She's Long Gone

Melissa, NOW

   
   It was hard to deny the nervous tumbles in my stomach—partly because over the heap of mussles I ate out of stress, but also because it was my first official sleepover. It would have seemed to be something trivial that all young teenagers do with warm-lit bedrooms, but for me it was an elite invitation, a green light my family was always so reluctant to give.

    Mother helps me with the things I had to bring out of boredom. Yet by the way she gone through each item, making sure it was the right power bank, the full set of just-in-case medical kit and the perfectly wrapped gift, doubt was written all over her face. Sometimes I struggle to see whether her eyes that observed every action of mine was either affectionate or cynical; she knew none of us had history of wrecking mistakes, as long as her GPS stays on, she'll be alright with Olivia Peters. A smart girl — heading to Brighton College in three months, ahead with her life, done with my daughter.

    I allowed the Google random number generator to pick my outfit; it was a ludicrous idea but my mind was definite that this visit could be the first and final adolescent memory. This wasn't prom or an exam, but there was now way a girl who spends a one hour car journey to someone's house just to look like a school project buddy.

  The phone rings with a buzz and I fight the urge to check it.  Olivia calmed me down three times making sure she'd prepare some non-alcoholic drinks as we both know anything with caffeine or stimulants would send my heart beating like a helicopter and straight to six feet under. Slowly I brush my fingers across the tag of my loosely knotted jumper, feeling the price tag scratching my skin. Air whooshes in from the gap through the bottom and I wonder if my sensitive belly would feel too naked when I sit in the hammock she claims to own in her backyard.

   She loves Italian. The stickers spread across her laptop screams the love for the language and the culture itself; I suggested making pizza with my newly-learnt bread  making skills, but Olivia insists to demonstrate the secret family recipe. For the past nights my knuckles clenched in the middle of the night from an unknown surge of adrenaline, which ended up searching through the web for green laser pens. If there's mountains in front of her house, we could point them around looking for wild pigs.

   People say these wild creatures only appear once as a sign of good luck, which of course living in an apartment in the middle of Surrey would never happen. I was so eager to have my own pen. No one could resist the temptation in school to snatch the teacher's one that points around the screen like a projected Disney show on the walls.

  It finally came yesterday in an Amazon box too large for a thin metal stick with tape wrapped a it instead of a plastic packing, which to my surprise, fits perfectly well in back pocket of my jeans, safe from Mother's confiscation.

  "Remember to turn your phone on ringer and call me when you arrive." She zips my bag tightly and her lips turn downwards into a frown.

  "Why don't you just give me a ride?' Sometimes her concerns came from her own problems. Mother was the person who thought of consequences, but never ever what would lead to them. She mourned about the loss of things yet doesn't understand the gravity of a butterfly effect.

   "I'm busy. Something to catch up." She hands me the brush, occasionally glancing at the clock.

   "Does that include looking at home décor ideas on your phone?"

  "You know what I mean when I say no to something, Melissa." Yeah, probably telling my dad that we need to keep some gold bullion in our house just in case of an upcoming global economic crisis that would deplete the value of all currencies. Last month when she left the safe open, I swear there was heaps of legal documents and ziplock bags with diamonds from her wedding.