New Feelings (a short story)

Feelings

Rosalyn never knew what hit her. Literally. She has never felt the touch of a hand holding her, nor the feeling of a boy kissing her. She can't even feel the warmth when her mother would give her a hug at night. The only thing she felt was the kiss her father gave her every night on the forehead.

She was different. She wasn't even sure if anybody wanted to hold her or if any boy wanted to kiss her (not just on the forehead). Rosalyn wanted those feelings so bad.

People had told her what it was like, but she could never truly know. Every night, Rosalyn would pray to God asking him to fix her. Her mother, Marie, had always told her she was perfect just the way she was because God made her that way. Her mother told her that she shouldn't ask God to change her.

How could Rosalyn not want to be normal? All her friends at school were normal, so why couldn't God make her normal?

One night, after praying on her bedside, Rosalyn was fast asleep. She would usually toss and turn. Some nights she would stay up all night sick. Those were the worst days. God let her rest this day.

Her dreams were deep and vivid. Rosalyn was all alone, in a field. Crops were all around her. There was a sweet smell in the air. The flowers must be blooming. All of a sudden, the air gets very cold on her face. Her long hair is sent in every which way, and her vision lessens.

Rosalyn falls into another deep sleep in the cornfield.

She wakes up in the ocean. Treading water. She doesn't know how she's doing it but she is. The sensation is very weird and alien to her. The water feels as if it is going through her legs. The muscle on her arms and legs shake back and forth with the treading motion.

Now the air is crisp and the water tastes salty. Rosalyn is losing energy dramatically and struggles to keep her head above the water. After a few more seconds of struggle, she lets her body go limp and sink. She doesn't realize that she has to breathe before going under. Rosalyn has never been in water before. When she breathes in the water gives a sharp pain that she feels all over her body.

Rosalyn opens her eyes underwater to the sight of sunken ships and cargo all on the bottom. That's where she classifies herself. The leftover. The forgotten. The sunken.

The sharp pain of breathing in water ends when she is suddenly in one of the hallways of her high school. Teenagers are running around, goofing off, and being typical teenagers. Rosalyn is much more conserved, though. She is holding her books in her right hand and swinging her left to the music in her head. She couldn't believe the sensation she was feeling. With each step she took she could feel the blood pumping from her heart all the way to her toes and fingers and back. This is what it's like to be normal.

Rosalyn had loved music. Every kind. She would listen to everything. It was one of the few things that she could do, and she embraced every second she spent doing it.

Currently, she had an old poppy/cheery song stuck in her head. It was one of those songs that every teenage girl was obsessed with until the next one-hit-wonder released a new song. But not Rosalyn. She stuck her music as a part of her that she never lets go.

Rosalyn glanced at the clock to catch the time, but it was frozen. Then, everything just stopped moving. The sensations in her legs and arms stopped and she could only move her head again.

She glanced down at her left and and couldn't believe what she saw.

He was reaching for her hand.

Thank you for reading! If you read this please comment and tell me if you liked it!