Nyctophilia

dollhouse

I walked so fast through the cornfield.  I could feel my legs becoming weak with every step I took. Why was I feeling this way? Sebastian was just another guy at school. He was no different. Or at least that's what I thought. I couldn't pay attention to anything, the guilt that had built inside me was eating me alive. If there was something I had promised myself to never do, it was that I'd never treat someone as poorly as everyone else treated me, to hurt them or to ignore the pain they were going through, but I had done it, and I hated myself for it. I could practically hear the voices inside of my head telling me the kind of shit person I was, how disgusting I had behaved, how I wasn't any better than Natalie and Maria and all of the people who I swore, were the ultimate worst.
I became aware of my surroundings as my knees hit the grass and I found myself facing the mud. Fortunately no one had seen me, as the cornfield was usually only transited by the stoners who often came and traded their goods and smoked pot here.
I quickly got up and started sprinting back home, scared that if I stopped I would completely break down.
I got home after a few minutes of sprinting and ran up to my bedroom as I plopped myself onto the bed and drifted to sleep, hoping I'd never wake up.
I woke up to the sound of my mother's angry voice who was calling me for dinner. I understood why she was mad. You see, I developed an eating disorder called anorexia while I was in rehab simply because, at that point, nothing else really mattered to me. This caused my mom to be extremely paranoid about me eating every single day after I'd come back from school. I didn't blame her though, I'd be crazy if they told me my daughter had a mental illness and an eating disorder all in one spoonful of information.
I walked into the kitchen only to immediately smell the delicious cooking of my mother. As I took a seat at the table and my mom approached me to pour the soup onto my bowl I could notice her eyes were red and puffy as if she had been crying all day. I understood why.
You see, to explain all of that we'd need to go way back to the time I was a baby. I wasn't born in Pennsylvania, I was born in New Jersey and we moved here when I was 2. Upon our arrival, mom decided to open her bakery shop as it had always been her dream to have one. It was small but it quickly became Lancaster's favorite bakery because of it's delicious Mexican pastries, my mom's specialty as she was Mexican. This made us become one of the most prestigious families in Lancaster, so when my parents split up when I was 6, our reputation crumbled. I felt sorry for my mom, she missed my father. He had been her first love and probably the only one she would ever have. He made her life a whole lot easier but also a living hell as my father was an avid alcoholic. Sure she had had a couple of flings here and there but nothing would ever compare to the marriage with my father. She missed the reputation she used to have, the praise, the love from many and the lifestyle we used to live.
On top of that she also had to deal with the fact that I was borderline suicidal and the fact that my sister had gone away to live her life a few years ago. Yes, I have a sister. But she went to LA to study, got married and never came back.
So yeah, my mom never smiled anymore, not after everything that had happened to her. And even if she did, you could tell it was not genuine.
She sat across me and we ate in an awkward silence. Suddenly, out of the blue she spoke to me:
"How was school?" She said with a tired voice. I had never seen her this way.
"School was fine" Lie. "We had arts class today". Truth.
"I assume you had a lot of fun, then". False.
"Yeah, kind of". False. It was terrible.
"So, big news for this family". She announced.
I looked at her confused and scared. What else could possibly happen today?
"I'm reopening the bakery". She cried out.  I could see the happiness within her eyes and something inside of me ignited that day. I felt happy, truly happy, not in a "I'm finally cutting today" happy or in a "I hope everyone dies" happy but like, real happiness.
"That's great mom! How did that happen?". It's all I could say. I was curious as to what made my mom make that decision.
"Well, I found out that one of my friends from high school moved here to Lancaster, so we met up at Chrissy's Café and she offered me to help me with the bakery when I mentioned it. She even offered to pay for the whole remodeling of it! Oh. My. God. Spence. I am so excited! I've been crying all day because of it!" My mom squealed.
So I had been wrong, my mom wasn't crying because of my father like she always used to do, she was happy and it was beautiful.
"Wow mom, that's awesome. She must be an amazing woman!"
"Of course she is! She moved because of her divorce. Poor woman used to cry all afternoons. She told me she knew his ex-husband was cheating on her but she was afraid to risk all of the reputation their family had. But she stood up for herself and divorced him. They ended up in good terms though, he's paying everything for her and their son. Oh! I forgot to mention, she has a son. He's actually your same age."
As she mentioned this I began to wonder. Sebastian said his mom and him moved here because of their parents divorce. Your heart began to race at the thought of this, all of your doubts coming up to the surface.
"So what's her name mom?" I asked, scared of what the answer might be.
"Amelia Cornell, formerly known as Amelia Lennox". My mom said giggling.
And then it hit me, all of my doubts being answered with those 7 words.
Amelia Lennox was Sebastian's mother. And now, she was my mom's best friend.
Could this day be any more worse?

*Check the first chapter "CAST" for an inside look to nyctophilia's cast!