Things She Wanted 2 Forget (Urban)

Now

Shannon was put on punishment for sneaking out of the house and showing up at three in the morning with hickeys on her neck. Around the same time, Shannon tried to sneak back into the house, her mom was up fixing some peppermint tea. Right as she was stirring in sugar, the front door opened.

Long story short, Shannon is now on lockdown. School and home. Two days in, she was sure she was about to die. Her mom took her cell phone and her laptop and gave her a really long speech about sex and being safe.

What her mom doesn't know is that Shannon is still a virgin. Sure, the hickeys were a bad look and she understands why her mother would think that she is having sex but the story isn't as bad as it seems.

Anyways, bored to death on a beautiful Saturday, Shannon couldn't stop thinking about how she would rather be out hanging with her girls and winking at cute boys shooting ball in the park but instead, she was confined to the four walls of her bedroom.

Damn, she could've gave me a CD or something to listen to!

Shannon was ready to get off punishment and quick! She knew she needed to do something good, something her mother would be impressed with.

She made clean clothes and dirty clothes piles, she organized her makeup and her jewelry, she even cleaned her shoes from under her bed. Her mom always fusses at her about her messy closet so maybe cleaning that up would lift her punishment.

She opened the door to her closet and was almost scared at the huge pile of clothes on the floor of the closet. No clothes were on the hangers that hung from the racks in her closet.

"Why did I let this get so bad?" Shannon asked herself out loud. She sighed and shook her head.

She thought about quitting. She thought about just letting the punishment wear off on its own. But she misses her phone and she misses her friends.

Shannon started to slowly sort through the clothes, finding shirts she's been looking everywhere for.

As the closet's floor started to show itself again, Shannon found an old beat-up shoebox with a red heart drawn on it. The box did not look familiar to Shannon at all.

"What is this?" Shannon thought. She grabbed the box and took it over to her bed. She sat criss-cross applesauce on her bed and opened the old box.

In the box, there were so many things. Old gold necklaces, bracelets, little figurines of black people like the ones at her grandpa's house. Also, there were old letters and pictures. Shannon picked up the pictures and started to flip through them.

There were old pictures of her mom in her early twenties. It was pictures of her and some of her friends, some she knew, some she never saw before. She posed with a really handsome man in some of the pictures. Shannon figured it had to be one of her mom's old boyfriends. Shannon was amazed at the way her mother used to dress back in the day. She was very fashionable and so beautiful. One picture, in particular, stood out to Shannon. Her mom was sitting in his lap and they had on matching shirts. Shannon's mom was smiling so hard, she looked so happy. The man was smiling hard too. His dark skin looked so smooth and perfect. He held on to her mother tight.

Everything about the photo seemed so intimate to Shannon.

She wondered who this man was and what he meant to her mother. All she knew was that he was not her dad. Shannon decided to snoop through the box for some answers. She picked up one of the old letters and was about to read it until her mother slung her door open.

"Shannon get dressed, we're going to the store." Her mother said.

She looked at Shannon sitting on her bed and saw the letter Shannon was holding and immediately knew what it was. She saw the box she hid deep into the depths of Shannon's closet and panicked a little bit. That box was private and not meant to be seen by anyone, not even her.