One Minute

Chapter Two-Gone

I plugged my Beats into my iPod and did my best to drown out the world. I didn’t want to hear all the crap I have to at home. I didn’t want to deal with my family. I had enough to deal with. Though my parents may not have known, I knew more than I should.

Sure, I have a family. I have a mom, a dad, and a sister. Trisha, Joseph, and Monique Montero. They’re nice. My sister’s five years younger, and she picks on me a lot, but I can tell that she just wants me to care for her and love her. My mom goes to school almost every day to become a nurse, so we don’t talk much anymore. She understands me though when it comes to some things.

My dad’s a different story because of all the secrets I know about him. He’s the one I dispute with the most. Ever since I was in 8th grade I’ve known things about him. He gave me his old cell phone back then. He was too stupid to erase the messages on his outbox.

I read more than I should have. How he texted her saying , “Hey hotstuff,” or “When are you coming down to see me?” He never answers her calls in front of us. He texts her daily. I know he does. He watches porn early in the morning when everybody else is asleep.  Nobody else knows. He doesn’t know that I know so many things about him. He doesn’t know that I know about her. But why would  he know?

They swear I’m so stupid.

I keep quiet about it all—I couldn’t bear to see a family torn apart because of what I know.  On top of that, my best friend left me. I told her I was starving myself, and she told that I could go ahead and think I was “fat”, but if I was going to starve myself then I wasn’t allowed to talk to her.

I waited for days, hoping that maybe it’d be like all the other times when she’d talk to me after a while. I waited for that text. Sometimes I still wait for that text, even though I know that I will never get it. It took me fourteen years to make a best friend, and only a couple days to lose her.

Sometimes I was okay, and I could go through the day without any worry. Other days the pain hit me hard like I was the Titanic that hit the iceberg. I’d cry and I’d cry and I’d cry. I sobbed and wept for hours at a time, and it made me ache. It hurt me to know that I couldn’t do anything right sometimes.

I buried my face into my pillow and I let out soft sobs, turning off my iPod. The door opened and in came my best guy friend, Raymond.

I’ve known Raymond for a long time now—ever since we were children. Back then, we used to be next door neighbors. Now, he lives across the street from me. He was a handsome young man with the typical German features: a tall and muscular body, shaggy blonde hair, ocean blue eyes, strong cheekbones, a sharp face that could cut through diamonds, and freckles that stretched across his flesh like the stars in the sky. A lot of girls at the high school liked him because of his looks, but he didn’t enjoy the fact that they only liked him because of that.

They never let him express and show his personality. As cheesy as it sounds, he’s a hopeless romantic and he’s the man of every girl’s dreams. He’s the type of guy that believes in finding the one, and he has yet to find her, or at least, one that likes him as well.

“Hey there beautiful,” Raymond sat down on the edge of my bed, rubbing my back. He stopped for a moment and at me up, tilting my face towards him, brushing the tears away.

“What’s wrong Zora…?” He pulled the headphones away from me, my face cupped in his hands. He was always nice to me because he loves me. I remember back in preschool, we were always together, and one day he walks up to me, and tells me, “I’m going to marry you one day!”

“It’s nothing… Just… a lot of stress…” I lie. He nods lightly and takes me to the bathroom.

“Go ahead and wash up, and then we’ll talk about this later. We are camping out in the backyard tonight, right? You promised we would do it today! And we were gonna make s’mores and stuff, right?” He poked my stomach and I couldn’t help but to let out a soft giggle, then I nodded faintly. “That’s my girl. You’re the best, Zora.” He smiled at me and kissed my cheek before walking off to the living room, closing the door for me. I sniffled and rubbed wet cheeks with my sleeve and I stopped for a moment, catching a whiff of something. I sniffed the room, unable to decode it. Finally, I sniffed my sleeve, pulling away slightly.