Snowflakes

December 11th

11th

"Sometimes there's nothing you can do. Sometimes they don't have enough to fight with." ― Tamora Pierce.

It's Thursday. I hate Thursdays. It seems like every week the fourth day is unenjoyable and I spend the whole time wishing it would be over. Further, this Thursday is worse than most.

By lunch time I feel so ill that even the quietest noise seems to boom in my aching head, whilst I don't dare even look at my sandwiches. Immy tells me I should go to the office and ask to go home, and for once we agree instantly.

Just before I leave, when my Mum is waiting impatiently in the reception, I remember my daily secret santa present. I dart off, pushing back the rising nausea as I rush to my locker that sits in a deserted corridor. I almost laugh when I see what's awaiting me: a packet of Christmas themed Haribo sweets. Talk about bad timing. Still, it's the thought that counts and there's no doubt I'll be able to eat the whole lot another day. Right now though, the thought makes me queasy.

My Mum rolls her eyes and tells me that it couldn't have been that important, but I just shake my head. She doesn't understand. The unique relationship (if that's what you can call it) shared between this anonymous person and me, is private and will always remain that way.

❄

Two hours later I'm half sitting, half lying, on the cold bathroom floor as I wish that I could just skip ahead a few hours or days or however long it takes for this ghastly sickness to subside.

With a groan, I sit up and lean over the toilet bowl, being sick unceremoniously. After a split second my Mother is by my side, holding my hair back from my face and rubbing my back.

I get a familiar feeling to last night, the kind I get far too often. Almost always, I can just push the feelings away and carry on only slightly shaken. But now I'm ill and I'm weak and I'm so exhausted that I just let the memories and the emotions flood into my mind's eye.

"Shh, it's okay Scarlett," he reassures me in the most soothing voice I've ever heard him use. "It's okay. You'll be alright, love."

His hand drifts up and down my back in a comforting gesture as a single tear slides down my cheek, a sign of how distraught I'm feeling. My hair is pulled carefully from my face and when the ordeal is over I slump back into him, inhaling the remedying smell of his cologne and washing powder and just him.

"You're okay, Scarlett. I'm here. I'm here," he tells me over and over until his words form a lullaby which my heavy eyelids drift shut to.

"It's okay, Scarlett baby, I'm here," my Mum whispers soothingly in my ear as I lean back against her.

I'm exhausted, not only from being sick but from the flashback that just makes the pain fresher and sharper. I hate it.

I hate how easily I let the memories come rushing back. I hate how it leaves me a quivering, tearful mess. I hate how it's been almost a year and I still can't force myself to get over it. But mostly, I hate how everything can't just be like it was last December, back in Perth, when everything was normal.