Light up the Sky

t h r e e

Maya

Mom came back from pity-delivering the Browns'. She delivered the cookies after like three months. She said that she wanted to give them some time to heal. Apparently the boy I saw that day had met with this hockey accident which had caused him this dark vision, almost like half-blindness. I feel bad for him. I can't help but understand what being in the shadow is like. What seeing just the night sky is like. No sun. Not even a ray. I'm glad I enjoyed at least those non-accountant moments of life out in the sun.
My Physics classes just ended so I take my coffee cup and head down the stairs to the kitchen and keep my cup on the edge of the countertop. I fall from the back on the couch where my mom is sitting with her laptop, and with her teacup hardly balancing on her knees. "Mom...," I say observing the tension creases on her forehead. "Why are you so obsessed with uploading the story today? You know you can always chill! It's not like Josh will say anything!" I complete my sentence and look back at my mom and she gives me this reassuring look which says 'don't worry about me, but thanks for sorting the problem' .
"I've baked some brownie bowls along with the cookies, and it's on the counter, go get it before it gets cold!" my mom says to be while petting Sunny. Sunny has grown a lot fatter in the last few months. I wonder why? It's probably because she is getting old or something. I get up and head to the counter, and I can suddenly smell the fresh cocoa brownie on the countertop. Why didn't I smell this before? Nevermind it's probably nothing. If I mention this to mom, she'll probably freak out, thinking that my cranial nerves aren't  functioning right, and carry me over to Dr. Grange again. I grab the brownie bowl and head back up with it. I start watching funny cat videos, when expectantly, Sunny enters the room paranoid for having another cat company.
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I play my jam from Spotify and decide to clean my mess of a room. I really want to clean the mirror, on which I painted those Tiktok inspired pastel and puffy clouds with rainbows and angels. I sprint down the stairs and grab Colin's Squirt bottle and the rag rug cleaning cloth piece from the storage loft and hurriedly climb the fight of stairs back up to my room. My heart starts beating like dramatic drum rolls, and I feel dizzy. I stop in my tracks and stare down at my feet. I'm hallucinating and hyperventilating. My toes look squiggly and long. I stare at them as I try to catch my breath. I slowly pace towards my bed, and almost faint as I fall into it. As I sink into my duvet, I think about this attack. The last time when my mom and me went to Dr. Grange, she mentioned about my overexposure to sun rays last summer, and that it had caused my respiratory and cardiac imbalance. Apparently my cranial nerves had less receptivity than before. Mom started crying in the car that day. I lay there on the bed until the ceiling comes to focus, and my heart calms down. I turn to the right, and slowly get up. I face my closet door which is full of my pictures. I see my parents and me at the beach at Puerto Rico, each of us holding those Blue Lagoon drinks from that popular Black Pearl dinner. I was under sunlight. Pleasantly smiling. I saw how happy my parents are in that photo. Me included. My rosy cheeks, bulbous enough to cover my eyes, my skin tan like cocoa butter, and my cute little swimsuit with cute little rainbows. I almost get tears in my eyes. I can't imagine that one day I was allowed to be free. Look at me now. I look like a trapped creature. Trying to free herself from all the cruel complexions she faces, the dungeon which is her home, with strangers who are family, and the world, which is unsafe;she is trapped within this souless body forever.

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After my little tantrum about freedom, I pull myself together, take the squirt bottle from the crochet rug, and move towards the mirror. I bend down a little to take the cloth from underneath the side sofa, where it must have dropped while I fell on the bed. I see Sunny spread out on the side sofa, licking her little tush, not bothered at all. Such an adorable one. I pat her head and resume my quest to find the cleaning cloth. After I find it, I get up, and take a small peak outside the window. The sun has set, and the Sky is left in this cotton candy like imprint, with a little wisp of blue and mustard somewhere in it's density. I see a watermark like shadow of the moon, shaped like uneven cheddar with little cirlces somewhere around. I look down to the pavement as I hear someone pacing towards. I see that boy from the other day. He looks at me too. His eyes are this deep, ocean color, like you could get lost into. We fix our eyes on each other. I notice his other features. Delicate and modelled, his lips seemed as soft as silk, his hair blowing from the wind, fresh and feathery. I see him, looking back at me, bewildered too. He gives me a smile ever so dazeing, and I melt my amusement and smile back my shy smile. For a second, everything else  shunned, it seemed like we were the only ones.