Annalise Starke had known her mother was going to die eventually; she just hadn't expected it to happen so soon.
At fifteen she had moved with her mother back to her home country of Australia with half a heart (metaphorically, of course) and her mo...
When I came to, it was still black as pitch outside. I glanced over at my phone to see that it was four in the morning on Friday—God, Breck's going to make me go back to school today, isn't he?
I groaned, reaching up to rub my eyes with the heel of my hands. They felt like they weighed a hundred pounds, each. Clearly, I was not doing well with the jet lag—
You're not doing well with anything, really, the voice chimed in.
I sat up and turned on my bedside lamp, its bulb blinding, and hoping it would chase the darkness away. Even if it was inside of me.
I stared at the floral wallpapered walls, tracing my eyes over the bell Lillies in the pattern, and tried to get ahold of myself. I'd forgotten how much I loved this wallpaper. I hadn't seen it in two years and yet now, the walls seemed to close in, hugging me like an old friend. In that moment, it felt like all of my nerves had been squeezed out.
It went away as soon as I took a breath, bringing me back to reality—the reality where my mother was dead and I was back in Rose Hill.
With a sigh, I officially climbed out of bed.
As I stood up, the cold wood chilled the flats of my feet. I hopped from one foot to the other trying to shake off the chill before I started to make my bed, silent worries flooded my brain as I got into the well-mannered rhythm of fluffing my pillows and folding my blankets.
After I placed the last throw pillow on my bed, I headed into my bathroom. I desperately needed to wash my face, and my hair, and—well, all of me. I think my comfort from cleanliness stemmed from memories of my mother wiping the dirt from my face with a wet rag, or cleaning a cut with peroxide. She always used to say, before you can take care of anything else, you must first take care of yourself.
I wish I had taken that more literally than I had.
As I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, I almost didn't recognize the girl that looked back. My golden-blonde hair hung down my back, there used to be an ever so slight curl to it, now it laid limp. My skin was paler than it had been in years, and had the slightest pallor to it.
I leaned closer, looking at the bags framing my dull eyes. Usually they were warm—my favorite feature, and one that I shared with my mother—but the shine had yet to return to them. Not only didn't I look like me, but I didn't feel like me, either. I had yet to heal from the shell I had become in the past few weeks since her passing.
