That Broken Girl ⇒ Kian Lawley

5

In my deep dream state, I was parading through a one-story unfamiliar mall, almost seeming fake as the two ends of the building were visible to the human eye which shouldn't be a characteristic of a shopping center. The stores' gates rose from the ground, symbolizing the beginning of the day for both the crowd and the employees who were setting up displays in a cute, orderly way to attract more people into their store, earning them more money.

The hallways soon flooded with a sea of different faces and nationalities, along with the stores on each side of the long corridor. Workers preparation for the long upcoming hours were over and everyone had their own conversations sparking up. The commotion was deafening, that is until I woke up to the sound of our doorbell vibrating throughout the entire house.

I paused for a few seconds to regain my composure and comprehend the difference between reality and my dream state before heaving the covers off my body, the brisk air from our built-in air conditioner slapped my skin and formed goosebumps.

My thoughts roamed to my closet to change out of my sloppy apparel consisting of pale gray joggers and an old black spaghetti strap tank from Aéropostale that had blotches of a repugnant red color, the outer rims a pasty pink from fabric bleach that I had spilled on the cloth from back in ninth grade when I dyed my hair an abnormal color and thought bleach would get the cream out of my top.

However, the ringing of the bell pulsing throughout the house had pried me out of the comfort of my bedroom, and instead of switching to something more decent looking and appealing to the eyes, I vacated my room with heavy emotion evidentially causing the corners of my gold knob to collide at full force with the wall, the sound of plaster breaking had been hypersensitive to my ears.

At the moment, splitting the wall was the least of my problems. There was a highly persistent person at my door, who I assumed to be none other than my neighbor Kian. He is the kind of person to be completely clueless about someone who's potentially avoiding him or just isn't home, so he will keep knocking or pressing the doorbell.

The soles of my bare feet smacked against the frigid wood of the steps when I stomped down them in order to get to the door before the irritating ringing noise would pierce my ears again.

With my hand clutched tightly around the knob of the front door, I swung it open using every muscle I could, continuing to clutch onto the edge of the door to prevent it from splitting more plaster on the walls in the house. Just when I was about to roar at the person on the other side of me who was standing on my doormat, my mouth unwillingly closed shut with invisible adhesive glue, my eyes meeting those of a short, built guy in a police officer uniform.

"Hello miss," the man with buzzed brown hair spoke, his eyes were a mesmerizing shade of brown, specks of yellow glimmering against the sunshine. It was almost hard to look away from his gaze, but it would have been awkward if I continued to stare at him, therefore I tore my sight away from him and noticed that my knuckles were turning a porcelain white color.

"Uh hello," I replied, moving all of my weight onto my right leg as I held the door in my hand, two fingers, my index and middle, tapping on the wood while I was glancing nervously between the two.

"We work for the Los Angeles Police Department, and--"

"May I please see your badges?" I interrupted him, at the moment I didn't care about how rude it was to do so or the guilt that built up inside of me when I replayed how nasty it was to cut the stranger off like that, but it was always a rule of my mother's, to always look at their badges to see if they're telling the truth whenever there were people at the door claiming to be police officers. She says nowadays kidnappers and bad people are becoming clever.