The Suburbs

You live in the suburbs.

This is not on purpose. You were born in the suburbs, to Jamie Vivian Jones and Jack Oscar Jones, your mom and dad. They lived in the suburbs because there was nowhere else to live, and they'd both grown up in neighbourhoods of crabgrass and brick elementary schools around each corner.

You have an older sister named Rosa Lee Jones. She has blond hair, but she doesn't like it. She thinks it's tangly and brown. She hides, behind her hair, which she grows long and thick. You don't look like her. You don't look like anybody.

Your life was the same exact thing every day. You got up at the same time each morning and ate the same breakfast. You sluggishly did your work in each class, and you talked with your friends. You did everything the same.

Once, you woke up and didn't get up. You turned your alarm off and just stared at the ceiling. You had gotten it painted a couple years ago, and they'd tested out colours on the edges. It looked like a beach, and then the ocean. You watched the waves break and watched as the sun slowly filled up your room. You still didn't get up. When your parents came to check on you and get you up, you just turned over and didn't get up. They took your temperature and finally decided it was for the best if you stayed home. The next day, you went right back to school.

There were other days you stayed home, but that one remained solitary, outstanding even, in your mind for no good reason. You didn't know why, and finally, you had to dismiss all the thoughts that were crowding your mind. You needed to focus on other things.

That night was a quiet one. Fleecy clouds covered the opalescent moon and stars quavered in their spots, like always, but not many were visible in the suburbs. The biggest one was dimmed, and there were many that were just dull pinpricks in the shifting sky. And you were awake still, thinking about the universe and your school interchangeably, as we so often do. You thought it was dark and quiet that night, but you didn't usually stay up so late.

You hadn't planned to. You'd done most of your homework that afternoon and only needed to smooth out the rough edges, and after dinner you'd checked your English, Math, Spanish, and History homework, because those were the classes you'd have tomorrow. Then you texted your friends and watched T.V. and then took a shower, because you didn't want to get up early tomorrow to take one.

At eleven thirty, your parents had come upstairs and peeked in your room and told you to go to bed. You sighed because most of the time, you liked to stay up late. So, you read a book, a book you'd read before and had thought practically nothing of it, but you needed to do something, and you didn't want to go downstairs to get a book from the shelves that lined your living room walls.

Finally, you'd yawned so much that you flicked the light off and turned on the box fan that was aimed at your feet. You laid down on the bed and you tried to sleep, but you couldn't.

You felt like it was so hot that the air was a thick curtain around you, that the moon was a magnifying glass for the sun, and that you were baking alive. You twisted and turned in your bed, getting tangled up with the sheets. You checked to see that your box fan was on the highest level, which it was.

You finally decided to go in the bathroom and soak a towel to put on your forehead. Maybe you'd get a drink, and you decided that after that, you'd go downstairs and tiptoe to the freezer, and then you'd check to see if it had any ice cream in it. You were pretty sure there would be, because last Saturday, there'd been a birthday party at your house for your mom.

You walked to the door of your room and blinked as the light filled your eyes. It was so bright; that couldn't be right. There was too much light...