Fragile | ✓

1.0 | Dramatic Much

10 | Dramatic Much

→ Everyone has their own secrets

→ You know that would be a lie right?

━━━

"DADDY, DADDY!" I called out, ready to proudly exhibit my art work. The wall was covered in a set of stick figures, all in different crayon colors. A messy yellow circle was drawn with lines coming out of each side as a sun and a jig jagged green topping the baseboard. In the middle of the wall, two stick figures, one with a cap on and one with sunglasses, stood tall.

"Jess? You're in here right?" Daddy asked, turning the corner of the living room in his pajamas. "Oh my goodness, what is this angel?" He placed his hand covering his mouth and immediately went on alert, removing the red crayon that I had grasped tightly in my fist off. Dropping on the ground, he immediately swooped down to pick up all the coloring utensils away from my reach.

"My masterpiece, daddy! Do you not like it?" I announced, confused on daddy's reaction.

"Oh Jess," He said his signature phrase and took off his glasses holding them in one hand. He rubbed his eyes and sighed before touching my drawing on the wall. "It's beautiful-" I perked up. "-but you aren't supposed to draw on the wall, love."

"Oh," I mutter quietly, downcasting my eyes. "Sorry."

"Aw, no princess. Come here, let's draw a enormous masterpiece on a piece of paper." He held out his hand towards me and led me towards the huge cupboard near the kitchen. Dropping my hand, he took out a huge piece of scratch paper that extended as long as the rainbow!

... except that there was no pot of gold on the other side.

Immediately, a smile covered my face and I ran to the kitchen counter. Jumping up and down, I reached my hand up as high as it could go to get my crayons that daddy had put there. Daddy taped the sides of the paper on opposite sides of the table and we climbed onto the tall dining room chairs to start coloring.

━━━

Two hours and two pairs of colorful hands later, we had finally finished our drawing.

Blue unfinished circles meant to be droplets of rain were scattered across the paper. Two brown lines stood at both sides of the paper with what looked like a pink cloud on top. 'A cherry blossom tree,' daddy had told me. And its final touch was the two stick figures in the middle- similar to the ones currently on our wall- one with glasses and one with braids.

"It's beautiful." Daddy said quietly with loving eyes, but he wasn't looking at the painting. He was looking at me.

━━━

The closer I got to Ryan's house, the more my anxiety continued to spike up.

This Friday, when Ms. Mandy announced that the projects were due the following Monday, was when I first realized that we hadn't even started the project. Procrastination at its finest, why don't you? When I expressed my concern to Ryan, his only response was a shrug to which I explained to him that we had to meet up outside of school to finish this assignment. Ryan had begrudgingly given me his address and told me to meet him today. Eli and Mason, now in charge of the house as Caden was on a business trip, had reluctantly agreed to let me go with the promise that I would stay safe and that it was for a project. Though they had offered to drop me off, I protested to walk by myself, claiming to want exercise, when in reality, I just didn't want to bother them any more.