Everything Has Changed (On Hold)

Chapter 8: Someday Soon

Chapter 8: SOMEDAY SOON

Routine is out the window. All I’m doing is scanning the web for good colleges to apply for. I wake up at sunrise and paint. I go to bed at midday and sleep til dinner, stay up until the sunsets and sketch it. It’s currently 5:30 am and it’s warm. It’s funny how that happens during summer. I’m wearing my pyjama shorts and a tank top, no one should be up, I can wear my lazy day clothes.

Grabbing the sketch pad and pencil I race downstairs, it’s tea time. There’s no way that I can survive the morning without tea! It’s my saviour. Yet as I swing down the stairs, jumping over the banister, I hear a muffled voice talking. Its mum, I haven’t heard her up this early for weeks, she used to do this all the time. I thought it was some sort of phase that she was just communicating with some old university friend. Obviously that has continued but I’m starting to think it’s something more. Weird I know.

“Shush, now, don’t stress, when the time is right. Yes, they have just finished school… No she doesn’t know yet… I can’t you know, it’s hard… She’s my baby!” Mum whisper yells into the phone. “I know it’s got to be soon, but how do you bring that up in a conversation?”

I stand quietly there listening. Part of me feels guilty for eavesdropping, but the rest of me is wondering what she’s talking about. I’m her baby, I just finished school. All evidence seems to say that she’s talking about me, I just don’t know why.

“Mum, is that you?” I say loudly pretending I had just walked downstairs.

“Oh my! You gave me a fright there Gracie baby, you coming down for your tea?” She says regaining her calm.

“yeah, just here for the tea, was that you on the phone I could hear?” I ask meekly.

“Yes I was talking to a long-distance friend of mine. Sorry if I woke you,” Mum says, “Now if you excuse me, I have to go sleep some more,”

Sighing, I finish my tea and head off to the attic to watch the sunrise.  Mum has been acting weirdly again, I thought she was done with this stupid sneaking around and morning phone calls. Obviously she hasn’t, which makes me wonder if it’s more than just an old friend, clearly it’s not just a friend, she’s been waking up hours before usual, changing her whole schedule just to fit in time to talk to this person. Very unlike mum, she wouldn’t change her schedule to drive me to anyone house, never ever, not even if it was for homework assignments!

Sitting in my attic I watch the sunrise, instead of doing some sort of art, I just sit. I can never do art when I’m sad. Some people say, their sadness makes their art better but I can never feel any motivation to do something that makes me so happy while I’m sad. It wouldn’t cheer me up; it would wreck the piece of art. I don’t want to look at something and think every time that I see it, oh that’s from when I was upset over what my mum could possibly be hiding from me. Oh well, so much for getting up early. I might as well go sleep again.

****

I wake up to shouting which is not normal in my household, like not at all, my parents don’t shout, they ignore each other until they feel the tension too much and sit down like sensible adults over coffee and sort out the issue. It sounds reasonable but once it took mum and dad, 2 whole months to find it too awkward to keep ignoring one another. I  lie in bed in shock as I hear my parents fling words at each other, with raised angry voices I’ve never heard before.

“She has a right to know!” Dad yells,

“I never said she didn’t” Mum screeches,

“Then why didn’t you tell her months ago?”