petrichor

Memory

Question:
what are y'all's hobbies?

Lena

She was alone in her room, mindlessly fiddling her pencil over the math homework she was supposed to do. Ugh, I wish I can get this over with already. She sighed as she slammed her head repeatedly on her desk. To pass time, and to make her brain think she was being productive, she doodled her own cartoon characters on the margins on her exercise book.

After a few minutes of daydreaming, doodling, and groaning, she placed her pen down and let her mind wander for a bit. But unfortunately, instead of replaying the good memories, her mind wandered back to what happened earlier at school.

After lunchtime, she was standing in front of her locker, tidying her stuffs and getting ready to head over to the next class when one of her classmate Rebecca approached her. Lena tried to muster a smile, but it was hard because she knew deep down that Rebecca hated her. "Uh, hey Becca." She said awkwardly. She felt her hands sweating profusely.

Instead of replying, Rebecca grinned even wider. She looks like a wolf. Lena thought. "Well hello, Lena." Replied Rebecca, "You look surprisingly pretty today." Lena was stunned, was Rebecca playing a joke on her? She never gave anyone a compliment unless to her friends. Nevertheless, she answered back. "Thanks. Uh, you too I guess."

Rebecca walked closer and leaned on the side of Lena's locker, observing her every move. Lena felt her hands shaking as her enemy's gaze bore right through her. The tension between them was so thick, it was like a balloon waiting to be popped.  Finally, Rebecca broke the silence. "You know, you look thirsty Lena, mind if I offer you a bottle of water?"
"Oh, no. I'm not that thirsty, really, I just--"

But before Lena could finish her sentence, Rebecca uncapped a bottle of water and poured the entire contents over Lena's head. In no time, Lena was soaking wet. After it was over, Lena looked over to Rebecca. Her enemy's smile was triumphant as she watched her victim gasping for air and screaming in shock. A crowd formed between them, laughing and pointing at Lena while Rebecca laughed mirthfully as if the whole thing was a joke.

"What did you do that for?!" Lena screamed. Rebecca shrugged and placed a smirk on her face. "I don't know. I just thought your face needs a little refreshment." She glanced at the empty water bottle. "Turns out I gave a little too much." And without saying another word, Rebecca walked off followed by her two cohorts who suddenly popped out of nowhere down the hallway. A short while later, the crowd dispersed, but Lena could still hear the whispers that was directed to her.

After a pathetic attempt of drying herself up in the bathroom with limited toilet paper, Lena came to class with her shirt dripping wet and her hair soaking. She felt the eyes of thirty four other students gawking at her as if she was a museum artifact. She sank lower into her seat, trying to ignore the whispers of her classmate.

Lena glanced towards the back row where Rebecca and her friends were sitting. Rebecca gave a shrug and shaped her hand into an L shape and placed it on her forehead. Loser, her enemy mouthed. Lena covered her face with a spare hoodie from her locker. Tears welled up in her eyes as she tried to blink it back.

She had no one to talk to, she tried to force herself to enjoy the solitude, but she couldn't; she was lonely because everybody seemed to laugh at or ignore her. Especially now with what happened with Rebecca, she was even more of a laughing stock than the ugly lunch lady with an extra thumb in the cafetaria.

Nobody seemed to care about her, and nobody intended to. Her only solace was drawing cartoons on her sketchbook. Everyday, she would make up new stories in her head and let her hand make the imaginations come true. But she was afraid to show her drawings to anyone else. So her work, was highly confidential, and for her and her eyes only.

She snapped back from her flashback due to the gurgling sound of a fountain that belonged to the neighbor next door. At first, she felt nothing, then slowly, she felt her hands sweating and her heart pounding. It felt as if the amount of oxygen in her room was quickly depleting, making it more difficult for her to concentrate.

Lena staggered towards her bed and placed her head on the pillow, the headache and heart pounding became worse after every second. No, stop it. I'm not supposed to remember these things. She shouted in her head.

But of course, the events keep playing in her mind like a broken record, making the memory more agonizing every second, sometimes slowing down, sometimes speeding up, but it was mostly played in rewind. It was slowly messing up her breathing rhythm; she was hyperventilating, and she didn't know how to stop it.

Stop it, I want silence! Lena thought, as she curled into a fetal position and placed a pillow over her head. She could barely hear the voices in her head anymore, all the memories became a blur. The concept of reality and non-reality felt vague. And she was having trouble breathing.

Minutes passed, and her heart was thumping so loudly, she could hear it in her eardrums, making the pain shot through her head. She felt as if she had been impaled by a knife right in the brain. She wanted to scream, but it would only made it worse, and she stifled a sob instead, letting out the emotions she had been keeping earlier to be free.

She stifled a scream as she felt her lungs constricting. Make it stop! She screamed in her head. Suddenly, the whole room felt like a merry-go-round, she could hardly focus on what she was seeing or where she was, "Oh, no." She muttered to herself, before she collapsed once again on her bed and blacked out from exhaustion and everything went dark.