Found Out The Day After

Chapter one: The beginning

Sometimes, it feels like I have a TV in my head. Though, as I grow older, the TV screen seems to get darker, the colors seem more faded, and the volume is quieter. Most times, I have the remote; I can control the TV, and I get to decide when to turn it off and on and what I watch. But sometimes, in the deepest corners of the night, after I've turned out my light and I'm awake in bed, awaiting sleep to coddle me and protect me until morning, the TV turns on. I don't have the remote, so I just watch as it projects the worst parts of me, the pieces of my life I wish I could shut away.
Suddenly, I'm sixteen years old again, splayed out on the floor of Ashley's bedroom rug, a beam of morning light from her ridiculously large window casting itself over her perfectly auburn hair. I'm wearing a tank top and comfortable shorts (it was the middle of winter, but I had spent the night at Ashley's for her seventeenth birthday, so I was still wearing my pajamas), gazing up at Ashley's ceiling fan as it spins around and around.
"You're lucky, you know that?" Ashley blurts out. I sit up and furrow my brow, puffing my lips, and I give her a quizzical look. Ashley and I have known each other our whole lives, so she understands that my facial expression means 'go on'. She continues, "I mean, come on, you've always done so well in school, just like I have, but your parents don't constantly pressure you to do better when it's literally physically impossible for you to do any more or any better than you are doing."
I know exactly what this rant is about; Ashley was recently elected class president for the second year in a row, her Mock Trial team just made it to nationals, and she had made it to state in every other activity she had been in that year. But knowing Ashley's parents, they probably only cared that she wasn't doing softball this summer; they had probably berated her for it and called her a failure and said she wasn't going anywhere in life - all because she didn't want to play softball this year.
"Yeah, your parents are kinda psycho." I regret it as soon as I say it; as hard as Ashley's parents are on her, she loves them, and she says she loves the pressure, that it drives her to do the best she can. "Well, they're looking out for you, but they're kinda hardcore about it y'know?"
"Yeah, I guess so. I just wish they'd lay off sometimes." Ashley opens her mouth and closes it again, like she wasn't quite finished speaking, like she wanted to say something more, but she decided against it. With the conversation effectively over, I lay back down on the floor, staring once again at her ceiling fan going around and around and around. I turn on my phone and try to find a good song for us to listen to; then, I remember Ashley's favorite song: Party In The USA by Miley Cyrus. It's been her favorite since we were kids, and any time it came on, I just knew Ashley was going to start dancing.
"Oh hell yeah, I love this song!" Just like that, everything is back to normal, and whatever Ashley was about to say is now permanently lost to that fleeting moment. Ashley stands up from her desk and starts dancing awkwardly, like a chicken trying to breakdance, singing along as she does.