Sunshine || l.h. {complete}

Seven

oh my g o s h i am so so so sorry about not writing so much recently, college and life and school and boys and aljb;aslkjf;aslkfj ugh my life has been go go go lately. i apologize though, and since it's the holidays and i don't do much, i'll {hopefully} be writing more :) so thank you if you've stuck with me!! i love you guys very much, your reviews make me smile, so keep it up, loves x

ps, this is a long one!! 4.4k words!! :D x

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7:43 p.m.

Wednesday, November 1st, 2014

“Belle Marie Sinclair!”

Dang it.

The first thing she does when she opens the door is wince at her mother’s harsh tone. She sets her backpack down against the table and sighs, looking up to see her mother’s round face bright red in anger and her palms turned to fists against her hips.

“Yes, mom?”

“Get your butt in there, now,” she says in an evenly murderous tone, pointing to the bedroom on the far side of the house. Belle sluggishly takes a seat and picks at the loose strings on the bedding, “Is there something wrong?” Her voice is both timid and shaky, a dead giveaway in these types of situations – not that her mother doesn’t already know what’s going on. Her mom knows she skipped school because the front desk woman gets paid to pick on children who skip school without notices, telling on them to her parents. For a moment, Belle calls the front desk lady The Tattletale in mere spite, curling her lip in frustration.

“Would you care to explain,” her mother begins slowly, running her tongue over her lips in a moment of hesitation as if to see how she wants to word her sentence, “why you skipped school today?” Belle kicks at the wooden flooring with her sock-clad feet, suddenly feeling the creeping sense of regret climbing up her spine and sending a shot of lead to her bones. She feels heavy.

“I couldn’t do it,” Belle responds flatly, shrugging her shoulders a little, “I wasn’t feeling good.”

As if the words mean anything to her mother, Belle still speaks them anyways. It’s true, sometimes she’s skipped school because her head or heart wasn’t in it. She can’t focus sometimes, and other times her hands are just drawn to her wrists in anticipation or anxiety. Her mother’s arms draw back over her chest, tucking her hands into her pretzel limbs, “You’re not allowed to make that call, young lady. Belle, you can’t just do whatever you want to for the sole excuse that you don’t feel well. You’ve already missed two days this week because you didn’t feel well!”

It’s as if her mother’s words are a knife sunk deep into Belle’s back, every time she reiterates the words “feel well”, it’s driven further and then twisted so it hurts. The only words her mother has ever understood are “I don’t feel well today, I don’t think I can go to school” because they’re the only ones she herself can say aloud. Her mother was never comfortable with the other explicit words describing her daughter’s condition.

Belle gulps, wondering how she can save the situation, “I’m still not…”

“Where were you all day then?” her mother exhales and closes her eyes, reaching up her arms to press fingertip to temple. “Your cheeks are sunburnt.”

Belle pulls her knees into her chest and leans back against the brace of her mother’s bed, “I sat at the park.” Immediately her mother reaches out and pulls Belle by the chin so she has to face her, “You never do that unless you’re thinking about him. You have to stop that, dear, it only hurts you.” A strange look plagues her mother’s face, causing her to age ten years. “You can’t just skip school to go and think and worry and blame yourself into an oblivion.”