everything you never said

01. mina

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BEFORE we moved to this godforsaken town, my favourite colour was yellow.
At the time, I was young and naive and thought choosing a bright colour like yellow as my favourite meant I had to embody that colour, wearing a smile as bright as the sun and a cheerful demeanour to match.

I say that like I'm not still young and naive.

One thing's for sure though, this town  sucked the youth out of me. Because all this place ever does is remind me of him. The park near our house, with its rickety swings that we used to play on until dusk, the florists that I would visit on occasion to buy him flowers, the theatre we frequented every Saturday for movie night. All the summers we spent in in this town, once fond childhood reminiscence, were now painful reminders of what I had lost.

But I had done my grieving.

You know that feeling you have in the pit of your stomach right after you've finished crying? Like, the sinking despair that cause the tears to leak from your face is still, ever-present, but without the tears to blur your vision, you see how ridiculous you look. You still feel that undeterrable sadness, but you physically cannot cry anymore. That was me, right now.

I guess this is moving on.

'I hope you're catching the bus today, Mina' my mother's tired voice reminded me, the bags underneath her eyes prominent as ever, weighing her down like anchors.

'Of course, Ma. I wouldn't expect you to drop me, I know how much you have on your plate.' I replied quietly.

'I didn't mean it like that, kanna, I-'

'I know, Amma. Have a great day.'

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SOME PEOPLE ARE LIKE SUPERNOVAS.
They come into your life, guns blazing, and make you wonder how you ever lived your life without them. They make you laugh and they make you cry and they make you feel alive. And then they're gone. And that's the part that hurts most - when they disappear, leaving you to pick up the pieces.

That's what my mother said to me, three months after Papa died. She said it solemnly and quietly, like it was a fact. I couldn't help myself when I nodded in agreement, and laid my head on her shoulder.

I hope I never have the misfortune of meeting a supernova.

Because I will be enraptured by them, so wholly and completely taken, and then they will disappear, leaving me broken.

My mother is strong. She knew she had to be, for my sake. She took a job at the small law firm in Freemont and made the decision to move us into this house - my father's childhood home that we used to visit during the holidays.

She tries her best to move us to normalcy, but it's never enough. I can see it when she's crying in the bathroom quietly, when we look through old photo albums and her breath hitches, when she cooks pa's favourite breakfast. It is an unspoken agreement that we never mention these instances - they're chinks in her armour she's built to protect both of us.

In that aspect, I don't take after my mother. I am weak, and let my emotions control me for too long. I was an explosion of colours before, but now all I can feel is grey.

I glanced at the small campus of Larned High and sighed to myself. There were no supernovas here. Only stupid, conceited teenagers. I say that without a hint of mockery or malice - it's just the truth, and I'm one of them.

It's been six months since I moved into San Juine, but this is the first month of school I'm attending. Turns out, having a dead father does wonders for people's sympathy. My first class was English lit, and I hated it.

To be honest, I was never good with words. Math was comforting, because it was straightforward and left no room for errors. 1 + 1 is 2, no matter how crazy the world around you was, you could rely on that.

But words? Words were unpredictable. One word could mean so many different things to so many different people. Words from your favourite book could bring you a sense of comfort, but also serve as painful nostalgia for something you could never get back.

I focused my attention back to the teacher in front of me. She wasn't very old, she might have been a few years younger than my mother, at least. But she looked so tired, so exasperated with this class that smelled like defiance and teen spirit that I felt a kinship with her. I wondered why she took this job in the first place, but then I saw that hopeful glint in her eyes.

'You all have a little bit of compassion in you. A little bit of 'I want to save the world'. That's why you're here. But what I want you to know, is that it's enough to save one person. And it's okay if that person is yourself'

The bell rang, punctuating the end of her message. I felt a small, genuine smile on my face. I hadn't really smiled in forever.

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hi guys! It's me, chronic story creator. This book idea came to me a few days ago and I couldn't help but fall in love with it. A quick note- this will not be like any other book I've written. While the chapter sizes, formats and content in my other stories are relatively similar, this book will feature chapters that only have one word's definition, it will have the history and point of view of characters that aren't really a part of a major storyline and it will have characters that don't converse like most high schoolers do.
The Half Of It (Netflix movie) and The Sun Is Also A Star (novel by Nicola Yoon) are two of my biggest inspirations for this story.

Nonetheless, I hope you liked this chapter and there's more to come!
Also, please go check out Right There Where We Stood, a book by simplisticsonders that deserves so much love (yes we started new books at the same time, we're crazy)

PS - Updates of Clarity and I Knew Lorelai will now be once a week, perhaps twice a week)

Love,
Sanjana

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