Speechless

Chapter One

14 years later

"Mom, I can't live like this anymore." I signed my face expressing all the anger I could push forward. "You're the one who can't keep a boyfriend long enough for me to make it through a school year. Why should I suffer."

She sat on the bottom step with her head propped in her hands staring up at me. The frustration was neatly tucked away behind her eyes, she only let calm wash through her. We stood there, silently. Only the sound of the grandfather clock in the living room tick tick ticking away filled the halls of our nearly empty house. Boxes filled the half empty rooms and halls waiting for us to unpack them. Well, her to unpack them. I refused as a sign of my displeasure.

"I am already enough of a freak without having to keep changing school and making new friends." I continued in my rant.

"you are not a freak," she sighed, shaking her head.

She buried her face in her hands for a moment trying to wipe away the stress. I knew that would get under her skin. Freak. She felt bore the pain of my illness and its consequences as if it was her fault, like she was the one who causes the cancer and the one who caused the surgeons hands to slip. She bore the pain of my father leaving when it got too scary and too hard. She bore the pain when my sister, Veronica blaming me for her slipping through the cracks. Instead of bearing all the pain, I bore the anger of it all. It became how we managed.

My mother bore the pain.

I bore the anger.

Neither of us could let it go.

Picking her head up from her hands she stared at me firmly. Her age was beginning to wear on her face. People always said Veronica looked like my dad and I looked like my mother. I had her dark unruly hair that framed an oval face spotted with freckles. I had her round brown eyes that in the right lighting there seemed to be no difference between pupil and iris. I was her, just twenty-eight years younger. Part of me wondering if I would have sounded like her too, if I would have had her perpetually hoarse voice that echoed through halls.

"it is my senior year," I signed, "I am supposed to be thinking about prom and graduation. Not changing schools in the middle of October."

I shoved my hands into my pockets. I wanted to anger her, to make her feel the way I felt about the upheaval of my life.

"Ellie Mae you know you have to go to school." She said pulling herself up using the handrail eyes still locked on me.

Success.

I tightened my jaw and ran my tongue over my teeth. Instead of responding I turned away and pulled open the front door and slammed it behind me as I left. That felt like it got the message across.

The rumors had already started as there were eyes on me from the moment I passed through the front door. It was a small school, 392 students, now 393 students with my arrival. Principle Taylor had laid it all out for me from the tour we took over the weekend when he talked me through my schedule for the day. The amount that he talked it honestly didn't matter that I couldn't respond. He did enough speaking for the both of us. He told me all about the grand history of Horton High School and the amazing academic opportunities that came with small class sizes. I couldn't help but find humor in his spin of a small town with small opportunities.

When I entered the school I made a beeline for the front office. Miss Abel, the receptionist was not at her desk so I lingered in the front office unsure where to go next. 

"Good morning Eleanor!" He exclaimed jumping up from his desk the moment my foot passed the threshold of the front office. "We are so excited to have you here today!"