Two Steps North

Four in the morning was nothing new. Cecily walks calmly into her father's room where he screams at his television. Cecily takes the controller from her father's hands and turns the television to an appropiate channel that almost immediately calms her father down.

Cecily creeps back into her room and slams her body to her ground level matress and quickly falls asleep. She dreams of being in a field writing in her journal. A man approaches her in her dream and burns her journal. She has this dream every night.

Cecily wakes up from her nightmare. She brushes her hair and teeth and dresses herself in a plain shirt and ripped jeans. She checks on her father and sure enough, he's asleep. His four in the morning fit must have worn him out.

Cecily waners into the kitchen, opens the fridge and stares. There isn't much, just a carton of eggs, half a jug of milk, two bowls of something rotten, and a package of bacon. She grabs the bacon and eggs and whips up a quck breakfast. She looks at the clock. School starts in an hour. She eats her breakfast quickly, grabs her backpack, and heads to her one and only friend Rachel's home.

Rachel isn't awake, but Cecily sneaks into her room anyways. She startles Rachel. They both laugh, but Cecily quickly stops. She doesn't want to wake Rachel's family. They're far to wholesome and good to woken by some trailer trash girl like her.

"So Cec, I was thinking after school today we can go to the Arcade, I hear their giving out free burgers. Maybe we can go to the library too. Or..you know. Whatever." Cecily smiles. She loves Rachel's attempts at satisfying her. Cecily and Rachel are opposite in any way you could think of.

Cecily is typically not very outspoken, likes solitude, while Rachel is very outgoing, president of just about everything in the school. That's why Cecily likes her, because she has nothing in common. Having things in common were boring to Cecily.

She declared commonality a disease when she was five. That's when her mother passed away. Cecily and her mother were never close, never got along, in fact Cecily's mother was a drunk. She drank herself into alcohol poisoning which eventually killed her. Since then Cecily's father took a turn for the worse, got into drugs, and destroyed his brain. By age seven Cecily was fighting CPS and begging to stay with her father even though he wasn't in stable condition. But they agreed, somehow. Since then Cecily has been the mother of the family. Her baby sister, Juna, was taken before her mother died. She was taken to an orphanage because her mother didn't want to raise her 

She felt bad for Juna, but other than that, Cecily didn't care about her sister. She hoped that she grew up a better life and hoped that she became a successful doctor or something of the sort.

Cecily and Rachel talk for a few minutes while Rachel gets dressed and prepped for school. Rachel was beautiful, unlike Cecily who's dark brown hair and green eyes demolished her attractive physique. Rachel's blonde, straight hair and baby blue eyes made her an immediate magnet for hormonal boys.

Rachel finishes getting ready. Cecily and Rachel walk to school together almost every morning. Rachel usually complains about her broken car. Being seventeen with no car was a social disaster for Rachel, but to Cecily, it was another reason to smile.

The walk to school was long. It was about three miles from Cecily's home, but Cecily didn't mind. She enjoyed the fresh crisp air, the scenery of her small South Dakota town, it was extrodinary.  It was a beautful morning, the sun was coming up with no disruption from clouds. It was perfect, as perfect as it got at least.

Cecily's morning was going perfect until---

I fall to the ground and my head pounds. The voices are back. They're back. I grab the ground for anything, something! I scream for Rachel and she races to my side. She's used to it. She's dealt with this before. My uscles lock up and I fall to my back. My heart races, feeling like it's going to explode. I look at the sky and hope, pray that this will end soon. Tears spill from my eyes, and then it's over.

Cecily's body relaxes and she lets out a huge breath. Rachel's face is stunned even though she's seen these occurances before. She has no idea. The extent of these episodes were worse than Rachel could imagine. Cecily shakes her head and stands up even though she's wobbly. 

Rachel doesn't say a word. Nor does Cecily. They just continue to walk.