Hello Phoebe

Chapter 1: Alone in silence

Minutes without her being with me feels like days, days alone in this house feels like months. For the past months I have struggled with stress and working part-time as exams are rolling in, travelling to the local libraries to study every afternoon. Never had I thought that my mother was struggling as well, the moments I spent with her, she looked genuinely pleased with the life she chose for herself, even though living as a single mother with two children.

I was in my last years of high school, I couldn't possibly risk dropping  and working an extra job to be financially stable. Before everything fell apart, our family wasn't all that wealthy as other families but we were still above the average, we lived in a good neighborhood and everyone knew each other. 

I have an older sister who had moved interstate due to her university and haven't heard of the news of our mother. Everything that I had once own had vanished, I was alone, too scared to tell anyone about the loss of my dear mother. The house is so empty now, I don't think there's anything that can fill it.

At school, it's obvious that i'm hiding something from the people who are closest to me, I have been quite suspicious, my personality has changed drastically and my childhood friend Theo had the urged to know what's up. He has been very persisted, asking and whining to tell him what happened over the weekend. I don't know how to feel, at this point of time I have no one that really wants to be with me yet, Theo is always around the corner. Theo is my childhood friend since birth, his mother and my mother were close friends in school and we happened to be next door neighbors. 

It was obvious that my grades we're falling, everyone knew it - a girl who was once in the top 5 of the year level has fallen to the top 30. Teachers are so concerned of my well being that they call my mother, unknowingly I pretend to be her to hide the truth. I have become so distant with my friends to the point, I only hang out with two out of nine. 

Angela has been my friend for 11 years, we've been through thick and thin, even so she had left me.

    "You have been dragging me down, Phoebe I can't anymore, I can't understand unless you tell me. I'm so sorry." 

As she cried and walked away from me. I knew she was frustrated at me for telling her my feelings and the passing of my mother, because it is truly too upsetting.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Winter holidays has finally come, I had so much plans ready - movies, eat out, shopping, parties and sleep-overs but now everyone cancelled anything they had with me, I guess this is partly my fault. I couldn't keep up with my friends and they didn't wait for me, they just left me behind. I didn't blame them, I could sense the sympathy from their voice and eyes. 

Two weeks in my two-story house all by myself. My room is a mess - clothes on the bed, ground, chair, my school books can be seen on my desk, bed and underneath the bed, stuffed toys everywhere, childish and dusty posters on the walls, there's barely any visible empty space on the ground. There's so much mess, that even walking into my room is a struggle. I thought that I needed to start fresh and new, I shouldn't live in the past and that I really needed a good area to study for my exams.

After three hours of hardcore cleaning, my room is finally clean, I never knew my room had so much floor space. The walls looked plain so I decorated it with some fairy lights and hanged some old water coloring paintings to give some color to my room. 

I go downstairs and prep myself for dinner, open up a frozen box of pasta and microwaved it for 7 minutes, while I waited for it, I looked around, I planned that in this week I need to organised the house. The way the couch was placed made the house very big but since my mother isn't here anymore, the house doesn't need this much space, plus I doubt I would be hanging around downstairs a lot. 

The weather for tonight was said to be under 8 degrees, so I turned on the heater in my room and climbed into bed. It's nearly the next day and the only thing in my mind are flashback memories of the house being filled with joy and laughter, before my sister left and moved away, and my mother playing her favorite songs on the radio while cooking dinner. 

The house is so dark and cold, the only light coming in my room is from the cracks of my blinds, and that my room was starting to really heat up, I wasn't bothered to climb out and turn it off, so I just opened the window. While I was there, I cried out to the unknown.

     "Where can I find happiness?!"

Without realizing, I had woken Theo whose bedroom is opposite to mine. He looked confused but gave out a smile as he stared from across his room into mine. Out of embarrassment, I quickly close my blinds and turned off the light.