Chapter 5~Jaylin

                                                  Song: First Time                                       Artist: Jonas Brothers

I swear I must be going crazy, absolutely bonkers! This girl was just in my head. The whole thing was just some cruel, sick, joke. It had to be because for 12 whole years, I was completely invisible and now some strange, tall, doofus comes barging into my life without the least bit consideration of my feelings. Okay, maybe I'm being kind of harsh because she accidentally came into my room when she was trying to avoid getting caught from doing this thing that was consider illegal. I mean, this kind of thing was bound to happen, right? Someone would have found out about me sooner or later.

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My mom never came at 4:00, like Madeline said that she would. It wasn't that Madeline had been lying, it's probably because my mom was busy. Silya had left at 3:30 just so she wouldn't get caught. She had taken me outside in the daylight for the first time in 12 years. I could feel the feeling that was known as warmth touch my skin. It was like something had open up inside me. The whiteboard that she had given me was on the dresser now along with the Dry Erase Markers.

When we went outside, she began drawing the different things that my eyes saw and explained them to me. She also had given me a rectangular object that had white little sheets of paper with lines in on them. She told me to draw a picture of what I saw and to write down the meaning of each object so that way I could remember what each object was.

This was what they called "giving a gift" right? If it was, this would've been the first one I ever was given. I knew I had to keep it somewhere special. Madeline always came to clean my room every morning, so maybe I'll just keep it with me, hidden from her sight all the time. I didn't know how exactly she would react to someone giving me a gift, but I had a feeling that she wouldn't like it one bit.

I had something to myself for the first time.

There was a strange, but quite a good feeling at the same time that came over me when I thought about the possibility of Silya and I getting along well. I wasn't sure what this word was to describe what we were quickly becoming, but it didn't bother me one bit.

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The sixth word that I learned since twelve years ago was flower and it was a plant that has a long thin thing called a stem that was connected to little petals. Silya had handed me one and told me to smell it with my nose, so I had taken in the smell of this plant and it was something of a whole new world. It was fresh and it made me nose feel a sort of sensation that I knew was something wonderful. I could imagine all these different colors and I could hear other sounds of the outside now. There were so many wonderful things outside that it made me wonder why I stayed locked in all those years and missed all of this.

Silya came to my place every day at 11:30 a.m. and stayed usually until 4:00 p.m. Each time she came over, her backpack was always full with different things she took out to work on. Sometimes she would just plug her headphones in and listen to sounds that came from her rectangular objects and she looked like she really enjoyed listening to the sounds behind the headphones. During the time she did do that, I stayed quiet, enjoying the time she was here. Just the sight of seeing her made me feel good. It was the feeling I felt that was better than the word "good" at times even. I had learned a few things about her and to me, it was something that I never wanted to forget.

Silya liked taking me outside of my room and she still looked as happy she did the first time she had taken me outside. Whenever we were outside, I made sure to have my whiteboard, markers and the writing rectangular object that I always carried with me. She said that it was called a notebook and that there could be many uses for it. She said that one of the best things about writing is that you could write about anything that you wanted It was like you're the controller your own story. Within seven days, I had learned 14 words that I made sure to date every time Silya had explained to me and sometimes helped me draw.

This little piece of my world was a secret that was only kept between the two of us. Secret was a word that made me smile to myself because it was a word that made my mouth had formed into a smile. I liked the way that word came out as and the meaning behind it. Something kept between two people that shared a connection that no one else knew about. It was like we were in our own world, where in this world my troubles seemed to fade away.

The first words that I wrote down in my notebook were listed 1-14 and I made sure to draw the picture out of each word again and again:

1. Silya Emerson- a 16 year old girl that came from the outside

2. Warmth- a nice, glowing feeling that lights a person up and what I felt when we first shook hands

3. Pencil- the wooden stick that Silya uses to write

4. Cellphone- rectangular thing that you touch with you fingers and the screen lights up. You use it to call or text friends, Silya said to me

5. Outside- another part behind the door that is filled up with green things and the other warm feeling called sunlight

6. Flower- a plant with stems and petals that grow outside

7. Grass- green and pointy. It tickles you when your skin touches it and it grows outside

8. Whiteboard- a hard, flat, rectangular, surface that can be used to write on and erase when using dry erase markers

9. Dry Erase Markers- Magic markers that erase on whiteboards and a present from Silya that came with the white board and a notebook

10. Notebook- the rectangular object that is filled with white sheets that has lines on it that is used to write.

11. Backpack- a bag that Silya puts her things in

12. Gift- something you give someone that makes them smile

13. Headphones- something to put in your ears that makes sound come out for you to listen to

As I wrote down my last word for the list, I felt myself laugh a little and I didn't know why.

14. Secret- a connection between two people that no one knows about (Silya and me)

I knew at that moment that I finished that sentence that this wasn't something that could only happen when I was sleeping, it was real. My small world seemed to go beyond that wooden door of mine, and I wasn't ready for it at all.