Phantom [h.s]

Two

"Jane! Dinner's ready!"

I finally put down the photograph after many minutes of staring at it. Who is H.S.? Why is his photograph here? What was it doing in my closet?

I clench my jaw at the multiple boxes that still sit unpacked before exiting my room and making my way downstairs.

Do I tell my parents about the photo? I immediately decide against it. I found it in my room, and I want to keep it to myself.

However, I can't help but be curious. Barely anything was left behind in the house when we moved in, and this box seems so sentimental. Who could have owned it? H.S.?

As I sit across from my parents at the dinner table, the haunting smile on the face of the boy is the only thing slithering through my mind. I guess it's good to get my mind on something other than killing myself, even if that something is a creepy photograph I found in the dusty closet of an ancient feeling house. Well, I promised I'd be more optimistic, didn't I?

"Like your room?"

I look up into the excited eyes of my father, half-heartedly twirling pasta around my fork. "Yeah, it's...big."

"We'll have to get you some new furniture to fill up all that space!"

"It's alright. I think I've got enough furniture."

It's apparent to me that my parents always wonder why turned out so negative and sarcastic when both of them are just rays of sunshine. Literally, everything they say or do has a positive connotation to it. They should be crowned King and Queen Optimist of the universe.

I love my parents, I do. At times, though, I just want to get away from them and their nuclear positivity.

"So Jane," my mother says, spooning salad onto her plate. "You start school tomorrow."

I sigh. "Yep."

"Excited?"

I give her a look and she purses her lips "Come on, you'll make lots of new friends!"

"Friends are overrated."

My parents exchanged a look. "Remember what we talked about before we moved, Jane," my father says, adjusting the glasses perched on his face.

I look down at my food.

"The world is a beautiful place if you would just have an open mind," he on.

I bite into my lower lip to keep from retorting.

"You just have to smile at the world and it will smile right back at you." As if to back this up, both he and my mother grin widely at me.

I clench my jaw, exhaling. "You don't get it. You don't get it and you never will." I clamp my mouth shut as soon as the words leave me, and I stand up, pushing my plate away.