Flawless

Flawless [2]

When I got through the door, mom and Luka were already eating dinner.

“Where were you?”  Mom said shovelling a copious amount of noddles from a paper Chinese take-out box. That would be the source to why it smelt so good, mom wasn’t much of a cook and whenever it was truly edible was when she took it out of the box herself.

“I went to TCBY with Poet then back to her’s” I picked a noddle off Luka’s plate and popped it into my mouth. Honey soy?

I sat down next to him and got myself a plate, mom passed me a paper box “Vegetarian.” she said.  I took the box and tipped it upside down onto my plate, she contents fell out in a perfect square shape before it slowly fell apart on my plate. Picking up my fork I dove into my noddles, it had been a considerable number of hours since I had eaten and I was still fairly hungry.

“What you guys do today? Luka?”

Finishing off his plate of food and going for a prawn cracker, Luka “I got a ‘C’ on an algebra test,”

“Okay well at least we won’t have to worry about college” mom joked “Delta, what about you?”

I thought about my answer today ‘Well mom, I ditched out on maths to go to TCBY and instead I ended up saving a couple that’s having an affair from a burning building’  instead my preferred answer was that of something I had seen Hayden Panettiere’s character on ‘Hero’s’ say, and it was totally appropriate! “I walked through fire today, and I didn’t get burned.”

“Oh I see,” mom said “The fire is your obstacles to life, like school drama and stuff, and your saying that you didn’t get burnt is like saying you overcame it.”

My mom teachers literature at the community college, to so her, everything has another meaning. “Yeah… ” I said slowly, “something like that.”

“I got into the football team” Luka said, I was thankful that he had interrupted like that, I’ve never been one to hog the spotlight and I didn’t like it that much when it was on me for more than five minute.

Mom dropped her fork he her reaction was satisfactory for Luka’s news “Luka, that’s great! Well it looks like you can go to college now!” She picked up her fork and began eating again, there was a silence again that overlapped with the scraping of forks against plates.

“Where’s dad?” I asked, he wasn’t anywhere in the house from what I could hear, if I extended it beyond the room.

“He had a meeting in the morning so he flew to Miami.” It wasn’t unusual for my dad to leave unexpectedly for meetings all over the country. It was part of his work for the Federation of American Science. If he didn’t love Lords Lake so much we would be living in Washington DC instead of Washington State.

The rest of the meal went by quickly with bit of meaningless banter thrown around the table.  Afterwards Luka disappeared into his room to play on his Xbox and stayed behind to help mom clear the table.  

“Seeing Ryan tonight?” she asked, my ears spiking at the sound of my boyfriend’s name.

“I don’t think so,” I said honestly, “I saw him at school, and he had football practice afterwards. And he’s always too tired after that.”

“Are you guys okay? You’ve seemed a bit cold lately.” She stated.

“I’m fine, I’m just a bit stressed out at school.” I said, the lie wasn’t familiar on my tongue ad it tingled as I let it free.

I could tell that my statement didn’t sit right with my mum, but it came across as convincingly “Anything you need with?”

I shook my head, taking my school bag with me I went upstairs and shut the door to my room. I opened my laptop on my bed and waited for it to come to life, crossing my legs I plugged in my iPod head phones to douse the sound as my desktop screen came up.

I quickly scanned my room, the door was shut and locked, the window was close, but I jumped up anyway to pull the curtains across. Just to be sure. Then I returned to my laptop put my heads phones in and connected the USB that Poet gave me before I left TCBY.

I have to wait a couple of minutes while it loaded then it switched to the media player and footage of me started to play on the screen.

 “Get this on camera!” I shouted at her, this was a week ago, on a Saturday afternoon we had gone down to the Lake. I was now at the top of a tree hanging from a weak branch that was about to give out due to the weight put on it.

“I already am!” she called back from the other side of the camera, and a few seconds after that the tree branch snapped and I fell, hitting the other branches on the way done, diving in the ground head first. I rubbed the spot on my temple where the gash that was now visible on screen had been.

“Delta!” Poetta had called out to me, and the screen started to shake as she ran the short distance over towards me.

I hadn’t blacked out, which surprised me, it’s happened before, but it didn’t happened this time. In the end, I had a broken both my legs, my left arm, several ribs and punctured a lung. I think my spine and neck had broken to. If it had happened to someone else, they would have died, or become a paraplegic it they were lucky.

But now came the worst bit. It started at my legs and worked its way up. There was loud cracking as my bones set back into place and healed. This was the first time I couldn’t feel it, which Poet said was because my spine was broken. But then that started to heal and the pain slowly started to burn the way up through my ribs my neck, my head, healing my lungs, the abrasions on my brain. 

Within the next minute I sprang to my feet, “Oh that was different.” I said.

“You okay?” Poet asked again from behind the camera, the last thing you saw was my nodding then the screen went blank.

When I pulled out the ear-plugs I heard the rapping on my window. I slammed my laptop shut, jump off my bead and yanked open my curtains. In the bottom of my garden half illuminated by the kitchen lights, but my sight made up for the rest I was able to make-our Ryan throwing pebbles from the swing set in my backyard.

Flicking the latch I opened my windows and leaned out into the stiff night air. “Ryan” I hissed, “what are you doing?”

He dropped the pebbles in his hand, “I barley saw you today.” He said “I missed you.”

“Come around to the front door,” I said, closing my windows. Walking back through my room, I took the USB out of the laptop and put it in the top drawer of my desk.

After I let Ryan in mom, gave us both a boy smile and claimed to be going to bed. We set up a movie in the lounge room and snuggled together on the couch.

He would rub my back for me and kiss me on the forehead every now and then, and narrate my favourite lines. And some people say Finding Nemo isn’t romantic. Shame on you.

When he left it was late, and today’s events where catching up with me, I always got tired a few hours afterwards. And a nice hot shower was just what I wanted.

I slept good that night, so good that I was actually late getting up the next morning, it was a good thing I already had my outfit laid out. I was nearly at the front door when I remembered Poetta’s USB, so I quickly ran back upstairs to get it, but when I opened my desk draw I found that it was empty, everything in it, including the USB had vanished.