A Hidden Picture

Fifteen

~ Annalise

I'm in a dark room. Every corner of the endless space emits piercing crying and arguing. I look around with wide eyes and a shaky body. My skin is cold and wet, as if I just crawled out of a pool.

My teeth chatter. The crying and yelling gets louder. As if it's closing in on me. Even though there are no walls and no end in sight.

Hesitantly, I look down. Fear trickles down my spine as I see the pores on my arms. Second by second they get bigger. And bigger. And bigger. Each one being their own endless black pit. They just keep expanding and expanding, the stressed voices yelling at me through each one.

Soon my sickly looking skin color is almost not visible as I turn into just a body with bullet like holes everywhere.

Expanding until that's all I become.

Until I become swallowed by myself.

~ Reed

"When your brother was in high school he was passing math with flying colors," Dad scoffs.

I just shrug and continue to stare down at my plate, slowly picking at the food.

"I'm not good at math either!" Gracie smiles brightly next to me, as if she's proud of herself for being like me which makes me weakly smile.

Dad's lips purse when he looks towards her. "Kayden and Alina are so smart. I don't know what happened to you two," he mutters the last sentence.

Gracie smile drops slowly and goes back to looking at her plate. The sight of her thick pink glasses, chubby cheeks and little frown is making my heart sink.

"Dad. I have three B's and one D which I'm getting tutored for. And I also help Gracie with school and I'd say her grades are pretty decent. It's not the end of the world." I don't even want to finish my food. My appetite goes when he starts talking about this shit.

He glances up at me from the other side of the small rectangle dining table in our kitchen as he continues reading the book in his hand.

Mom sits next to him, too interested in the TV show to care what he's saying.

He sighs. "All I'm saying is, your brother is going to the NFL next year and he was ahead of you in high school. What are your chances of becoming a pro football player if you're grades are average and you're not some out of this world player?"

I just stare at him with no emotion. I don't want to be a pro-football player.

Except I can't tell him that because I don't want to hear it. His complaining and disappointment.

My tongue pokes my cheek as I continue staring him down, trying to hold back my tongue.

With a defeated sigh, I stand up and go clean off my plate before putting it in the sink. Just so I don't have to hear him anymore, I walk back up the stairs and to my room, closing the door behind me.

I lazily walk over to my CD player and pop in one of them. Are CD's old? Yes. But they remind me of all the good memories of my childhood, so I refuse to get rid of it. There's a shelf full of old CD's next to my bed. Half of these I stole form my sister after she went to college.

Once Michael Jackson starts playing lowly, I tiredly lay down in my bed. Half my face is smothered by a pillow.

I have practice tomorrow which means I'm going to be late to picking up Gracie from the library. And then I got detention the day after that. My parents don't even know about my detentions, god they'd be livid. I heard the voicemail the principal sent them but I deleted it before they came home. Which is always later at night anyway so I wasn't in a rush.