The Sociopath's Daughter

Order

I paced around my room, thoughts swirling my mind like wind in a hurricane: how can I make myself look as good as possible?

'I would never disrespect a teacher for no reason!'

No, he wouldn't believe that.

'Father, if you just sent me to a smart school this wouldn't have happened!'

Eh, he'd probably just get even more angry.

'Oh, father dearest, you know me...'

Well, to be honest, he really didn't know me all that well. We both weren't very good at talking to each other, both from his seeming inability, as well as my age and common inability (that would grow more apparent with age). I wanted to get to know him, I wanted that relationship I never really had with my mother, a relationship like on the adverts during Christmas time or like the ones I read about in my stories. I would often live through those books to escape the reality of my loss, as well as my ever changing life.

The stress of it all caused me to pour out all the contents of my dresser on the floor to reorganize them, the organizing that my father had usually done for me. I folded it best I could, aka as best as a child with not a lot of folding experience can do. This reorganizing would calm me down.

When I lived with my mother, I had a whole bookshelf perfect for my height; whenever she would have late nights I would stay up and reorganize the books until she came home, sometimes I would wake up on the floor with Paddington in hand.

The floor was an absolute mess as I started sectioning everything by type of clothing, then by color, the alphabetical order of said colors. As I was trying to figure out what order I should put everything back, I heard a knock at my door. I just stayed looking at my clothes that lay on the floor, begging to be organized again. The door opened, shifting the blue section.

"NO! STOP!" I exclaimed in dramatic fashion as I ran over and picked them up.

"What in the bloody hell are you doing?!" father asked, seemingly concerned and very annoyed.

"You ruined it!" I yelled, ignoring him.

"Cecily if you are using this as a distraction it simply won't work" he groaned, rolling his eyes.

"I was fixing it and you didn't even ask to come in!" I argued, starting to get upset. Though I was upset he ruined it, I think my suppressed feelings started catching up. He looked at me very perplexed.

"I knocked," he assured, coming into my room, closing the door slightly behind him so as to not cause further distress.

"I didn't say you could come in" I sassed, crouching on the floor and reorganizing from scratch. "I want them by color, then I'm going to put them in rainbow order, red being the top with orange and the-" I started before he interrupted.

"Cecily, are you-" he started, obviously uncomfortable and unaware of how to go about this, "are you alright?" he said, getting down on my level. I didn't answer right away, he put his hand on my shoulder to get my attention but I quickly squirmed away.

"Don't touch me" I hissed, "I'm cleaning it up, see?" I said as I picked up the reds and stood up to put them away.

"Stop doing that for a second, please" he requested, giving out a huge sigh.

"Why?" I asked, picking up the orange section before he put his arm in front of the drawers, I tried to push his arm aside but he was obviously much stronger than me.

"Sit down, please" he asked, trying to hold on to every last bit of patience he had left. I said nothing for once and did as he said; I sat down across from him on the floor.

"What happened at school?" he asked.

"I stood up for myself," I said, crossing my arms.

"Why did you have to stand up for yourself?" he asked.

"Because the bloody teacher hea-" I started.

"Don't say 'bloody'" he said, holding his head in his hands.

"Why not?" I asked, "it's an adjective"

"John told me I shouldn't let you say that word" he said, shaking his head, almost in disbelief of what he was saying as he was saying it.

"If John jumped off a bridge-" I started mocking.

"Yeah yeah, I get it" he stopped me, annoyed.

"He'd be 'bloody'" I joked, wiggling my fingers in the air; he gave a slight smile as he was about to laugh, but then put on a straight face to get back to the conversation.

"What did the teacher say that you felt you had to 'stand up for yourself'?" he asked, getting back on track.

"She accused me of talking during class when I was just telling another student to stop talking" I explained as he listened intently.

"Hm, and what happened to the other student?" he asked.

"Nothing! Then I thought that if I got the note signed she wouldn't call, but then she did anyway!" I added.

"Well that's just ridiculous" he commented, annoyed. "Why would having the note be better than the call?" he asked, trying to play detective.

"Why do you think?" I asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"Foraging is a crime, and you do not even know my signature" he said.

"Well your handwriting isn't too far off from mine" I said.

"Stop it" he chuckled, his laughing made me laugh. "I'll talk to your teacher about today at some point this week" he said, getting up.

"Are you gonna sign the note?" I asked.

"Not unless that pest who got you in trouble has a note to get signed" he scoffed. I smiled, it was nice to see him on my side and interested in my life. He looked at my mess of a floor, then at me. "Do you want help with this?" he asked. My instinctual reaction was to say 'no, I can do it alone,' but something in me stopped me from saying that.

"Yes, please" I answered, nodding my head.

"Please? I should've got that on tape" he joked in a monotone voice. I threw a shirt from one of the sections at him in response.

We cleaned up the floor and put everything away, talking and joking as we did. I felt like we both started to put our guard down. We started being father and daughter rather than flatmates who just so happened to be related. 

"What happened to that person you were supposed to meet?" I asked. 

"I couldn't focus on anything, I had to get this situations settled first so I cancelled it" he answered, "this is more important" he said, looking at me and smiling; I smiled back.