For as long as Evelyn could remember, her home has never been a safe place. With the constant threat of her mother's erratic behaviour, Evelyn is nothing more than her punching bag.
But one day, she finds an abandoned poem left on a park bench, and...
If anyone were to ask her what her happiest memories were, she would simply say that they all happened before she was born. That's because her memories weren't really her memories.
Any snippet of the past that she could recall never featured her, or anything she'd ever done. Her most prominent recollections weren't of times where she learnt to ride a bike, or went to the beach with her family, or had her first kiss, or fell asleep under the cover of a dreamy starlight sky.
No, she couldn't have nostalgia over things that never happened.
Instead, they were always of Mother.
Mother when she was angry.
Mother when she was upset.
Mother when she hated Evelyn.
Mother when she hated herself...
She could only imagine that Mother's happiest times all existed before, well, she did. She told her all the time, after all, that life before her was much better than it was now. Evelyn didn't doubt it, but it was always hard to imagine that the woman who birthed her was anything other than what she'd always been— cold, controlling, calculating.
As Evelyn swung her dangling legs against the metal rails, she closed her eyes, letting the soft breeze coming from the river below down wash over her.
Sitting on the railing of a bridge probably wasn't the best idea, but she'd always reasoned with herself that if she accidentally fell in one day, it wouldn't be that big a deal.
Not that she should've been mistaken as suicidal though. She knew she had been through enough tough times in her life not to just give up now.
But, it's not like the world would weep after her if she were to just disappear.
It would be so easy— she acknowledged that fact. The only person who would notice her disappearance would be Mother. And even then, Evelyn was convinced that the strongest emotion that would elicit out of her would be anger.
But it's not what she wanted. There had to be more out there in the world for her.
This couldn't be all there was for life to offer.
Too bad that she was always so afraid to do anything about it.
Checking her watch, she sighed.
Time to start heading home.
She pushed herself off of the barrier, on to the hard pavement behind her. Grabbing her bag from the nearby bench, she paused when her eyes skimmed over something white. There was a piece of paper sitting under where her bag had just been— that of which she was sure hadn't been there twenty minutes ago. What really grabbed her attention, though, was who it was addressed to.
To the girl sitting on the bridge.
She could only assume that meant her, considering she didn't see anyone else indulging in her borderline-fatal pastime.
Picking up the paper, she opened it up, smoothing out all the crinkles with a meticulous hand only Mother would be proud of.
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